No Boot Device Found - Linux on Tower 7910

Question

The BIOS on my new desktop does not seem to be able to boot from a Linux installation I have recently loaded on one of my hard-drives.

Tower 7910 arrived with 4 HDs connected with Windows 8 pre-installed on them. The HDs were controlled by the SAS RAID controller, everything booted and ran fine.

I would like to use this machine to run Ubuntu 14.10. I created an installation USB and booted with that, I could see the HDs, installed to those successfully, however upon reboot, the BIOS does not recognise the new Linux installation as being bootable.

After scratching my head for a few days, I wondered if this was due to the fact that the HD I installed to was controlled by the SAS RAID controller. So I winkled a SATA cable that does not use the SAS bays from the case and installed Linux onto a separate HD connected to the motherboard separately from the SAS controller. This works fine (can install Ubuntu on this drive and the BIOS immediately recognises it as bootable, and I can boot from it and even verify that Ubuntu was successfully installed on the original HD).

I have also tried to update the BIOS to the latest version I downloaded from dell.com/support in the hope that this would allow me to boot from these HDs. The version available for download seems to be an earlier version (A01) than the one that the machine came with (A02) but I proceeded with the downgrade anyway and this did not improve the situation.

Unfortunately I cannot see any way of mounting this extra drive into my case (although there is space for more drives, there is no more plastic to allow the HDs to slide into the case). How can I add HDs to this machine?

Ideally I would like to be able to just boot Ubuntu from the RAID controlled HDs. How can I do this?

CnrL · Answer

Thanks for your reply, but I have installed the latest version of Ubuntu: 14.10.  Interestingly, the LTS version (14.04.1) did not seem to be compatible with my NVidia graphics card.  Fortunately the very latest version had no such problem.  I will update my question to refer to the Ubuntu version number.

speedstep · Answer

14.04 removes tons of drivers. I suggest trying 12.04.5 DVD not CD version. 12.04.5 has lots of patches and revisions.

http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/DVDs/ubuntu/

ubuntu-12.04.5-dvd-i386.iso

ubuntu-12.04.5-dvd-amd64.iso

speedstep · Answer

UBUNTU 12.04.5 is minimum required.

CnrL · Answer

Downgrading from 14.10 (which works fine when installed on a drive not connected to the SAS controller) to 12.04.5 has not helped.  Still getting a 'No boot device found' message after fresh install.

speedstep · Answer

Then the issue is drivers for the controller. Dell supports Ubuntu and it can be pre loaded on machines.

http://linux.dell.com/

This site provides information that may be useful regarding your usage of Linux on your Dell equipment.

Dell partners with Red Hat, SuSE and Canonical, and so most of our efforts are focused on these distributions. However, we realize many of our customers choose to run other distributions with a mix of non-standard hardware. Though we can't support every Linux flavor or hardware configuration out there, this site is an unofficial resource to help you use your Dell hardware however you choose.

If you have purchased support from Dell and have questions or issues concerning a product or solution supported by Dell, please see support.dell.com, and if necessary, contact Dell Technical Support through the normal channels.

mehlsa · Answer

I'm having the exact same 'no boot device found' problem post linux install on two Precision 7910s also. Both units shipped with A07 BIOS. I was able to get both to boot normally after installing CentOS 6.7 linux only after downgrading the BIOS from A07 to A06.

I'm going to report this on the <ADMIN NOTE: Email id removed per privacy policy> mailing list.

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No Boot Device Found - Linux on Tower 7910

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