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(Dell's) BIOS setting:

SATA: AHCI

Boot List Option: Legacy (default setting was UEFI)
Legacy Option ROMs: Enable
Attempt Legacy Boot: Disable

installation media: USB drive

patition:

Guided - use entire disk

select disk to partition:

/dev/nvme0n1 - 512 GB (the other is the bootable USB drive)

Everything seems to be fine before installing GRUB: enter image description here

At the beginning, after clicking graphical install, some error log flashes and disappears in less than 0.3s: enter image description here

Without GRUB, I can not boot into the system. Redoing installation doesn't help at all.

Can anyone give me some hints how to fix it?

Update: doesn't work with Debian 10 (buster) either enter image description here

Rahn
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  • Please, consider [filing a bug to Debian](https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting) regarding the package [`debian-installer`](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=debian-installer;dist=stable). – Paradox May 06 '19 at 19:32

1 Answers1

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It looks like the i386-pc (i.e. the legacy MBR) version of GRUB is not prepared to handle NVMe devices, and is failing.

I'm not sure legacy-style booting is even supported on NVMe drives at the firmware level. With a NVMe system disk, I would definitely stick with UEFI.

The ACPI error messages might not be serious at all: sometimes the ACPI tables are not exactly tailored for the specific hardware model, but instead just copied from a higher-end model/prototype and the ACPI information for missing features is basically just inexpertly hacked off. It's good enough for Windows, but Linux tends to make some noise about references to missing ACPI methods.

Sometimes a firmware update might include a "cleaner" version of the ACPI tables, getting rid of those Linux ACPI error messages.

It looks like the installer is trying to determine the disk to install GRUB onto, but failing - and as a consequence, some "dummy" initial value in the installer scripts gets through.

You should probably check the other virtual consoles in the installer: one of them (usually Control+Alt+F2 if I remember correctly) should have a root shell you can use to investigate further, and another virtual console (try the other function keys in the same manner) should have the installer's log messages ready for viewing.

telcoM
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