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I have a Dell XPS 15 9570 running Windows 10.

I purchased an external Dell Thunderbolt 3 drive to enable me to boot Ubuntu without touching the Windows 10 install on the internal SSD.

I have configured the BIOS to allow booting from Thunderbolt 3 using the instructions here:

https://www.dell.com/support/article/uk/en/ukdhs1/sln301218/how-to-boot-to-an-external-device-using-usb-type-c-connection?lang=en

I have a USB key with the Ubuntu 18.04.1 installer.

I successfully booted from the USB key.

I can see the Thunderbolt 3 drive from the installer and the installation appears to complete successfully.

When I reboot, I can see the Thunderbolt 3 drive in the boot sequence in the Bios Boot options.

When I attempt to boot from the the Thunderbolt 3 drive a message pops up too quickly for me to read and the machine restarts.

Anyone got any experience of a similar setup?

user47227
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  • Did you partition in advance and include an ESP - efi system partition on external drive. do not know if UEFI boots directly from Thunderbolt or if it is like USB where it only boots /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi. But grub probably installed to internal drive's ESP and should boot from that. Just run the summary report, the auto fix sometimes can create more issues. Use ppa & your Ubuntu live installer flash drive. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair Not sure what it will show with a Thunderbolt drive? – oldfred Oct 05 '18 at 17:21
  • I didn't partition in advance, rather I chose the 'erase disk and install Ubuntu' in the installer. It definitely wrote something to the internal drive because I noticed that there is now an 'Ubuntu' option in the BIOS boot sequence menu even when the Thunderbolt drive is disconnected. I tried selecting it but the machine just hangs. I will try the Boot repair tool! – user47227 Oct 05 '18 at 18:15
  • Found this that says you have to authorized Thunder bolt, but back then no utility to do that. Do not know latest info: https://superuser.com/questions/1298144/external-thunderbolt-3-ssd-drive-not-recognized-on-ubuntu-17-10-running-on-macbo – oldfred Oct 05 '18 at 19:14
  • Interesting. There is an option to disable Thunderbolt authentication in the BIOS and I disabled it. Still no joy. I have just run the boot repair tool and the output is here: http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/jfcxk6W3Fn/ – user47227 Oct 05 '18 at 19:21
  • I also tried the default repair but it failed. I do think you are correct about the ESP partition. – user47227 Oct 05 '18 at 19:23
  • I do not think script shows Thunderbolt drive, but it does show an ext4 partition on your NVMe drive which normally is your internal drive. Did you erase Windows? Also Dell need both UEFI updates and the SSD needs firmware updates. And to see internal drives correctly you need to change RAID to AHCI for drives in UEFI. And you will need nomodeset to boot with nVidia. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1042414/trying-to-install-ubuntu-on-dell-xps-15-9570 & https://askubuntu.com/questions/1046263/dell-xps-15-9570-2018-disable-nvidia-gpu – oldfred Oct 05 '18 at 19:33
  • The NVMe is the Thunderbolt drive. I have left the internal NVMe SSD set to RAID as I don't need Ubuntu to be able to see it. I will try to update UEFI and SSD firmware. – user47227 Oct 05 '18 at 19:41
  • Updated firmware. I can now see the error message: "System BootOrder not found. Initializing defaults" – user47227 Oct 05 '18 at 20:09
  • Boot repair one more time: http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/8nQRHFpM78/ – user47227 Oct 05 '18 at 20:29
  • Before repair, UEFI had ubuntu entry in same ESP partition as your Windows. After repair it shows GUID of ESP on NVMe drive. It looks like it should boot. Errors seem to all be related to flash drive as not in standard drive configuration (most flash drives have same set of warnings). If you now choose Ubuntu in UEFI does it boot? – oldfred Oct 06 '18 at 03:44
  • Unfortunately it's still giving the "System BootOrder not found. Initializing defaults" error and then goes into a boot loop. I've installed Ubuntu to a USB drive and it boots no problem. Thanks for help! – user47227 Oct 06 '18 at 08:31

1 Answers1

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I've just tried to boot Ubuntu 20.04 from the same Thunderbolt 3 disk and it works.

The machine (Dell XPS 15 9570) is running BIOS version 1.15.0.

user47227
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  • good to know I have a Lenovo y740 and am thinking about getting a nvme enclosure and thunderbolt nvme drive for Ubuntu 20.04, I think it will work. – edencorbin Jul 16 '20 at 05:33