On 11/25/2012 06:42 PM, Keith Moyer wrote: > I am attempting to install Debian Wheezy onto my new Toshiba Satellite > S855-S5378 laptop using the beta4 debian-installer (I've tried the DVD > images and the netinst images on USB and CD). > > When I boot debian-installer in Compatibility Support Module (CSM) mode, > the installer runs fine. However, it would install grub in BIOS mode. > I need it to be in UEFI mode to allow dual booting Windows 8 (which came > pre-installed). > > When I boot the debian-installer in UEFI mode, however, I just get a > flash of: > > Welcome to Grub! > Error: "prefix" not set. > > then the screen is all scrambled. It appears as though a smaller > horizontal resolution is being used and the scan lines are just being > appended to each other. So, image is squished to the stop ~40% of the > screen and the image is illegible. > > Is this a UEFI issue or a Grub issue? Any ideas on how I should proceed? > > I've noticed that newer versions of grub has a commit (revno: 4412) to > "Reject invalid resolutions" in efi_gop.c. I'm not familiar with > either either UEFI or Grub code, but that sounds promising to me. > I've checked out and compiled the debian-installer code. Would > updating Grub to 2.00 be difficult or have bad consequences? If this > would be the thing to do, I'd appreciate a pointer on how to build > netinst images from the compiled debian-installer; I can't seem to > find anything on how to do that.
For anyone curious, I solved my problem. I compiled Grub2 EFI from the bzr trunk and put the resulting .efi file on another USB flash drive. The commit I mentioned previously (or something else coincident) seems to fix the display issue. However, booting the install image from this grub immediately still corrupted the display. To get around it I had to set the gfxmode and tell grub to pass it along to the booted kernel: set gfxmode=1366x768x32 set gfxpayload=keep terminal_output=gfxterm set root=(hd0,msdos1) linux /install.amd/vmlinuz desktop=kde initrd /install.amd/gtk/initrd.gz boot And, for any one else trying to install Debian on an S855-S5378 (or similar), I also had to compile the alx ethernet driver, place the resulting .ko files on the same USB flash drive as the compiled Grub, hit "Go back" as soon as I could in the installer, open a command prompt, insmod the .ko files, then resume the installer. I now have Debian 7 happily installed on my new laptop! :-) - Keith
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