Q4OS installation failure

Hello,

The fdisk command shows that your disk is in gpt format and there is an efi partition on the disk. Did you start the installation media in EFI mode to proceed with the installation? (By the way, does your PC support this mode since it doesn't seem recent?)

To check if the installation media was started in EFI mode, open the terminal, paste this command:

 # [ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo "UEFI Boot Detected" || echo "Legacy BIOS Boot Detected"

And see the result.

If the installation media was started in legacy bios mode, the disk format (gpt) is not suitable, hence the error during the installation of grub.

However, it is technically possible to install in legacy bios mode on a gpt disk, but in this case, it is necessary to create a small bios_boot partition at the beginning of the disk (which does not exist in your case because there is an efi partition instead) because there is not enough space to install grub entirely in the mbr of a gpt disk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS_boot_partition

It should display either UEFI Boot Detected or Legacy BIOS Boot Detected... definitely one of the two.

If you're installing in legacy mode, you first need to convert your disk to MBR mode; otherwise, grub won't be able to install correctly on your GPT disk. You can do this with gparted. First, select your hard drive (probably sda) at the top right, then go to the Device menu / Create a new partition table. Choose the msdos format.

The entire disk will be erased.

https://gparted.org/display-doc.php?name=help-manual&lang=fr#gparted-create-partition-table

Then you can create your partitions by clicking on New Partition.

The other option (perhaps the simplest) would be to keep the GPT disk format and convert the EFI partition to a bios_grub partition so that part of grub can install there. For that, you need to select the EFI partition and set the BIOS_GRUB flag.

https://gparted.org/display-doc.php?name=help-manual&lang=fr#gparted-manage-partition-flags

Can you redo a

sudo fdisk -l from the installed Q4OS?

Hello,

"Disklabel type: dos"

The disk has indeed been converted to mbr format.

If it wasn't you who did the operation, it was done automatically by the installation program, it's the first time I've seen this.

Hello,

Some remarks:

• Regarding the ESP: you can normally manage it from the EFI settings of your BIOS/UEFI. It usually looks like this. If that's not the case, it seems possible, under Linux, to work on the ESP with efibootmgr:

  # Installation sudo apt update sudo apt install efibootmgr # Load the appropriate module, usually done automatically (see lsmod) sudo modprobe efivars # List the partitions sudo efibootmgr -v # Delete the entry XXX # See: man efibootmgr # See: https://tecporto.pt/wiki/index.php/Removing_an_entry_from_the_UEFI_boot_list_(Linux) sudo efibootmgr -b XXX -B

• Regarding the command df -h: it lists the available space on each mounted partition. Among all these lines is /boot/efi, which corresponds to the ESP.
  
  Example:

  # Find the EFI partition mount | grep /boot/efi # I get: # /dev/nvme0n1p2 on /boot/efi type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0077,dmask=0077,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro) # The device that interests us is therefore /dev/nvme0n1p2 # Display the occupied space, keeping only the line that contains /dev/nvme0n1p2 df -h | grep /dev/nvme0n1p2 # I get: # /dev/nvme0n1p2 256M 53M 204M 21% /boot/efi # The partition is 256Mio, 53Mio are used, 204Mio are free, the occupancy is therefore 21% 

• Regarding legacy boot: this must have unlocked the installation of Q4OS because indeed there is then no reason to reference anything in the EFI partition.
  • However, if you decide to restore Secure Boot (which is required by recent systems, including the latest Windows), you will need to ensure that everything necessary is installed for GRUB to reference Q4OS in the ESP. Make sure that the ESP partition is mounted in /boot/efi. We see in #19 that this partition no longer exists, apparently because you have done a big cleanup since the message #5.
  • If you are forced to set up Secure Boot, you will need to create a FAT32 (vfat) partition of a few hundred Mo on your disk (personally, I allocate 256Mo) and then reference it in /etc/fstab so that it mounts in /boot/efi. If the question arises, it will be a good opportunity to ask it on the forum ;-)
    
    If the EFI partition exists, you can then verify that it is mounted with:

    mount | grep efi # You should see two lines like: # efivarfs on /sys/firmware/efi/efivars type efivarfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) # /dev/nvme0n1p2 on /boot/efi type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0077,dmask=0077,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro) # If nothing appears, it means that the ESP partition is not mounted. It then needs to be created and mounted. An ESP partition is a FAT32 partition of a few hundred Mio.

    Then you can run the following commands so that Grub references your Linux system in the ESP:

    sudo apt install grub-efi-amd64 sudo update-grub

• Regarding your partitioning.
  • You have made an installation on two partitions (swap and /), which is an installation that I informally call a "TFPC" installation (don't bother). This is perfectly correct.
    • Advantage: it allows for less constraint (there is no longer a partitioning between the system partition (i.e., /) and the user partition (i.e., /home).
    • Disadvantage: If you need to reinstall your system, by overwriting / you will also overwrite your user documents. You must then be careful to save them beforehand (even if it means using a live USB if Q4OS does not start anymore).
  • This disadvantage is the reason why on a consumer machine, we generally do the following partitioning:
    • Swap: min(2*RAM, 4Go) in swap (used notably for hibernation). Nowadays, as PCs generally have more than 2Go of RAM, we use 4Go.
    • System partition: / in ext4 (minimum 15Go, personally I allocate 30Go to be safe)
    • User partition: /home in ext4 (the rest)
• Regarding the partition model (gpt vs msdos): It is possible to switch from one to the other (see for example here). Nowadays, we prefer gpt, which is less constraining. You can check which is being used with:

  sudo fdisk -l

  Just as you can perfectly satisfy yourself with a legacy boot (compared to a secure boot), you can perfectly be content with an msdos partitioning as opposed to a gpt partitioning.

Good luck