[SOLVED]Cannot boot Mageia 7 from new SSD

[banjo]

I have installed Mageia 7 on a new Crucial SSD, and it will not boot. I installed it twice, and it installed and ran both times, but when I try to reboot, the SSD is not recognized as a bootable device by the EFI BIOS.

This is probably not a Mageia problem, but I thought maybe somebody here has run into the same problem and could make some suggestions about what to try.

The SSD I am using is the Crucial MX500 2.5" 1TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CT1000MX500SSD1.

I have installed both the Live DVD version and the Classic version, and in both cases, the OS runs, but after I shut down and try to reboot, the drive is not recognized by the BIOS as a bootable device. It is interesting that I am currently running Mint 18.1 on the Crucial MX300 2.5" 525GB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CT525MX300SSD1, which works fine.

To see whether the drive has failed, I put it in an external enclosure and mounted it. It looks as though all of the partitions and file structures are there, so the drive itself appears to work.

I found the following note in the installation manual on page 18:

Some newer drives are now using 4096 byte logical sectors, instead of the previous standard of
512. Due to lack of available hardware, the partitioning tool used in the installer has not been
tested with such a drive.

Some SSD devices now use an erase block size over 1 MB. If you have such a device we suggest
that you partition the drive in advance, using an alternative partitioning tool like gparted, and
to use the following settings:
• Align to = MiB
• Free space preceding (MiB) = 2
Also make sure all partitions are created using an even number of megabytes

So I mounted the drive and re-partitioned it using Gparted according to those suggestions. It was unclear whether "even number of megabytes" means no fractional parts, or a number that is divisible by 2, so I made them divisible by 2, which satisfies both constraints. That resulted in the following mess of a partition table.

SSD Partition Table

SSDPartitions20190814.png (62.48 KiB) Viewed 1020 times

There are now unallocated bands around the partitions. You can see that the sector size is 512, and that the ESP partition is properly fat32 and flagged as "boot, esp".

My system still does not recognize the drive as a bootable device. When I attempt to boot, I get no POST beep, and it throws me into the EFI BIOS.

I suspect that there is some incompatibility between my EFI and the new SSD, but I don't know how to trouble shoot that. I am in way over my head. The computer system is not that old. I built it from parts in the fall of 2015, so it is not yet 4 years old. Here is the inxi info from my Mint system running on the same hardware.

Code: Select all

System:    Host: LinuxMain Kernel: 4.4.0-159-generic x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.8.9
           Distro: Linux Mint 18.1 Serena
Machine:   System: ASUS product: All Series
           Mobo: ASUSTeK model: Z97-A-USB31 v: Rev 1.xx Bios: American Megatrends v: 2501 date: 06/24/2015
CPU:       Quad core Intel Core i5-4590 (-MCP-) speed/max: 3143/3700 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GM107 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti]
           Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: nvidia (unloaded: fbdev,vesa,nouveau)
           Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz, 1920x1080@60.00hz
           GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 750 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 384.130
Network:   Card: Intel Ethernet Connection (2) I218-V driver: e1000e
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 1025.2GB (24.8% used)
Info:      Processes: 221 Uptime: 22 min Memory: 1461.8/7922.6MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.2.35

Anyway, it is looking like I may have to give up on this SSD and go to a different brand, or maybe even go back to a spinning disk. But I thought I would ask first to see if anyone could suggest something else to try.

Thanks,
Banjo
(_)=='=~

[jiml8]

I seem to recall building a machine for a friend a few years ago using an Asus motherboard, where I encountered a similar problem.

I don't recall the details, but I was unable to get the system to boot using uefi from the ssd. I changed the boot format to the legacy format using the old mbr mechanism and was able to have the drive detected and used as the boot device. I don't know if the problem was related to Linux or to the mobo.

Just something to think about.

[banjo]

Thanks for the suggestion. I do not know how to set that up; I will research it and see what I can find out.

When I did the classic install there were two options on the USB drive, one for legacy and one for EFI. The legacy system complained that I did not have a boot partition. So if I can figure out how to set up a boot partition I might be able to get it working.

Thanks

[wintpe]

im not sure if you have made the same mistake i did recently, that had me flummoxed.

boot from the usb drive and select the uefi boot.

during partitioning go to custom and select the option to auto allocate the partitions.

it should label it with blue, red, green red as uefi, root, swap and home

install it.

then go back into the bios and select uefi non windows version and no secure boot.

it should then offer mageia (yes it sees mageia as a uefi boot option and set that as the uefi bootable device.

does it boot now.

hope thats the issue

regards peter

[banjo]

Thanks for the suggestion. I turned off Secure Boot when I put the first Mageia on this computer in 2015. So I don't think that is the issue.

I can go in and look again, but it currently boots OK with my Mint system when that disk is hooked up. The Mint system is on a Crucial MX300 drive. Same family of drive, just an older version. I also had Mageia 5 running on a Crucial MX100 drive. That worked OK as well. Strange happenings.

I will take a look.

Thanks

[banjo]

It took me a while to get back to this, but I finally did. I installed Mageia 7 using the legacy BIOS and it boots and runs.

I used Gparted to add a new 1 MiB partition and flagged it as bios_grub. Gparted refused to leave the partition unformatted and defaulted it to fat32 with a warning that it could not read it. Strange. But after I installed Mageia 7, it appears that whatever was in there was properly overwritten. Here is my fractured partition structure after I got it all done.

SSD Partition Table

GpartedDisplay.png (56.66 KiB) Viewed 909 times

It is a total mess because of the empty bands I put around the active partitions and the now useless ESP partition, but it works. I will probably clean this up and take back my 300 MiB of ESP before I call it done. But it does work as-is.

So I am marking this solved. For anyone who lands on this page with a similar issue, here are the details.

When installing Mageia 7 on this disk.....

Crucial MX500 2.5" 1TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CT1000MX500SSD1

when you have this mother board.....

Machine: System: ASUS product: All Series
Mobo: ASUSTeK model: Z97-A-USB31 v: Rev 1.xx Bios: American Megatrends v: 2501 date: 06/24/2015

you might have to use the legacy BIOS emulator to get the drive to work.

Thanks to all for the help solving this.
Banjo
(_)=='=~