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XPS 8900, cannot boot to Linux Debian 9
I have a Dell XPS 8900 with 1TB Toshiba HDD and 256GB M.2 SSD, that came pre-installed from the inventory. No modifications or upgrades whatsoever. I removed the Windows 10 completely and decided to install Debian 9 on the 256GB SSD with 1TB for data storage purposes. The partition is as follows: 220GB for root, 32GB for swap and 500MB for EFI. The installation process was successful and I went straight back into BIOS setup, enabled UEFI boot, disabled Legacy and secure boot options. When I tried to boot into my system again, it goes straight into "No bootable devices found page. Press F1...". I ran the diagnostics and it came up clean with no issues at all. I even switched from RAID On to AHCI, but no luck. All I want my system is to just run Debian 9 peacefully on the SSD. Can anyone please help me through this problem?
Thanks in advance !.
vishnueesyr7
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February 28th, 2018 14:00
The problem persisted with legacy boot enabled and Secure boot disabled.
Also, I tried Ubuntu 16.04 in UEFI mode and it works like a charm. I also doubt that my debian installation image is corrupted because I used the same bootable USB to install Debian in one of my another laptop.
Anyway thank you for your reply. If you think it's appropriate to close this discussion to save member's time and effort, I will be happy to do.
RoHe
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February 28th, 2018 14:00
And what happens if you re-enable Legacy boot, with Secure Boot disabled?
RoHe
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February 28th, 2018 15:00
Too bad Legacy didn't work. Maybe the Debian install just didn't go correctly??
Let the thread continue. Maybe somebody will have better suggestions for you than I did. :Wink:
PhilWUK
3 Posts
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March 1st, 2018 12:00
I don't know specifically for the XPS 8900 but if you want to use linux with a UEFI bootloader you need to install it in UEFI mode i.e. with the bios set to UEFI. If you want to use it in BIOS-Legacy mode (with something like GRUB as the bootloader) then you need to switch the bios to Legacy mode and then do the install. Most modern linux installers will detect whether or not they are on UEFI mode and create a EFI system partition for you.
I haven't used Debian for a while but if you find that Debian works but Ubuntu does not its probably because Debian does not fully support secure boot yet (https://lists.debian.org/debian-efi/2017/11/msg00021.html) where as Ubuntu is probably using a signed boot loader. In this case not only will you have to switch your bios to UEFI before installing Debian but you will have to disable secure boot as well.
In your case I would set the bios to UEFI, secureboot off and re-install Debian. if it still doesn't boot then boot the Ubuntu live usb and open up a command prompt. As root type "efibootmgr -v" then you will be able to see whether Debian has correctly added itself to the list of UEFI boot entries. i.e. Debian should appear somewhere in the list i.e.
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 20 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,000C,000D,000E,000F,0011,000B,000A,0006
Boot0000* Debian HD(1,GPT,9b64feb2-991f-40c1-80a9-bb263d3c8830,0x800,0x64000)/File(\EFI\debian\shimx64.efi)
Boot0011* UEFI: Built-in EFI Shell VenMedia(5023b95c-db26-429b-a648-bd47664c8012)..BO
jsplink
5 Posts
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February 22nd, 2019 10:00
@vishnueesyr7Have you had any luck?
I'm seeing a similar problem on an R630 machine with a fresh Debian install on a NVMe 2TB drive.
I've posted my issue here: Debian-install-on-R630-quot-Unavailable-quot-on-boot
John
jsplink
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February 22nd, 2019 23:00
@vishnueesyr7 I know you had this problem a year ago, but in case anyone else who is trying to boot from an Intel NVMe drive on PowerEdge check out the answer to this question. In short, it's not supported. Strange.
sinbad_ee
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November 23rd, 2019 12:00
I attempted to install Debian 10 on my Dell XPS 13 and ran into symptoms that were similar to OP's. Installation went well, but there appeared to be no bootable partition afterward (and the laptop just entered hardware diagnostic mode, which found all hardware doing just fine).
This answer from Phil (above) worked for me. My BIOS was already set to UEFI, but secureboot was on when I installed Debian. So I set secure boot to off and then reinstalled Debian.
Reinstalling (with secureboot off) went well and I could boot normally into Debian 10 afterward.
[ Different Debian major version and different Dell product, but this was one of the first Google hits for "Dell XPS 13 debian won't boot after install", so if anyone else hits this issue hopefully they will end up here. ]