Comment 0 for bug 1692876

After downloading a 17.04 ubuntu-server image for ARM64:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/17.04/release/ubuntu-17.04-server-arm64.iso

and using it to create a USB drive with /usr/bin/usb-creator-gtk, I can't boot the installer on my EFI-powered ARM64 machine, because the image is not EFI compliant.

See here:

$ fdisk -l ubuntu-17.04-server-arm64.iso
Disk ubuntu-17.04-server-arm64.iso: 618.1 MiB, 648083456 bytes, 1265788 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
$ file ubuntu-17.04-server-arm64.iso
ubuntu-17.04-server-arm64.iso: ISO 9660 CD-ROM filesystem data 'Ubuntu-Server 17.04 arm64' (bootable)

As you can see it's just a "flat" ISO 9660 image. In result my EFI firmware doesn't even try using it as it expects a FAT32-formatted EFI partition. Even after transferring the files over, I can't boot it, because it doesn't come with EFI build of Grub (grubaa64.efi). Then, after providing it manually I've managed to install the system, but with problems again - the installer didn't find the media automatically (was probably looking for partitions like /dev/sda1 while the media is only available as /dev/sda).

In comparison, the AMD64 version looks like this:

$ fdisk -l ubuntu-17.04-server-amd64.iso
Disk ubuntu-17.04-server-amd64.iso: 685 MiB, 718274560 bytes, 1402880 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x5aac927d

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
ubuntu-17.04-server-amd64.iso1 * 0 1402879 1402880 685M 0 Empty
ubuntu-17.04-server-amd64.iso2 286608 291215 4608 2.3M ef EFI (FAT-12/
$ file ubuntu-17.04-server-amd64.iso
ubuntu-17.04-server-amd64.iso: DOS/MBR boot sector ISO 9660 CD-ROM filesystem data (DOS/MBR boot sector) 'Ubuntu-Server 17.04 amd64' (bootable); partition 2 : ID=0xef, start-CHS (0x3ff,254,63), end-CHS (0x3ff,254,63), startsector 286608, 4608 sectors

Also, Debian testing images work fine, being built the EFI way:

$ fdisk -l debian-testing-arm64-netinst.iso
Disk debian-testing-arm64-netinst.iso: 200 MiB, 209715200 bytes, 409600 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
debian-testing-arm64-netinst.iso1 0 407551 407552 199M 83 Linux
debian-testing-arm64-netinst.iso2 407552 409599 2048 1M ef EFI (FAT-1
$