Trouble installing LL 6.6 on 64 bit laptop

[stevef]

That's a bit better but it isn't really solved.

The suggestion to move USB Generic device up the list was because I wasn't sure if your system would consider your Live Media device as a USB HD or a USB Generic device.  If the Live Media booted with only USB HD promoted up the list, then no need to promote USB Generic.

I'd hope there will be something in the UEFI Boot Option settings that will avoid the need to go through the boot options screen at all.  We are looking to reduce the choices to just one.

I'd suggest going into UEFI set up and unchecking the following in Boot Options
PXE Internal NIC Boot
You can also uncheck
SD Card Boot
Floppy Boot

Then try booting to see if Notebook Ethernet IP options have been removed from the choices list.
If they have, then it is a bit more progress and suggests you are on the right track.

Your screenshot suggests there may be other choices which can be selected/deselected.  Is there anything below 'HP Applications' ?

[JanetBiggar]

So I went in and did what you suggested and now I’m down to only three choices once I click on F9 boot options (see last pic in the link below) one of them being “ubuntu”. Like previously clicking on this it then boots into LL 6.6

Interestingly the PXE Internal NIC boot is greyed out (and checked) so not sure what I need to change to allow that option to be UNCHECKED…

Nonetheless, I unchecked sd car, floppy plus the 2 Network Ethernet IPVs and also custom boot.

I took pics of the screen so you could see the items listed.

https://imgur.com/a/9MlISlr

[stevef]

OK, I guessing a bit here, but it seems the boot choices you are offered are aligned to the checked Boot options.
It is not clear which boot option equates to 'ubuntu' nor can I see a way to get the UEFI to 'remember' to boot ubuntu each time.

If I understand correctly, you currently have these checked Boot Options
1 USB device boot
2 mSATA Drive boot
3 HP Application

And get offered these choices to boot from
1 Notebook mSATA Drive (UEFI)
2 Boot from EFI file
3 ubuntu

I'm assuming there is no Live Media connected. 

In your situation, I'd be tempted to experiment a bit more.  Uncheck 'mSATA Drive boot' and 'HP Application' like you did with the Network and custom options. Leave USB device boot checked.  Save, reboot and see what happens. If the choices you are presented with change it may help narrow things down further.

If the system won't boot, go back to the options put a check mark against 'mSATA Drive boot' then save and retry.
If the system won't boot then, go back and remove the check from 'mSATA Drive boot' and put one against 'HP Application', then save and retry.

The aim being to remove options leaving only 'USB device' and the one that equates to 'ubuntu'

[stevef]

After a bit of digging around, found this article
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HP_EliteBook_840_G1

Though the article is about ArchLinux, it states

Even if UEFI, Arch Linux and (e.g.) GRUB are correctly configured and with the correct UEFI NVRAM variables set, the system will not boot from the HDD/SSD. The problem is that HP hard coded the paths for the OS boot manager in their UEFI boot manager to \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi to boot Microsoft Windows, regardless of how the UEFI NVRAM variables are changed

If correct and your hardware is an Elitebook 840 or has similar UEFI (it has 'Customized Boot' listed in the screenshots) it may be worth looking at the workarounds in the article.

[JanetBiggar]

I appreciate your sleuthing Steve. Interesting article.

I probably don’t know enough to have done it properly, but I gave it a try and put custom boot first and added the exact same path it gave at the link as in one of my screen shots it was the grubx64.efi that I chose at the end previously so simply typed that in when it asked for the custom boot name.

It still didn’t boot into the LL 6.6 OS and when I clicked on F9 boot options I believe it went up one more choice for boot options than last time.

I’ve made a short video for a student who would use this laptop so I will leave it at that for now.

What still doesn’t make sense is that it booted into LL 5.0 without any problem in the past…

[stevef]

I hope it goes ok for the end user.  I have a dual boot machine which necessitates pressing a few keys to get it booted.  At first it seems a bit awkward, but soon it becomes automatic.

Just a couple of things about your last post.

Is the SSD an mSATA device?
The note in workaround 1.1.2 seems to imply that the first workaround 1.1.1 (Customized Boot) does not work. it would help us if it give details, but it says

If you are trying to boot on a the mSATA port (m.2 SSD), this is the only working method.

Don't know how 5.x might be different to 6.x.
I thought your initial post suggested that there were problems with 5.x on this laptop a couple of years ago as well though you couldn't recall the specific fix.  The fact that you got 5.x working on this machine suggests either your Elitebook UEFI is not preset to only to boot Windows or what you did with 5.x solved the problem a different way.

Edit - Having thought about this a bit more, if 5.x was installed in legacy mode, it might be that when the laptop UEFI emulates BIOS it can't enforce the boot restrictions which it appears to be doing in UEFI mode. If this is the case, a new install of 6.x under legacy mode might be made to work albeit at the expense of the restrictions involved in using BIOS/MBR.

I think the lesson is to be prepared for a challenge when putting Linux on some models of HP Business Class laptops.

[JanetBiggar]

I’m going to mark this as SOLVED as I feel the now shorter steps the end user will need to do are very workable AND it allows me to have an accessible LL 6.6 OSZ on this laptop which was my goal.

My guess is that it is an mSATA drive, but this is only based on the boot option list giving it as an option so I could be wrong.

I do seem to remember having a similar problem with the initial loading of LL 5.0, however I really can’t say what I unknowingly did to then make it work…very likely I did switch it to legacy mode.

I’m going to quit while I’m ahead as I’m pleased with this end point albeit not perfect.