rEFInd can't find an Ubuntu installer partition

[Paulo Silva]

hi again!

after successfully recovering Ubuntu and Crunchbang via rEFInd, a "disaster" happened again: i lost Ubuntu from an upgrade (root partition is mounted as read only, making it unable to do things like accessing tty, starting lightdm, etc., and i can't really work around that)

the situation that i have is that the machine is that Macbook 2,0 that:
- doesn't boot usb-sticks
- cd driver is damaged
- i couldn't recover grub yet (even after lots of attempts, like using update-grub, grub-install, etc.)
- Crunchbang has no internet access (ethernet network, device not managed - and i can't fix it following those instructions we find online)

so what i'm trying to do is to reinstall Ubuntu via installing partition (i reduced swap size for creating that partition, temporarily) - that partition i created was an ext3 labeled as boot

so i followed those instructions from https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromLinux at "Live CD" part (step 2 mostly) - i didn't the step 3 because there is no grub at all there

so, after "everything" done, i rebooted into rEFInd, this Ubuntu installer partition were not recognized from rEFind, even after rescanning

what i done wrong? which procedures might we have in this situation?

thanks and regards,
Paulo

[Paulo Silva]

perhaps nothing happens because rEFInd might get information from /etc/grub.conf or /boot/grub/menu.lst somewhere? i thought rEFInd scans kernels from partitions directly...

[Paulo Silva]

is that something to add into refind.conf?
i found that the menuentry from refind.conf is significantly different from grub.conf (i have no idea what "volume KERNELS" is about)
btw, the iso content i copied to the sda7 partition were from xubuntu-14.10-desktop-i386.iso

[Roderick W. Smith]

rEFInd does not rely on GRUB configuration files, so that's not the problem. (rEFInd's install.sh script will pull some information from GRUB files if they're available, but this is done only to help populate options in /boot/refind_linux.conf, and is done only when rEFInd is first installed. If the GRUB files aren't present, rEFInd uses minimal defaults instead.)

My guess is that you're running into a driver issue. On what filesystem (ext2fs, Btrfs, etc.) is the kernel for the new Ubuntu installation? You must have the EFI filesystem driver for that filesystem installed. Btrfs may also require changes to the also_scan_dirs option in refind.conf to cope with Btrfs subvolume features.

If you're not sure what to look for, try running the Boot Info Script, post the RESULTS.txt file that it generates to a pastebin site, and post a URL to that document back here.

[Paulo Silva]

i'm trying to use ext3 on both installer and destination partitions (i copied those files via Crunchbang, which i have no internet form there, and i also want to reinstall on that one later)

alternately, i was trying to use this information
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/NetbootInstallFromInternet
and replaced that grub command prompts into

menuentry "installer" {
icon EFI/refind/icons/os_ubuntu.png
loader /boot/linux
initrd /boot/initrd.gz
options "ro root=UUID=b9a36bd7-d223-4df2-abf6-61ef3c551755"
}

and

menuentry "installer" {
icon EFI/refind/icons/os_ubuntu.png
loader linux
initrd initrd.gz
options "ro root=UUID=b9a36bd7-d223-4df2-abf6-61ef3c551755"
}

and both didn't work - rEFInd boot said initrd.gz is an invalid loader file - and "error - not found while loading linux"

[Paulo Silva]

also_scan_dirs didn't work as well

[Paulo Silva]

http://pastebin.com/LNaV0RGk

[Roderick W. Smith]

The Ubuntu installation images I've seen place the kernel in the casper directory, not in the boot directory. You also don't normally use a root=UUID={uuid} option with them. That said, your installer may be doing things differently than what I've seen.

It looks like you're trying to install Ubuntu 15.04 beta on /dev/sda6. If so, could you please show me the contents of the boot directory on that partition? If you're trying to do something else, please show me the equivalent directory on whatever partition you want to hold Ubuntu. Also, please show me the contents of the EFI/refind/drivers and EFI/refind/drivers_ia32 directories on /dev/sda (your ESP). (Chances are only one of these directories will be present.) I'm assuming you've got a 32-bit EFI, based on the filename of your rEFInd binary. If this assumption is wrong, please clarify. I'm trying to discover what kernel(s) you and filesystem driver(s) you have installed.

