Unable to boot from UEFI partition on the USB installion media, failed installation. Thinkpad T470s

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I’ve searched the forums here and this seems to be an issue many are experiencing with the new Thinkpads. Pretty ****ing disappointing considering the Thinkpad line is supposed to offer excellent Linux compatibility. But whatever, that’s beside the point.

Other threads I’ve found on the issue:

https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/525472-Problem-booting-on-Thinpad-X1-Carbon-2017
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/525378-Can-t-boot-into-uefi-install-usb-non-uefi-install-doesn-t-correcty-install-bootloader
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/523743-Cannot-boot-from-usb-to-install-openSUSE-Tumbleweed-on-T470s

Here are the details of my machine:

CPU: Intel i5 7300u
RAM: 20GB
SSD: 128GB m.2 SATA
BIOS: 1.11 (This is the most current version)

  • Secure Boot is disabled in bios.
  • USB created with dd command under openSUSE on another machine; installation media verified and has been used to do a fresh install on another machine without any issue.
  • Installation image is recent, 2017-07-01

Under the boot options, the only way I can get the USB to boot is by disabling UEFI boot completely. This allows me to proceed with the installation, but it defaults to a non-UEFI GRUB installation. After completing the installation, the system restarts and gets stuck in a boot loop, either putting me back at the screen to select the device I want to boot from, or a flickering black screen. If I restart with the installation media, and select boot from hard disk, it will boot into openSUSE. I did that, ran zypper dup and tried to restart without the USB inserted, but was back to the same boot loop sequence.

I’m currently in the process of zeroing out the drive completely and will manually partition the ssd with an efi partition, hoping that will get me somewhere. I initially thought that perhaps I installed the boot partition to the USB, but that is not the case. The installation created a non-UEFI partition for boot.

While I think the machine itself and/or this particular BIOS may be contributing to my difficulties, I was able to successfully install Arch, booting from UEFI using systemd-boot, using the same exact kernel as what openSUSE currently provides. So I’m unsure why I can’t get openSUSE to play nice here.

I know this isn’t a lot of information to go on, but it’s pretty much all the info I have. I am going to be mucking around with the machine all night “having a lot of fun” with it, so I’ll be checking in frequently here until I pass out or get it working. Thanks in advance ya’ll.

My end goal is to have UEFI boot only, with an encrypted LVM partition for the OS. I only plan to have openSUSE TW on this machine. On a side note, does openSUSE support systemd-boot?

2

Update:

Tried using the rescue option to go in and wipe the disk, create a fresh partition scheme, and reinstall, but no dice!

I created the following GPT partition scheme:

/dev/sda 128GB
…/dev/sda1 512M ef00, FAT
…/dev/sda2 127.5G 8e00 LVM
…20G lvm for SWAP
…107.7G lvm for ROOT (formatted BTRFS with all default subvol settings.)

Installation fails! When I select grub2-efi, it says it’s incompatible with x86_64?! This is pissing me off; my love hate relationship with linux is heavily leaning towards hate right now.

3

Any chance it has 32 bit firmware?

4

Hi, I have run into problem while installing Tumbleweed on T470s before. You have already read the thread I posted. But did you read the other one? Please refer to this post: https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/524790-Problems-on-burning-ISO-to-USB-thumb-drive-for-system-installation?p=2823074#post2823074.

And the related bug is here: https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=939456

In a summary,

  1. I have not tried non-EFI mode.
  2. I installed successfully in EFI mode with secure-boot enabled (and even with Windows 10 installed). (I am sure that it works with secure-boot disabled.)
  3. dd or its equivalent method doesn’t work due to the former mentioned bug.
  4. I used Rufus with its ISO Image mode (not the DD Image one). Although many users claim Rufus won’t work but it is the only one worked for me due to the former mentioned bug.

But I did not use the LVM partition scheme. I used Btrfs for root and EXT4 for /home partitions.

Hopefully this information could be helpful to you. But as a rolling distribution, openSUSE Tumbleweed does change a lot from snapshot to snapshot.

P.S. I think systemd is default to openSUSE but I am not an expert on this.

Regards,
CnZhx

5

I wouldn’t say that. It’s moving all the time :smiley:

P.S. I think systemd is default to openSUSE but I am not an expert on this.

It is, and has been for a couple of years.

6

Yes, it’s true. But we usually get it by release of snapshots :wink:

7

Thanks for link, I think I’ll be leaving for a different distro since this seems like a 2 year old bug that still isn’t fixed and it’s not present on any other install iso I’ve come across. Jumping through hoops to write a compatible boot image is pretty ridiculous for a distro that boasts enterprise lineage. When it comes to laptops, a Thinkpad is about as “enterprise” as it gets. Also, systemd is not the default, GRUB is. Systemd is the default init program, but that is not the same thing as systemd-boot, which is a UEFI-only bootloader.

8

Yes, maybe this means not very many people using ThinkPad use this method. But Steffen Winterfeldt responded to this very quick after I brought it up again on 2017-05-16. And this bug was fixed on 2017-05-19 and the patch was merged on 2017-05-28. I guess it had not being fixed because no one had actually provided the testing.

Anyway, wish you a good journey on finding the right distro.

Thanks for this information. systemd-boot is just too unfamiliar to me so I thought you were talking about systemd. :wink:

Regards,
CnZhx