Ubiquity fails to install Grub in Precise if bios efi

[Pjotr12345]

On my Lenovo B570e laptop with EFI BIOS, Ubiquity fails to install Grub. With the LiveUSB of Precise Pangolin 12.04, amd64, daily live of March, 12.

However, when I *manually* install Grub from the terminal in the live session of Desktop CD, it does install fine. Then I can boot into Precise from the hard disk after all. This happens both in Ubuntu, Xubuntu and Lubuntu 12.04.

I have attached both /var/log/syslog from the LiveUSB-session and a hardware list (output of lshw).

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

The log file seems to think that it installed GRUB successfully. What exactly was your symptom? Did it simply fail to boot?

Exactly what did you type to install GRUB from the terminal in the live session?

[Pjotr12345 (computertip)]

Indeed it simply failed to boot... What I had to do in a terminal in a live session afterwards, was this:
sudo mount /dev/sda7 /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda

Then I could boot from the hard disk without any problems. Other operating systems were detected correctly and shown in the Grub menu as well (other Ubuntus, Windows 7).

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

That would have installed a BIOS version of GRUB, which is odd since your system is allegedly EFI.

Do you have an EFI System Partition? Please attach /var/log/installer/partman.

[Pjotr12345 (computertip)]

I have tried to attach /var/log/installer/partman, but Launchpad keeeps complaining that it can't upload an empty file (?). Weird, because it's over 300 KB. Maybe you can find the info needed, in hardware.html (output of lshw), which I enclosed in my first message?

By the way: I found a strange report about this particular laptop (Lenovo B570e): according to the author, Ubuntu wrongly identifies the BIOS as being EFI, then tries to install the Grub-EFI, which then ofcourse fails to boot. Because it's an ordinary BIOS, not EFI.

Here's the report, in rather peculiar Russian-like English:
http://www.progtown.com/post5703404.html#p5703404

[Pjotr12345 (computertip)]

Yesterday, I repeated a fresh install with the daily build of yesterday. The problem is still there: Ubiquity installs Ubuntu fine, and installs Grub as well. Only... it wrongly identifies the BIOS as EFI, so it installs the Grub EFI packages.

Which makes the laptop unbootable, because it's an ordinary BIOS and no EFI at all. Repair is easy: boot from the LiveCD and install the ordinary Grub by hand.
sudo mount /dev/sda7 /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda

Then there's no problem anymore: Ubuntu boots fine and all is well with the world.... :-)

Is there any chance of the erroneous EFI detection being fixed?

[Pjotr12345 (computertip)]

Changed the status back to "New", as I've provided the requested information.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

It isn't wrongly identifying; your laptop is booting the cd in UEFI mode. You need to get it to boot the cd in bios mode if you don't want to use UEFI.