The ultrabook is a T oshiba Portege Z930-145 i5-3317U/4GB/128GB SSD/13.3"While inside of BIOS, I see: System BIOS Version 6.40 EC Version 1.20
Any other details that I can help you with? > Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 00:12:02 +0100 > From: st...@einval.com > To: alber...@hotmail.com; 708...@bugs.debian.org > Subject: Re: Bug#708430: EFI Bug > > retitle 708430 need to also install grub to the removable media fallback path? > thanks > > On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 06:28:52PM +0000, Alberaan ...y seré por siempre > Alberaan wrote: > >Package: grub-efi-amd64 > >Version: 1.99-27+deb7u1 > > Hi Alberaan, > > Thanks for reporting the bug as I requested. :-) > > >We have been having trouble trying to boot to a debian system. Just > >after a correct installation, debian didn't boot. The "Toshiba" logo > >from my pc was stuck. Someone on #debian-boot told me he thought this > >is what was happening: > > > >http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/4125.html > > Yep, it seems this was the core of your problem. The suggestion to use > Ubuntu's rescue-boot script only confused things further, hence why it > took so long to diagnose the problem. > > >Using debian installer in rescue mode, we did (sda1 being boot > >partition, sda2 the / partition): > > > >mkdir /target > >mount /dev/sda2 /target > >mount /dev/sda1 /target/boot/efi > >mount --bind /sys /target/sys > >mount --bind /proc /target/proc > >mount --bind /dev /target/dev > >chroot /target > > > >cd /boot/efi/EFI > >mkdir boot > >cp debian/grubx64.efi boot/bootx64.efi > > > >We then rebooted and it worked. > > Yes. grub-installer was correctly creating and installing the > grubx64.efi executable in a valid path and attempting to instruct your > laptop's firmware to boot it. BUT: it seems that the firmware is buggy > and ignores EFI boot entries when they are created. By copying the > grub executable to the fallback removable media path, your machine > will now boot. This temporarily solves your problem with booting. > > The problem with doing this is that at some point in the future when > you upgrade to a newer version of the grub package, things will stop > working. Newer versions of the grub-efi-amd64-bin package will replace > the debian/grubx64.efi file and the modules that it loads, but *won't* > replace the temporary copy we've made in boot/bootx64.efi. At some > point, compiler changes or internal grub changes are likely to break > compatibility between the old grub binary and new modules and at that > point your bootloader will break again. > > Fundamentally, the bug here is in the firmware of your Toshiba > laptop. Alberaan, Could you please tell us more details of the laptop? > Ideally we would like to have the model number and the firmware > revision so that we can log that information somewhere for future > users. > > Secondly (and this is more to Colin): as we've now seen this failure > mode in the wild in more than one case, I think that we need to add > (optional?) code to grub-install to tell it to *also* install to the > fallback removable media path. We could do a few things here: > > (a) use a blacklist of known-bad make/model/firmware versions and > automatically trigger the fallback installation when we detect > one > > (b) do the Windows thing: always install to the fallback path if > nobody else already has; we'd need to detect if the > previously-installed fallback file is from an older version of > grub-efi and if so upgrade it > > (c) ask the user the question (and store their answer in /etc or > debconf or *somewhere*): "do you want to install to the fallback > path too?" > > What do you think? > > -- > Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. st...@einval.com > "Because heaters aren't purple!" -- Catherine Pitt >
