Strange usb device format and failure to boot on UEFI system
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
usb-creator (Ubuntu) |
Confirmed
|
High
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
I want to run 16.04 on a new ASUS T300 Chi transformer notebook, which is pre-installed with windows 10.
I started by making a DVD iso from the beta distribution, then booted and installed it on a spare partition of my old Dell 1558 Studio laptop. The system runs fine in 64-bit mode, but the BIOS is non-EFI. I then applied the latest updates to the Dell HDD 16.04 system before running usb-creator. I've done this several times, always starting by DD-ing zeros over the first 200MB of the target 8mb usb stick.
The creator reports successful completion, but gparted doesn't like the contents of the usb stick after the image has been created. The partition table has been changed from type=msdos to type=mac, and the sector size from 512 to 2048. The capacity changed from 7.7GB to 57GB! There are two partitions: sdb1 is called "Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 LTS, with an "unknown" file system type and a size of ONLY 4KB; 1.22GB unallocated; sdb2 is fat16 and its 2.31 MB extent is almost full. No flags are set on either partition. Whenever I interact with gparted it throws a pop-up that says "The driver descriptor says the physical blocksize is 2048, but linux says it is 512 - cancel or ignore".
I am amazed to report this image boots successfully on my Dell with its "legacy" BIOS. The ubuntu live/install options page displays and it eventually boots the live system, which superficially seems to run OK.
The ASUS uses American Megatrends UEFI BIOS, which I have updated to the latest version 207. I have enabled the CSM (Compatibility Support Module - legacy BIOS) and disabled both fast start and secure boot. It boots the usb stick in non-EFI mode as desired (proved by not getting the grub2 efi menu). The "man=keyboard" splash panel appears, then it drops to a tty login briefly before the new ubuntu "circling logo" appears. After several minutes, it drops back to a tty screen with the following:
(initramfs) Unable to find a medium containing a live system.
I also have a usb stick with knoppix 7.0 which successfully boots in 64-bit non-efi mode on both the Dell and the Asus, so I am reluctant to blame the Asus legacy bios at this stage. Why is gparted reporting such a strange format after creating the usb image?
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: usb-creator-gtk 0.3.2
ProcVersionSign
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-13-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Wed Mar 16 16:11:25 2016
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-03-14 (2 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-GNOME 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Alpha amd64 (20160225.1)
SourcePackage: usb-creator
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
Changed in usb-creator (Ubuntu): | |
importance: | Undecided → High |
I forgot to say the initramfs message occurs when the external usb mouse and keyboard have become unresponsive, so I cannot use busybox to inspect the state of the system. I have no alternative except to power off the machine.