Tag: uefi

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“no bootable devices found” after installation of Mageia Linux

After the installation of Mageia 9 my Dell laptop refuses to boot with the following error: “No bootable devices found”

Background: Before, Ubuntu 22.04 was installed on the laptop. But I erased it completely and rearranged the partitions, too.

Solution

Manually create a boot option using the DELL setup utility (aka UEFI BIOS):

  1. Press F2 to open the setup utility
  2. Go to: General | Boot Sequence
  3. Under “Boot list option”: Make sure UEFI is selected
  4. Click on “Add Boot Option”
  5. Enter a meaningful “Boot Option Name”, e. g. “Mageia 9”
  6. Click on “…” to select a file name
  7. Navigate to \EFI\mageia\grubx64.efi
  8. Done.

Further information

In the setup utility, I have Secure Boot disabled.

An official Knowledge Base Article of DELL recommends to set System Configuration | SATA Operation to “AHCI” for linux installations. Unfortunately, mine is set to “RAID on”. Maybe that is causing the issue…

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Installing GRUB bootloader fails with cryptic error message “Could not prepare Boot variable: Function not implemented” and “grub-install: error: efibootmgr failed to register the boot entry: Input/output error.”

When trying to install a new Linux distribution (Debian or Mageia or Arch Linux) on my new machine, the installation failed with the following error messages:

Debian:

The installation of grub-install dummy has failed
Unable to install grub-install dummy : Fatal Error

Mageia/Arch Linux:

Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
Could not prepare Boot variable: Function not implemented
grub-install: error: efibootmgr failed to register the boot entry: Input/output error.

Analysis

I’m using an Arch Linux image to boot into a shell environment.

lsblk
fdisk /dev/sda
p

This displays information about the partition table. It displays “Disklabel type: dos” which means that the partition is of type DOS/MBR which could cause trouble (according to the documentation in the ArchWiki).

Furthermore, in the UEFI/BIOS of my machine under “Advanced | OS selection” there is the option “UEFI CSM” set to “always”. CSM means Compatibility Support Module and it enables the legacy (BIOS) boot mode. This could be a problem.

Solution

Set the “UEFI CSM” (Compatibility Support Module) to “never” in the UEFI BIOS and reinstall the Linux distribution (or just the GRUB bootloader). The system now boots using UEFI. The partition type is still “dos”.