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The device I'm currently working on, is pre-installed Windows 10 with legacy BIOS.

I have two bootable drives with both contain Linux Mint installer in it.

  • the first drive contains Mint 19
  • the second is Mint 21.

I made both using same method, and I've already verified each ISO file before I burned them.

I can successfully install the Mint 19 from my first drive to my device with no issue at all. But when I'm trying to install Mint 21 from my second drive, i got the error saying

The attempt to mount a file system with type vfat in SCSI1 (0,0,0), partition #1 (sda) at /boot/efi failed.

It comes up right after the partitioning section. Anyone have any ideas about this issue?

My guess is that the different version of the installer (ubiquity? - not sure, though) acts differently from its earlier version.

My questions are:

  • Is it possible to move only the files that contains the Linux Mint 21 from my second drive to my first drive but retain the rest files for the installation purpose from the mint 19?

    In other words, I want to install Mint 21 but using the installer from Mint 19 in my first USB drive?

  • Which files I have to replace from my USB drive to do so?

AdminBee
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kovovich
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2 Answers2

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You said your device is using legacy BIOS. But it certainly is capable of UEFI too, since it appears you have started the Mint 21 installer in UEFI mode, and it is trying to find an existing EFI System Partition and failing because there isn't one.

You will be able to use the GRUB menu to select between all the OSs only if all the OSs use the same boot style: either all BIOS or all UEFI. Since your Windows uses legacy BIOS, all the other OSs should use that too. (Unlike Linux, Windows ties the choice of partitioning type and boot method together: booting Windows in legacy BIOS style requires MBR partitioning on the boot disk, and booting Windows in UEFI style requires GPT partitioning.)

The fix could be simple: when you are in the BIOS menu, selecting to boot the Mint 21 installation media, you might see two boot options that could refer to it. One will boot the installation media in BIOS mode, and another in UEFI mode. You should pick the BIOS mode boot option in your case.

How the boot options are described is unfortunately vendor-specific and not always clear; but if you have one boot option that refers to the device as a whole, and another that refers to a specific partition on the same device, then the whole-device boot option is most likely the legacy BIOS boot option.

If your BIOS includes options like "prefer UEFI over legacy boot", "prefer legacy boot over UEFI", "boot only legacy BIOS" or "boot only UEFI", you might want to change that setting to "boot only legacy BIOS" or "prefer legacy boot over UEFI" to minimize the chances of booting any OS installation media in the wrong boot mode.

Most modern Linux ISOs have been prepared with isohybrid or similar tool to allow them to be bootable both as CDs/DVDs, and as written on USB sticks or other HDD-like media. Older ISOs might support just one boot method, but newer ISOs usually support both UEFI and BIOS boot.

If nothing else works, you could use your other OSs to manipulate the Mint 21 installation media to disable the UEFI boot option. You should see a FAT32 (or FAT16) partition on it, and a file whose pathname would be <drive>:\EFI\BOOT\BOOTx64.EFI in Windows. Rename that file to something other than BOOTx64.EFI, and the Mint 21 installation media will become unbootable in UEFI style, leaving only the BIOS-style boot functional. If you plan to use the same installation media to install Mint 21 on UEFI-based systems later, the modification will be easy to undo by restoring the file to its original name.

telcoM
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I managed to pass this error message by changing the bios setting of my DELL laptop. I tried to reduce the UEFI settings to its minimum security, but I finally worked when I used the legacy boot mode. Hope this helps others.

Hugues
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  • Welcome to U&L. Just a friendly warning: Kali isn't a desktop distro, it's a security professionals' toolbox. It's not in any shape or form newbie-friendly. A lot of things are intentionally broken, as they're either irrelevant or pose a security threat for the intended purpose. As per the devs [_Even for experienced Linux users, Kali can pose some challenges._](https://www.kali.org/docs/introduction/should-i-use-kali-linux/) so unless you're fairly well-versed with Linux, expect a heap of headaches. Getting familiar with the [documentation](https://www.kali.org/docs) is pretty much a must. – Peregrino69 Apr 07 '23 at 08:10