One more point, which is probably unrelated to your difficulties: Your /dev/sda3 is marked as an ESP but holds an ext3 filesystem. This is incorrect; you should change its type code so that it's a normal Linux filesystem. In gdisk, you'd change its type code from EF00 to 8300; or in parted or GParted, you should remove its "boot flag."

[Paulo Silva]

thanks! 15.04 (sda6) was what i had, and got damaged during an upgrade (can't access tty, and the root partition were mounted as read only (i wonder why)) - Crunchbang is at sda3 (without internet), it's where i'm trying to do everything to attempt fixing - i have to boot back into osx (10.4) for sending messages like this. (the missing answer comes later because of this) - At sda6, i'm attempting to fresh-install 14.10.

about sda3, i can't remember if i marked it as boot by hand (very probably i didn't), probably it was caused from installations or upgrades of distros i had there since 8 years ago (Ubuntu, Mint-Debian (i hated that one... :S), and finally Crunchbang)

[Paulo Silva]

since i didn't know what you meant by "show the contents", i both took screenshots and made a "ls -R" of them

http://pastebin.com/N9gjfjhd
http://i.xomf.com/ymjnc.png
http://i.xomf.com/yvjlw.png
http://i.xomf.com/pdklc.png

a note about gparted screenshot - i removed now the boot flags of sda3 and sda7 after you saying that (and the small size of swap (it used to be 1.2gb instead of 100mb) is because i wanted to use sda7, recently created, as installer partition - and later i will remove sda7 and grow swap back to 1.2gb)

[Roderick W. Smith]

Chances are this is your problem:

/mnt/sda1/efi/refind/drivers_ia32:
btrfs_ia32.efi  hfs_ia32.efi      LICENSE.txt
ext2_ia32.efi   iso9660_ia32.efi  ntfs_ia32.efi
ext4_ia32.efi   LICENSE_GPL.txt   reiserfs_ia32.efi

EFI filesystem drivers can interfere with one another, so you should not install more than you need. At best, the Btrfs, HFS+, and other drivers beyond the ext2_ia32.efi driver you need will chew up boot time and provide no functionality. At worst, they'll interfere and cause the driver you do need to malfunction. Thus, you should remove everything you don't need. In your case, you need the ext2fs driver (which also handles ext3fs). The ext4fs driver will probably work just as well, but you don't need both of them.

[Paulo Silva]

so i guess i'd remove ext4_ia32.efi, reiserfs_ia32.efi and ntfs_ia32.efi? (i don't use ext4 at all, reiserfs i never used, and ntfs only for carrying documents on external disks and usbsticks) and i guess putting them inside a "disabled" folder would be enough, instead of deleting them, just in case i might need one of them back later? (btw, i have no idea why is btrfs_ia32.efi that useful) - and thanks again!

[Paulo Silva]

isn't hfs_ia32.efi needed because the osx in sda2?

[Paulo Silva]

nothing (significantly different) happened... :S - btw, Roderick, what you would recommend for doing an Ubuntu fresh-install, using an installing partition instead of live-cd/dvd or live-usbstick (which both of them i can't use at all)?

perhaps information from https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/NetbootInstallFromInternet or https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromLinux#Live_CD might be adapted easily for an efficient, simple and painless process, that can be used via rEFInd instead of Grub (2 or 1) or Lilo? what do you think?

[Roderick W. Smith]

No, you don't need the HFS+ driver on a Mac, since the Mac's firmware includes its own HFS+ driver. When I advised you to remove everything but the ext2fs driver, that's precisely what I meant: Remove all of the drivers except for the ext2fs driver (or the ext4fs driver; either should work for you).

[Paulo Silva]

oh, ok, understood why so (i'm going to remove that one as well now)

in the meanwhile i finally could get grub fixed by uninstalling and reinstalling it in the Crunchbang partition ("dpkg -i" from the .deb files i downloaded previously, since i have no internet there), and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/NetbootInstallFromInternet worked perfectly - what still wonders me a lot is why we can't do the same via rEFInd instead of Grub, as far as i could try (and it's quite relevant, since it's very handy being able to install GNU/Linux without needing cds/dvds or usb-sticks)