Hi Wen

Good to hear.!!  I never heard of that Linux boot parameter before - will definitely remember that!

As a matter of fact, I did my first installation of first Ubuntu on a brand new Windows 8 laptop last night!  Oh I hate that!!!  But still your experience (Wen) was more traumatic!!

I am now convinced that this UEFI stuff is all a plot to make Linux (or anything else) hard to install on a machine with Windows 8+ preinstalled!!!  It should never be that hard!! 

I have to say it was easier than your (Wen's ) case in the end but still wasted too much time - while pre-UEFI I could easily claim to be able to install Ubuntu (or most distros) with 30 mins ... now it is taking at least 3-4 hrs ... and 80% of the time is just figuring out how to boot the thing reliably to complete the installation!.

My case was a ASUS  X551 Series. For those interested it works very well once Ubuntu is installed - cheap sub $400 machine (at Center Com, bit more expensive elsewhere with slightly different CPU option), 4 core Pentium CPU, 4 gb ram, 500 hd, 15.6 screen,  *intel* graphics, very basic model - but I rate as good value for someone wanting a basic machine for basic word processing, email etc.  Surprisingly light to carry around. As a matter of fact my own 13 inch screen also ASUS of similar specs and chassis/case construction but 1 yr old is noticeably heavier.  The Intel graphics meant no graphic issue.

Biggest issue was to figure how to boot from a USB!!.. It took me 3 hrs of searching the internet, playing with bios option etc to try to boot from USB...and I am disappointed to have to say ... I could not find out how to do that!  Whatever I tried, it always booted into Windows 8, even to the extent of disabling the boot device in the bios, it defaulted to re-activating it to boot somehow.

But booting from a CD actually worked!!! However, at first with Secure boot on the installation crashed with a kernel panic somewhere during the installation process.  And this was inconsistent, as on 2 or 3 attempts it seemed to crash at different stages of the installation.  Its possible that when I restarted after a crash, it sees that some files had already been installed and therefore it did not do a full restart, and hence the crash appeared to be at a different stage, but I am not sure about that? 

But after disabling secure boot, it all just worked fine and completed and after a post install reboot, everthing worked perfectly!  Got to say here that Windows 8 was wiped out completely.  There was no attempt to do a dual boot at all.


Reading the various posts, it appears to be the inconsistency of experience by people that is the problem.   I can see why many people would just not bother.  It is NOT simply a matter of disabling secure boot in the bios.  There seem to be always many things else that need to be fiddle with and each manufacturer now seems to add their own obscure bios option or rename one with a different name just to confuse all.

As a comparison, about 1 year ago, I did an install on another ASUS laptop (mine) with Win 7 preinstalled but it has UEFI/secure boot on.  It was just a matter of disabling secure boot and on it went smoothly. 

Your link below (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2147295), just shows what it mess it can be now!!!!

I had assumed that booting off USB was a given on all machine these days, and only required a bios change at most, but it seems that it not the case anymore.   The machine above (ASUS X551 series) does not seem to have an option to enable usb boot?? (However a particular web post referred to a particular option and even had a screen shot, but that screen was different to the one I had - it was a X551ca (or va?) - you'd think its also a X551 series machine - even here there seem to be inconsistencies)



Daniel






On 15/09/14 06:03, Wen Lin wrote:
Hi,

Finally, got a fix to my dual-boot problem!

With further googling, I came across this URL:  UEFI Installing - Tips
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2147295

It has lots of tips about all things Ubuntu install/dual-boot under UEFI, secure boot, etc.  One section, titled: Black Screen/ Video Modes
This usually required with AMD or nVidia
​, suggested kernel parameters:
​
in place of quiet splash
​, adding​

acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor

​And it worked after that!

Subsequent to that, I was able to boot the Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit LiveCD from the Win 8.1 laptop, with secureboot disabled, but stayed in UEFI.  Installation after that also went without any problem.  After that, I was able to boot into either the Ubuntu, or the Win 8.1, and back, no worries, even with cold boot.

I did try to re-enable the Secure Boot, but then I wasn't able to boot into Win 8.1 after that.  So looks like I will need to stick with secure boot disabled from now on.  

It would seem this solution is an obscure one - I only just came across it by chance.  And don't quite understand what it does either - just that it worked!

​Thanks Daniel and Douglas for your tips and suggestions.  Much appreciated!  Also share my experience here so next time others who try can waste less time.   :-)


Wen
​




On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 12:11 AM, Douglas Ray <dougray@cpan.org> wrote:


On 7/09/14 11:59 PM, Douglas Ray wrote:
> Hi Wen Lin,
> did you try "vbeinfo" at the GRUB prompt?

