0

Background: My fiancé is building a new computer. I got the old bones of their computer (motherboard, RAM, processor), a new graphics card, and a new hard drive. My fiancé took their old hard drive (which had windows installed on it), and I've been trying to install Unbuntu via a bootable USB on my brand new harddrive. I should stress that this computer was totally functional before we ripped the old hard drive and old graphics card.

Current Hardware:

  • Processor (old): AMD FX8150 chip, 8 cores
  • RAM (old): Corsair Vengence 2x 4GB DDR3 1600 MHz, 1x 8GB DDR3/ 1600 MHz
  • Motherboard (old): Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3
  • Hard Drive (new): Segate Barracuda 4TB 5400 RPM Sata III 6GB/s 3.5"
  • Graphics Card (new): ASUS GeForce GT710

Issues: I made a fat32 bootable USB containing the Ubuntu 20.04 iso file using Rufus on my Surface Pro 4 Windows laptop. I am able to boot from USB and launch the Ubuntu install menu. I make it all the way through the install menu, it tells me to restart, and when I do, I end up in the grub rescue menu. To be clear, this is a brand new hard drive, no partitions, no windows install. I have encountered several errors, and have tried several solutions as follows:

#1 Ubuntu Install Menu Freezing to blackscreen in random places: The install menu would sometimes freeze, or go black halfway though. I had dual monitors plugged in, realized this may be too much for my new graphics card (without an installed driver), so I unplugged one monitor, used "Try Ubuntu without installing" to install my graphics card driver, and started booting Ubuntu install in Safe Graphics mode. This allowed me to start getting the Install menu to show up consistently/stably. BUT there were MANY occasions I ended up hard-rebooting my computer because of a freeze halfway through an Ubuntu install.

#2 ACPI error: Throughout this process, when booting from USB, I am flashed an error that says: "ACPI Error: AE_NOT_FOUND, while resolving a named reference package element - LNK[INSERT LETTER OF ALPHABET] (20200528/dspkginit-438")... this fills the whole page then at the bottom it says " No Caching mode page found. Assuming drive cache: write through". Somehow this error is fine, it still boots Ubuntu and takes me to the install menu. Some googling tells me that this might be a BIOS ACPI issue/error. I checked and I'm running BIOS v F8 (from 5-31-2012) for my motherboard which is 2 versions out of date.

  • I tried updating my BIOS to the most recent version(F-10e), but the new BIOS after I installed following the motherboard manual instructions isn't different. Do you need to update BIOS step by step in order for it to "take"? What am I doing wrong? The BIOS update has several files.. I can't use Rufus to put several files on a bootable. Do I just put all files on a USB drag and drop like regular?
  • This error still occurs even after I installed the new graphics card driver using the "Try Ubuntu without installing".

** # 3 Grub Rescue Errors:**

Loading Operating System... 
error: File '/boot/grub/i386-pc-normal.mod' not found.
Entering rescue mode... 
grub rescue> ls
(hd0) (hd0,gpt3) (hd0,gpt2) (hd0,gpt1)
grub rescue> ls (hd0,gpt3)
(hd0,gpt3): Filesystem is ext2
grub rescue> ls (hd0,gpt3)/
./ ../ lost+found/ boot/ swapfile etc/ media/ var/ bin dev/ home/ li lib32 lib64 libx32 mnt/ opt
/ proc/ root/ run/ sbin snap/ srv/ sys/ temp/ usr/ cdrom/

I know that I need to point wherever grub is installed to the boot menu but I can't find them. opt, boot, root, media, var, mnt and cdrom are all empty when I ls files there. I tried doing a boot repair. Landed in the same spot.

I'm not sure where I should focus my troubleshooting efforts: BIOS repair, ACPI error, Grub install, boot repair, downgrade Ubuntu version? Any advice would be useful. I'm really not a hardware person- messing with everything under the hood is new to me.

Jessica Haskins
  • 1
  • 1
    Similar motherboards: Some Gigabyte boards need acpi=off boot parameter also Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 and 64bit Xubuntu 16.04 LTS install https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2370503 GIGABYTE GA-970A-DS3 motherboard not working with 64 bit kernel - IOMMU GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="iommu=soft" You typically do not need separate /boot partition unless using LVM, and now that is not required. Did you install restricted drivers, you need nVidia or nomodeset set boot parameter until you do. Safe Graphics Boot option on installer now adds nomodeset. – oldfred Feb 25 '21 at 22:46
  • All good points oldfred, the / partition may need mounting to make the edits before the reboot after install. –  Feb 25 '21 at 22:55

2 Answers2

1

You have installed in BIOS mode the rufus has the option and requires the choice of what you wish to do create BIOS or EFI installer. You need to recreate the installer for EFI and install it again in the proper mode or it will never have chance of working. Or the reverse is true but it looks for grub-pc not the -efi so it is in BIOS mode. Go into BIOS and either enable pure BIOS or EFI with no CSM compatibility. Then use an installer built for the mode chosen. With the EFI you have to be certain to create tiny 200MB partition at the beginning of the drive in that section of the installer and have it set to be used for the System boot partition then it should install properly and enable a boot of it, with GRUB for the BIOS you let it install to the drive no special actions needed to work.

If the install needs edits for the additional parameters mention by oldfred then in the Terminal application.

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
sudo nano /mnt/etc/default/gurb

To edit the file then the procedure described here to chroot into the install and should be update-grub if it has already been install or do the grub-install --recheck to have it done with a complete checking of the configuration to use.

https://howtoubuntu.org/how-to-repair-restore-reinstall-grub-2-with-a-ubuntu-live-cd

  • Ok, so I created a new bootable USB. When I tried to do pure BIOS I got an error (since BIOS only supports up to 2.2GB and the Ubuntu package is larger than that). So I tried to make a pure EFI bootable. I changed the BIOS setting to EFI only as suggested with no CSM compatability. After install I've landed in the grub rescue menu once again, but with a different error: error: invalid arch-independent ELF magic. But, when I look for grub in my boot folder of my partition, that is there (with all the files it needs to actually run e.g. the vmlinuz files)! Any advice now? Edit: THANK YOU! – Jessica Haskins Feb 26 '21 at 00:43
0

I managed to repair my grub following the instructions provided by happyTux. But then when I launched into Grub, Ubuntu wouldn't launch because of kernel panic.

error: invalid magic number 
error: you need to load the kernel next.
Press any key to continue ..._

It would appear that my motherboard supports either BIOS or EFI, but is not UEFI compliant. When I tried to do a pure BIOS boot, I got an error because the Ubuntu 20.04 bootable is larger than 2.2GB. (I've posted a new question here)[https://askubuntu.com/questions/1320360/how-to-install-ubuntu-20-04-on-a-non-uefi-compliant-motherboard].

Regardless of if I'm using Etcher or Rufus, I've been unable to make a bootable that actually works. Any advice on specific settings I should be enabling?

Jessica Haskins
  • 1