UEFI is a feature of motherboards that was introduced about 2012 to prevent users from running operating systems other than those from Microsoft on their computers. It can usually be disabled in the BIOS settings but it takes some rooting around. Its presence explains a lot of the problems I have had trying to install Linux onto more recent computers. It is, in effect, yet another Windows nuisance feature to keep the Microsoft virus alive and in circulation.
What happens is this. If you attempt to install a Linux on a machine with UEFI enabled you will be asked to create a small partition with a name like /boot-efi or similar. The kernel would normally then be installed to that partition. It then cannot be updated in the normal way (by downloading and running grub) as the symbolic link cannot be made with the vfat filesystem, so you get an error message and the old version of the kernel remains in use. This is apparently yet another Windows nuisance feature.
If you proceed with an installation but do not add the EFI partition, it will proceed to the end and then there is an error message. This cannot be resolved with boot-repair.
In an attempt to resolve the problem, I combed through the BIOS, which involves digging around in all the options, and disabled all the UEFI and security features, then tried boot-repair again, but this still does not resolve the problem.
However, with all the UEFI features disabled on the motherboard, a fresh install will not ask for the EFI partition to be created. On the 250 Gb SSD (mounted directly in the motherboard slot; it identifies as the last HDD, in my case /dev/sdc) I created just two partitions as msdos, 30 GB for root and the remainder for home; there is no longer any need for a boot partition and the swap partition should be placed on a conventional disk as they are reputed to wear out solid state disks. Installation then proceeded to the point where the grub routine has to be written. At this point I got a warning that if I continued it might be impossible to start another operating system installed on the same machine, eg Windows. Obviously that message could be ignored. The next screen gives an option to chose which disk grub should write to, in my case /dev/sdc.
The system now works correctly, including the kernel updates.
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