On 2022-01-08 11:20, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
[I hate top-posting but it seems best in this case.]
[No prob. I hope you will tolerate my "interleaved" posting :-) ]
It sounds like you have two problems:
(1) debian doesn't understand your network card (NIC)
(2) your UEFI setup isn't doing what you need it to
What is your computer?
"Brand-X". My own concoction from a few years ago. The motherboard is a ASUS Maximus VI Hero. Video is a NVidia GeForce GTX 1660 supporting a dual monitor. Sound is on-board. Processor is an Intel Core i7-4770K.
What is your NIC?
The NIC is also just a chipset on the motherboard. On Windows, my Device Manager says that I am using "Intel Ethernet Connection I217-V". Network discovery is enabled. I don't have wireless on this computer. A direct cat-5 goes to the router, and DHCP is used.
(1)
Some NICs are have non-open drivers. By default, debian would not have those drivers but Ubuntu might. That could be the problem.
Some NICs are too new to have drivers in a stable debian.
My computer is at least 6 or 7 years old. And Ubuntu wants to connect to the internet for non-free drivers. A chicken-and-egg problem if that is true.
Anecdote: (perhaps a year ago) my son's motherboard came with a 2.5 gigabit NIC that was not supported by the latest official Fedora installation image. But it was supported after updates were applied.
Does the live Ubuntu system (i.e. the booted installation medium) see your network? That is a fine environment in which to try to debug networking hardware.
It does not see any network. So, no Samba or any of that either.
Hack: install via a different NIC. If you have tried wireless, try wired. Or vice versa. If desperate, try a USB NIC. Or a NIC card from another computer.
Sounds like a last resort, since this NIC has worked since the days of Windows 7 and older Linux vesions, and still works in Windows.
(A USB ethernet NIC is a handy thing to have in your toolbox.)
Yes, got that, but again, I will keep it in the back of my mind as a last resort.
(2)
UEFI can almost always be convinced to do what you need. If you are not used to it, you are probably trying to get it to do something unnatural.
Note: UEFI and GRUB are not alternatives: you will be using both.
UEFI booting is a multi-stage process (true of all kinds of booting)
- UEFI starts
- UEFI has a setting for what to boot. This will be the path to a .efi file within the ESP (EFI System Partition) of the hard drive.
- The ESP is a distinguished FAT partition. It will have been created by installing Windows. Linux needs to share it.
I think this is a bottleneck. I notice that it stalls when "writing to boot record" or something like that. I never saw EFI mentioned by Linux, so I wouldn't know how to "share" the EFI with Linux. I notice it is not doing it on its own; or in the case of Debian, it just goes halfway. I have also just tried installing Slackware, and it happily installs, but stalls on the dialog for writing boot information. Pressing ENTER cleared that dialog and the install finished, but something was probably up, since it only booted partially, and only with a USB as a boot drive.
- In a running Linux system, the ESP is conventionally mounted as /boot/efi
- To boot most Linux distros, there will be a "shim" .efi program in the ESP.
On a Fedora system, it is /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/shim.efi
- Once the UEFI has started shim.efi, the shim loads grub (/boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubx64.efi)
At this point things are close to what you are used to.
What is odd under UEFI is selecting what .efi to boot. Almost every UEFI firmware has a setup page that lets you select what .efi to boot, but the capabilities and methods vary wildly. I cannot tell you what to do from the setup page because I cannot see yours.
I guess I could repeat the Slackware boot procedure (since it offers an extra root console), and mount the EFI partition. Are these .efi files text files?
Once you have Linux running, Grub will usually let you select Windows to boot, and that is the most convenient way to control what gets booted.
I've posted to this list a few messages about the mysteries of UEFI in general and efibootmgr(8) in particular.
Thanks, Hugh. Paul
| From: sciguy via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
| This has happened with what I have tried so far: Debian and Ubuntu. I have | been accustomed to my network card being auto-detected and the internet being | automatically connected with an installation, but I am not getting internet on | installation, so much of the installation has failed. | | This machine was set up as a dual boot, and is running Windows 10 with the | latest updates. It has previously run a version of Ubuntu Studio, but with | this upgrade (first by USB then by DVD), I am not getting a network, and so | the installation remains half-finished. | | Somehow, after changing this over to Debian, where the installation failed for | the same reason, Windows 10 EFI detected the incomplete installation and now | offers "finishing the Debian installation" as a boot option when I reboot. | | It seems the root of my problem is in Microsoft's choice to take over the EFI | in a recent update, thereby supplanting GRUB, which was there before. GRUB was | a technology I understood fairly well; EFI is not. Can anyone suggest, or | point to some resources, for how to install Linux alongside W10, in a way that | the EFI appears to recognize (since it seemed to almost accidentally with | Debian). | | Thanks | | Paul | --- | Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org | Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk | --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk