[SOLVED] Help Installing Mageia 5

[hythloday]

Well y'all, I'm at a loss.

I am trying to install Mageia 5 on my new computer (Dell XPS 13 developer edition) and something just keeps going wrong. I will add this is my first attempt to install a distro as the sole OS on a computer, as opposed to dual-booting it with a PC, so maybe that has something to do with it. Also as a disclaimer I'm not a particularly advanced user, been getting into it the last couple years, but forgive my many novice instances of ignorance if you would be so kind.

In short, I go through the installation (from a DVD) and when it tells me everything is fine and dandy and all I need to do is to reboot and enjoy Mageia. I do so and my hopes and dreams are soon crushed. All I get is this anticlimactic message:

"No bootable devices found.
Press F1 key to retry boot.
Press F2 key for setup utility.
Press F5 key to run onboard diagnostics."

And that's that. When I go to the setup area the boot sequence area is completely empty and blank and there are no boot options.

One suspicion/fear I have is that when it got to the partitioning section I first did the option of "Erase all and just use Mageia" or something like that, as it is my intention to replace the default Ubuntu that came on the computer with Mageia 5. I am a little scared this might have deleted stuff I might actually need (if so I don't know why that would be an option in that form, but even so...). Could this have possibly deleted some sort of boot device that was attached to Ubuntu? Like I said I am a bit more on the novice side, and my previous experience was installing distros in partitioned space alongside Windows, so I am a little lost here.

Also on repeated attempts I tried to partition the stuff manually following a couple guides online and youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSLw6x3pIaU). The guide I read said one of the partitions needs to be an ESP partition focused on EFI/boot or whatever the term is. I tried that in a couple different ways, nothing changed anything. The youtube video simply partitions two things, one to "/" and the other a "swap". No /home or ESP, yet somehow the video goes on and it reboots like my hopes and dreams hoped and dreamed it would. I tried this, and it told me there has to be an ESP, which makes sense, but I am confused how youtube person wasn't told this and on top of that everything worked.

Anyway, after a few more tries I cleared everything and went back and chose the "Use Free Space" option, of which all would be Mageia. This apparently partitions everything itself from the available space, which would be all of it in my case. I'd hoped this would just automatically do whatever it was I am missing, yet still my hopes and dreams died again promptly upon reboot.

So, everyone, why isn't Mageia 5 installing correctly? Where is it when it comes time to boot? Why is there absolutely nothing when it comes time to boot? What am I doing wrong? Did I screw everything up? I just want to happily use Mageia, please help!

:'(

[xboxboy]

Hi there, hythloday.

Good news is I have one of these myself: XPS13DE, I'm in Australia, my sister got it in USA for me some time back. One of the developers also has one! http://colin.guthr.ie/2013/02/dances-with-laps/ shows how he installed, although that's not what I did. I'm not sure what version Colin has, but I have the 9433, HD touch screen.

I installed Mageia 4 on there without a hitch, and it's performed fine. I haven't had a go at getting version 5 on there yet. I have version 5 my desktop, and it is easily the best mandrake/mandrake/mageia version ever.

Now, I will be putting Mageia 5 on mine, but I'm about to head away for a week, so I wont have time to try Mageia 5, and help you through, If you want to wait until I'm back, I'll take note of how it all goes for you.

Other than that, the guys on this forum are great, they'll be able to walk you through, it's just tricky dealing with different hardware at times.

I can assure you though, Mageia 4 flys on the XPS13, and KDE is soooooo much nicer than unity. In, fact, Mageia is just a far nicer distrubution than Ubuntu in so many ways. Welcome aboard, the install hastle will be worth it when done.

[doktor5000]

Hi there,

some details are missing. What Mageia media did you use for installation, and did you put it on an USB drive or burned it to CD/DVD?
Also, from your explanation I gathered that you already completed the installation of Mageia, correct?
Please also add information whether you installed in UEFI moder or in legacy BIOS mode.
You can see how to distinguish from the the link in https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installing_o ... boot_media

See also https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installing_o ... I_firmware for UEFI installations.
And FWIW in general, Mageia by default should always create a separate / and /home partition, for drives bigger then 40GB IIRC.
For UEFI installations it will also automatically create that ESP partition for you.

[benmc]

Hello hythloday,

From what you have written it appears that you have attempted to create a UEFI installation [ I am guessing from either the 64 bit Live or the 64 bit Classical media].
If the disc was originally partitioned with an MBR partition scheme, this may be the problem, as an MBR scheme wont allow a valid /boot/EFI partition to be written.
See if you can get into your bios and disable UEFI mode - I had a quick look at the owners manual on-line but I could not find it.
If you cannot find this entry either, put the install media into your system, enter the bios and see if you can choose the non UEFI install from the media directly
Here is an image of my boot options with both dvd + usb for the 64 media
as you can see there are 2 UEFI options for me.

uefi+legacy bios.jpg (661.97 KiB) Viewed 1769 times

dont choose either of those and see it you can get a good installation.

another option is to use something like Gparted and remake the partitions in a GPT partition scheme [ /boot/EFI (<300Mb), /, /swap, /home(maybe), then do the install ....again

best regards

Benmc

[hythloday]

Hey,

First of all thanks xboxboy and everyone for the warm welcome to the Mageia community. On that note there's great news - I figured it out!

More specifically thanks to benmc I figured it out. Not sure I can explain it exactly, but I disabled UEFI and went through the BIOS setup and it worked then for some reason. I now have Mageia 5 running, and running well. I have hit one more snafoo, though, so with that note off to make another thread.

Thanks again!
Hythloday

[xboxboy]

That's great. I look forward to loading Mageia on mine over the coming weeks when I have time.

[redfloyd]

Anyone know if this is valid for for the Kaby Lake version (9360)? I've got one coming, and would much rather use Mageia instead of Ubuntu.

[isadora]

Strange way to get attention for your inquiry.
Rather would advise you, opening up a new topic for that,
instead of re-opening an already solved issue of someone else.

[pete910]

Anyone know if this is valid for for the Kaby Lake version (9360)? I've got one coming, and would much rather use Mageia instead of Ubuntu.

Kaby lake this close to the RyZen launch ?????