Hi, I have a machine whose only storage is NVMe and I think this forces me to use EFI if I want to boot it. This is something I've never done before as I've always got by with the BIOS set to legacy boot. It's not going well but I don't know if that is due to something I'm doing wrong.
At the point where d-i asks me if I want to install an extra copy of grub in the EFI fallback location, I say "yes" and then get an error screen saying: Unable to install GRUB in dummy Executing 'grub-install dummy' failed. This is a fatal error. Here are the logs from that install attempt: https://strugglers.net/~andy/tmp/d-i/ Having experienced this problem when trying to do my "real" install (largely preseed automated, software RAID, LVM), I did this one non-automated with priority set to "low" and made it much simpler: only used /dev/nvme0n1; three partitions (ESP, swap and root). That is why the logs show me deleting an MD device as the first thing I do in partman. It seems to have been left over from my earlier attempts. If I say "no" to the extra copy of grub I get the same error, so I think it's not that step but the actual grub-install that comes after. I guess the only interesting part of the syslog file is: Nov 21 01:02:01 grub-installer: info: Installing grub on 'dummy' Nov 21 01:02:01 grub-installer: info: grub-install does not support --no-floppy Nov 21 01:02:25 grub-installer: info: Running chroot /target grub-install --force-extra-removable --force "dummy" Nov 21 01:02:25 grub-installer: Installing for x86_64-efi platform. Nov 21 01:02:25 grub-installer: grub-install: warning: vars_get_variable: open(/sys/firmware/efi/vars/blk0-47c7b225-c42a-11d2-8e57-00a0c969723b/raw_var, O_RDONLY) failed: No such file or directory. Nov 21 01:02:25 grub-installer: grub-install: warning: efi_get_variable: ops->get_variable failed: No such file or directory. Nov 21 01:02:25 grub-installer: grub-install: warning: device_get: readlink of /sys/block/(null)/device failed: No such file or directory. Nov 21 01:02:25 grub-installer: grub-install: warning: open_disk: could not open disk: No such file or directory. Nov 21 01:02:25 grub-installer: grub-install: warning: efi_va_generate_file_device_path_from_esp: could not open disk: No such file or directory. Nov 21 01:02:25 grub-installer: grub-install: warning: efi_generate_file_device_path_from_esp: could not generate File DP from ESP: No such file or directory. Nov 21 01:02:25 grub-installer: grub-install: error: failed to register the EFI boot entry: No such file or directory. Nov 21 01:02:25 grub-installer: error: Running 'grub-install --force-extra-removable --force "dummy"' failed. Is this bug report relevant? https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=925591 Though it seems to be about software RAID, whereas I've striped the example down to only having one ESP. There's also this one with the same error messages: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=933523 But trying some ideas from there results in: ~ # ls -la /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/ dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Nov 21 00:46 . drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 0 Nov 21 00:46 .. ~ # mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars ~ # mount --rbind /sys /target/sys ~ # chroot /target /bin/bash root@tanqueray:/# grub-install Installing for x86_64-efi platform. grub-install: warning: efivarfs_get_variable: open(/sys/firmware/efi/efivars/blk0-47c7b225-c42a-11d2-8e57-00a0c969723b): No such file or directory. grub-install: warning: efi_get_variable: ops->get_variable failed: No such file or directory. grub-install: warning: device_get: readlink of /sys/block/(null)/device failed: No such file or directory. grub-install: warning: open_disk: could not open disk: No such file or directory. grub-install: warning: efi_va_generate_file_device_path_from_esp: could not open disk: No such file or directory. grub-install: warning: efi_generate_file_device_path_from_esp: could not generate File DP from ESP: No such file or directory. grub-install: error: failed to register the EFI boot entry: No such file or directory. root@tanqueray:/# efibootmgr -v BootCurrent: 0009 Timeout: 5 seconds BootOrder: 0007,0009,000A,0003 Boot0003* UEFI: Built-in EFI Shell VenMedia(5023b95c-db26-429b-a648-bd47664c8012)..BO Boot0007* debian HD(1,GPT,4f823ade-7a2d-4d65-b369-f76f3dd01aa8,0x800,0xf3800)/File(\EFI\DEBIAN\GRUBX64.EFI)..BO Boot0009* (B1/D0/F0) UEFI: PXE IPv4 Intel(R) I350 Gigabit Network Connection(MAC:3cecef2221e8) PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/MAC(3cecef2221e8,1)/IPv4(0.0.0.00.0.0.0,0,0)..BO Boot000A* (B1/D0/F1) UEFI: PXE IPv4 Intel(R) I350 Gigabit Network Connection(MAC:3cecef2221e9) PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x1)/MAC(3cecef2221e9,1)/IPv4(0.0.0.00.0.0.0,0,0)..BO Any ideas? Cheers, Andy