... there's also
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-grub

> cheers
> Douglas
>
> On 6/09/14 5:14 PM, Wen Lin wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I've been trying for weeks to install Ubuntu 14.04 onto my friend's new
>> Toshiba laptop with the new UEFI secure boot built-in.  So far, no luck!
>>    I can't even boot it up with the Ubuntu Live CD, regardless of
>> SecureBoot enabled or disabled.
>>
>> First, some info and what I had done so far:
>>
>> Laptop:  Toshiba Satellite C50D-A
>> (My friend bought from JB Hifi for $480 - not a high-end machine)
>> CPU:  AMD E1-1200 APU with Radeon HD Graphic 1.4 GHz  64-bit
>> Memory:  4 GB
>> HD:  500 GB
>> Display adapter:  AMD Radeon HD 7310 Graphic
>> OS:  Windows 8  (I had since upgraded it to Win 8.1)
>>
>> I had:
>> - Created a Win System Recovery image (using Win 8.1 built-in standard
>> tool) to a USB flash disk.
>> - Also used Win 8.1 built-in tool to shrink the C: drive to 255 GB,
>> leaving me the other half of the disk for my Ubuntu install.
>>
>> I had no problem F2 at startup into the laptop's BIOS to change stuff like:
>> - Boot sequence
>> - Enable/Disable SecureBoot
>> - Swap between UEFI Boot & CSM Boot (or Legacy mode)
>>
>> I had googled around quite a lot, and had tried several different
>> approaches suggested, to no avail.
>>
>> Most of the forum sites/blogs suggest disable SecureBoot, some said no
>> need - as newer Distro like Ubuntu 14.04 nowadays have no problem
>> booting with SecureBoot on.
>>
>> I tried both approaches, but the Live CD first could only display a
>> text-based version of GRUB 2 boot menu, with "Try Ubuntu" & "Install
>> Ubuntu" among the menu options (rather than the Ubuntu's usual graphical
>> one).  Then when I selected either the "Try" or "Install" options, it
>> went into a total blank screen, and a moment later, everything stop - I
>> tried waiting for it, sometimes hours, but it never come back!
>>
>> To try to see some messages, I used 'e' in the Grub menu to get into an
>> editing mode:
>>     set gfxpayload=keep
>>     linux     /casper/vmlinuz.efi   file=/...  boot=casper quiet splash --
>>     initrd    /casper/initrd.lz
>>
>> To edit the kernel boot up parameters - generally involved replacing the
>> "quiet splash" with parameters like "nomodeset", "vga=radeon",
>> "vga=792", etc - all to no avail.  But this time I could see some boot
>> up messages splashing out, and then stopped at certain point:
>> E.g.
>> - [drm] Initialized radeon 1.34.0 ...
>> - ahci 0000:00:11:0: flags: 64bit ncq ...
>> - r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver ...
>> - fb: conflicting fb hw usage radeondrmfb vs EFI VGA - removing generic
>> driver
>> - ACPI: Video Device [VGA] (multi-head: yes  rom: no   post: no)
>>
>> In general, it would seem the different boot parameters could only vary
>> in at most several boot steps, but none of them managed to go all the
>> way to successfully boot into Ubuntu Live.
>>
>> I had also tried other Distros: Ubuntu 13.10 64-bit & Linux Mint 15
>> Cinnamon 64-bit - no different.  I even tried an Ubuntu 12.04 32-bit CD
>> - but it boot straight into the Windows 8.1 instead.
>>
>> Another thing to point out:  I had also tried the CSM Boot option (in
>> place of the default UEFI).  When in this mode, the whole "SecureBoot"
>> feature disappeared, and I managed to boot into Ubuntu 14.04 Live CD,
>> all the local programs, WiFi, Internet, the lots, all worked as normal!
>>    I had not tried installing Ubuntu from there.  Just as well!  As
>> attempt to boot back to Win 8.1 failed - the error message basically was
>> saying that the Win 8.1 is not there anymore!  I could only boot back to
>> Win 8.1 normally after I had reverted back to UEFI Boot mode.
>>
>> As you can see, no joy at all!   :-(
>>
>> So my question:  Is it a UEFI/SecureBoot problem, or an AMD Radeon
>> display adapter problem?  If it's a display adapter problem, then why I
>> could boot into Ubuntu when not in UEFI mode?  If it's a UEFI problem,
>> then why couldn't I boot into Ubuntu with the SecureBoot disabled (said
>> so by all the related forums & blogs I had visited so far - i.e.
>> secureboot off - no problem)?
>>
>> I was pondering, if all else failed, to just install Ubuntu 14.04 into
>> the partition I had freed up, while in CSM mode.  If this worked, then I
>> could persuade my friend to just stick to Ubuntu, and occasionally if
>> wanting to go to Wn 8.1, change back to UEFI before doing so.  While
>> this may work (painfully), my friend might one day decide not to go back
>> to Ubuntu, and my efforts would be wasted. Worst still, installing
>> Ubuntu in CSM mode may render the Win 8.1 unbootable, and I don't think
>> my friend want that!
>>
>> Any suggestions, comments, or experience in such dual boot adventure
>> would be welcomed!
>>
>> Thanks in advance.
>>
>> Wen
>>
>>
>>
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