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I've been trying to put ubuntu 15.10 on my Lenovo yoga 300-11IBY. The install process from USB seems to run fine, but I then find that I can't boot the system.

In the bios only usb and network boot are shown as options - no bootable hard disks. UEFI boot and Emmc discs are new to me, but I guess that it only wants to boot from the mmcblk0boot0 or mmcblk0boot1 areas of the emmc drive. Should I try to install grub onto one of these drives?

I had read in a couple of places that ubuntu installs and works fine on this laptop, so I'm curious as to why the installation didn't quite work perfectly for me.

Further info: I'm using the 64-bit version. I first tried to install in 'classic boot' mode, and then under UEFI but the end-result seems the same. I have poked around in the bios a little bit, but there are not really many options and none that look to me like a solution.

More info as requested: Ubuntu is installed on the drive under /dev/mmcblk0p1 - I can see this by running ubuntu from usb and looking around. When the machine boots it goes straight to booting from usb again or attempting to boot from the network (cue error message advising me to check cables, presumably because there is no network). The bios offers me no other option than booting from usb or from the network - no hard disks are shown (though they are there and seem to be working. There is also a small /dev/sda disk, which is dos formatted and I understand is a windows rescue device of some sort).

Any help appreciated. Many thanks.

user520680
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2 Answers2

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Switch to UEFI mode. Disable secure boot. Then reinstall Ubuntu under UEFI mode. It should work then, at least it did for me.

aurelius
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I now have a system that boots. The solution I used was to manually partition the EMMC drive and explicitly include an EFI system partition. This has resulted in a system that works, so I am satisfied and disinclined to tinker any further for a while. Nevertheless, questions remain...

Firstly, I don't know why I had to do this manually. In my previous attempts the installer asked for confirmation that I want to use UEFI boot, but did not create the EFI system partition anywhere I (or UEFI) could see, and also did not report any failure to do so.

The EMMC drive is permanently divided into 4 separate 'devices': mmcblk0, which is the largest part of the drive and intended for general use; mmcblk0boot0 and mmcblk0boot1, which I had assumed were intended to be the EFI partitions but I have been unable to find any way of writing to them; and mmcblk0rpmb, which I gather holds the pre-installed digital signatures and I can't seem to access at all. Only the mmcblk0 device is offered for partitioning by the ubuntu installer (the others are also invisible from gparted). All are visible under /dev in the running system. I don't know what's supposed to be done with those 'boot' devices, but it doesn't seem that they are key to getting the system running, as I had feared they might be.

user520680
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