[mythtv-users] Installation report: ECS Liva doesn't boot after Debian Installation. What am I missing?

[A. F. Cano]

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 03:30:25PM -0700, Karl Newman wrote:
>    On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 3:03 PM, A. F. Cano <[1]afc at shibaya.lonestar.org>
>    wrote:
> 
>      In the partitioning phase the installer claimed that "there may be
>      existing operating systems already installed using "BIOS compatibility
>      mode", so I chose not to force UEFI installation here, in case I might
>      need access to that later.  This might have been a mistake and the cause
>      the system doesn't boot now.
> 
>    This is probably the cause. I think this system requires a 64 bit EFI boot

Thanks for the tip.  This was indeed the problem.  More below.

>    loader. I'm using Gentoo, but I wrote up my install notes here:
>    [2]https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1006786.html You might find
>    something useful in there.

You're a true pioneer!  You attempted this when there were many more
problems and you had to get immersed in low-level code to see what was
happening.  I got lucky that Debian 8 finally became stable about a
month ago and all those issues had been taken care of.

I had found this page that convinced me that it would be possible to use
Debian 8/Jessie on the Liva:

http://blog.einval.com/debian/CDs

The good news is that the system is now booting properly.  I attemped
all kinds of fixes from expert mode (the one that allows you to go back
and forth and select individual areas to configure) but I had all sorts
of issues with installing on an "unclean system" and failing to install
the base system.  After re-formatting partitions and even erasing
previous data, I finally decided to start over.

I did select "force UEFI boot" and the installer forced me to create
an EFI partition.  At first I tried to use one of those that were
detected (/dev/mmclblk0boot0 or /dev/mmclblk0boot1) but it didn't
work.  They appear to be read-only.  The installer also claimed the EFI
partition needed to be > 35MB.  I ended up with this partitioning for
the SSD:

#1      primary 38.8 MB B f ESP
#5      logial  31.2 GB   f ext4        /

With all the other partitions newly re-formatted, the installation
proceeded smoothly until it was time to re-boot and that worked too.

So, the critical issue is to "force UEFI boot" and then create the
EFI partition.

Now the long process of configuration begins, which includes myth
setup.  I'll report on that when it's done.

Thanks for the help!

Augustine