[T7910] EFI Boot Entires Not Persisting, Cannot Boot

Hello,

can you check using the live boot disk, how is formatted and partitioned the disk that you are not managing to get efi persist ?

lsblk -f
sudo fdisk -l

Please check if is GPT (mbr would not be ok and cause this issue), and you should be able to see a small Fat32 EFI partition ( max 500mb I think ) with the esp  flag (this too is required to have persistent efi entries)

Also if the cmos battery is too low, it could lose the custom efi path and revert to the default at reboot.

Another trick that could work ( to abuse of the default efi\boot\bootx64.efi ) would be to mount the esp partition of the disk you installed onto and 

sudo mkdir -p /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT
sudo cp /boot/efi/EFI/<yourdistro>/grubx64.efi \ /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI

then set the disk as first in boot order, and it should boot

@mazzinia_​ 

Thank you for your reply,

It is GPT fat32 ESP enabled. My boot path is /efi/EFI/Linux/vmlinuz.efi and I tried moving to match the default boot path and name BOOTX64.EFI

I can try replacing the CMOS battery. I also formatted it to 1000mb, I can try reformatting. 

It is able to find the disk and my linux efi binary in the BIOS menu. Could there be any other settings preventing it from persisting? I disabled admin pass for uefi. Boot from USB works fine and it detects the efi on that.

possibly related!

https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/precision-fixed-workstations/t7910-sas3008-updated-firmware/647f8e1df4ccf8a8deee3b5d

I forgot to mention that I am totally unable to boot even from the live usb by selecting the efi. It loads the initramfs, but it hangs on mpt3x64 and totally fails to detect drives. I thought it was an issue with my gentoo installation and kernel, and I have been banging my head against a wall trying to get it to boot, but I did not consider that the issues might be related.

Do you know anything about this? @mazzinia_ ?

no, sorry, I don't. But have you tried disabling secure boot like they mentioned in that thread ?

Supported operating systems (if it helps):

BIOS

Red Hat® Linux 7.0

Red Hat® Workstation 7.3

Ubuntu® 12.04

Ubuntu® 14.04

Windows 10, 32-bit

Windows 10, 64-bit

Windows 7, 32-bit

Windows 7, 64-bit

Windows 8.1, 64-bit

Hi

Daft Idea .......

https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

I followed the instructions in the post I linked for flashing the storage controller, but no luck. 

1GiG is the largest EFI area I have come across, 100-150 for MS, 260 - 360 for Deb etc, but Gentoo takes the biscuit.

For avance users the option to create an SDA4 user area is suggested.

@anne_droid​ thank you. I am not sure if it will work because I cannot create any persistent uefi entries though.

I have got the ZFS issues worked out, and I can boot from ventoy and manually load the EFI executable, then decrypt by force loading mpt3sas in dracut, so I have a working system (hurray!). However, I still cannot create persistent uefi entries for my main disk. I have ventoy installed on a second ssd in the main drive bay, and the bios detects the ventoy efi binary and boots.

I have tried with efibootmgr, bios settings to create the boot entry, and even reflashed the storage controller firmware using the instructions in the post I linked, but no luck. 

I am going to try replacing the cmos battery, because that is the only thing I have not done. 

Any ideas? I am glad that I have a working system, but I want to do secure boot. I read somewhere that the firmware patch only works if you are in pure uefi mode, but I don't know if unpersistent efi entries factored in there. I am having trouble finding info on that.

Unfortunately, I have also run into another issue: my kernel detects USB storage devices, but my system does not map them to block devices, and I cannot mount or access any of them. lsblk shows nothing. I am not sure if it is a related issue, or just something with my system. Live usb linux can detect and mount the drives fine.

If you're using Win10/11 as your other OS, it requires BIOS Secure Boot on if set to UEFI and not Legacy.  If Linux was loaded in Legacy mode, like Win10/11, it may not work if BIOS is then just switched to UEFI.  Vice-versa also.  Not sure if that helps.  I'm not too familiar with Linux.

Hi

Can you try a version of Gentoo created by Rufus/Etcher, or dd -ing a USB stick, because Ventoy has a few quirks (On Secure‑Boot‑enforced hardware, you either need to disable Secure Boot, enroll Ventoy’s key, or avoid Ventoy entirely for booting Gentoo ISO's)?

In fact stick Debian 13 Live on as a test piece, even install it, then, if successful overwrite with Gentoo.

@anne_droid @bradthetechnut 

Thank you

I made some progress today, some things I tried:

• Formatting a fat32 usb drive (msdos partition table) and copying the efi binary to the default path EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.efi. It was able to boot into my main disk, and I even was able to get it working with secure boot temporarily, but it is difficult to get it working as I can only do it blindly on this video card.
• After clearing out all uefi entries pointing to my main drive, I moved the efi to the default boot path again, but this time still on my ssd's boot partition. It attempts to boot the efi file, but it hangs on a black screen until eventually rebooting.
• I reset the nvram many, many times because I cannot use the video card in uefi-only mode to test secure boot. Not sure if this had any impact.

I would be okay with just keeping my boot partition on a usb drive and keeping it in the mobo port as a permanent boot partition, but I still have not been able to get my installation to mount USB drives.

The lack of USB blockdevs is my main concern now, as I need to be able to install the kernel without removing the drive and usb stick and plugging into my laptop and manually copying. I also need USB drives for other things. The USB ports definitely work on live USBs and it works for the keyboard, but it just does not assign block devices. 

The kernel can see USB storage devices, but it does not assign block devices so I cannot use them. I will try installing debian on a second ssd tomorrow to see if it rectifies any of the issues.

I wonder if the SSD is the culprit.  Have you tried a different one? 

First, did you try testing or replacing the size 2032 motherboard battery as mazzinia suggested?  Bad batteries affect BIOS and therefore PC operation.  Types of problems depend on individual PC.  The 7910 came out in 2014 and good batteries last around 5 years.

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", but it is difficult to get it working as I can only do it blindly on this video card." .... quick question, which gpu are you using ?