Want to boot from USB, but cannot change BIOS settings.

I get to GRUB, but it does show with options for me when I choose to boot from "Linpus lite":



I'm going to try with the previous LTS, the one you're using next in case there's some incompatibility. I have a different machine than yours, an A515-54G, but the procedure should be analogous. Right now my BIOS settings have Secure Boot disabled, UEFI mode (I can't choose anything else), and no password protection whatsoever.

There seems to be something wrong with how you're creating the bootable USB, I was able to create and boot from the 18.04.4 Ubuntu release just as well:



I had to instruct Rufus to download some Syslinux code when it asked, because it was an older release and it doesn't have boot code for all of them. I wrote the image in ISO mode (you could try DD too if that doesn't work).

So far so good

Okay, there's another (crude-ish) way to make it work (hopefully).

You just want to have Ubuntu installed don't you? Because I could do a basic installation here, for an UEFI machine, of the Ubuntu you like, then create a dd-able image of the whole disk for you to use over there.

I'd need to know the hard drive space you have and the kind of partition you want to have (like a separate /home for example), but I've done something like that before with success. The download size would be something like 5-7 GB probably, but I could cut it in chunks if you prefer.

It's just too odd that you can't boot into Linux even to get started when I had no trouble over here. SATA in AHCI, UEFI with Secure Boot disabled and all good.

robrichards said:

I assume disk 0 is the hard drive.
Disk 1 is the usb.
Once that is done, then do I use rufus to load the ISO there?
In my bios, there is no sata mode that I can change. It does say Optane without RAID in "Information"

Never assume! You can end up with a formatted drive by mistake. In DiskPart, the command "det" can show you more info on what you have selected, for example "det disk" on the selected disk, "det part" on the selected partition. And "sel" selects things (disks begin in 0, partitions in 1), think of DiskPart as parted, or fdisk.

 

Rufus, as far as I know, clears all kinds of configuration you may have done to the partition table in the chosen disk. Everything gets deleted. What @egydiocoelho suggested is the manual way of creating partitions for a bootable USB.

By the way, in some BIOSes the SATA operation mode can be changed by pressing Ctrl+S in the Main tab, a setting appears for it (but if you want to boot into Windows you must restore it to what it was, or do some changes in Windows first).

To change some of the things related to security in Acer BIOSes you need to have set up a supervisor password first. Try to set something up and see if you can disable Secure Boot mode afterwards, that's probably what's preventing you from accessing the boot disks.

Did you see the SATA operation mode? Is there such an option in your BIOS?

Hi! I haven't forgotten about this issue, but I was caught up with different things and couldn't get back at you until now.

I made an installation of Ubuntu 18.04.4, very basic, for now it's kind of a live environment except it is installed properly with an ESP partition and all. I uploaded the file here: https://mega.nz/file/gddg0Srb#qBBKTdU5BRwAn_MNlBY-ukkRGzYVvCivi1CFEhN4zCE

After decompressing the RAR archive you'll get a 7.5 GB file which is to be dd-ed into a flash drive. It was made with the smallest flash drive possible in mind, an 8GB one, so you can use anything bigger than that without any problem (gparted should be able to adjust the partition table after the fact too if you wanted to extend the partition).

As it was a test, it is all installed in a single partition, meaning the layout is just the ESP (EFI) partition and the rest is an ext4 one.

I used ImageUSB from OSForensics to create the image, but I believe it is compatible with dd as well. Otherwise, this is the settings you should use in ImageUSB:



Remember to choose the right disk or things could end up badly... in any case you'll be warned again once you click Write:



That's it, at the end you should have an installation of Ubuntu 18.04.4 ready to be boot up in an UEFI machine with Secure Boot disabled. It should appear as "ubuntu" in the boot menu. If you're able to boot it, and you're able to access the internal hard drive, we have a chance of installing things into there.

If you're able to boot it, but you can't see your internal hard drive, it may mean that the Optane setting is keeping things as a software RAID (although it reads without RAID, who knows). In that case I'll try to guide you later on.

Give it a try and please report back!

robrichards said:
There is a logon screen, that I assume is your name, but I don't know the password. Yes, I tried "test" and got in! 

😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳 HOW COULD I FORGET TO TELL YOU THE PASSWORD!!! My god, at least you got in, my apologies man, I had so many things in my head I completely forgot.

But! Good news is that you can use Linux in that machine!

As for the disks, it may be as a thought, the internal disk must be wired through RST and that behaves like a software RAID in Linux, needing to mount it with mdadm and all ~> A pain.

We may be able to change it, Acer has recently changed the SATA operation mode in the BIOS setting. To access it you have to be in the Main tab and press Ctrl+S, but it only applies to the majority of machines. Some others don't get that shortcut for some reason (mistake maybe?) and they should wait for another firmware upgrade.

See if you can access the setting, and switch to AHCI instead (if you had Windows installed still it may not boot after the fact, it requires reconfiguration). If you don't have that option, I'd try updating the firmware to the latest revision which is 1.08 for your machine per the support page and checking again: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/8192?b=1

And if you still can't access the SATA operation mode, I think your only bet for now would be to mount the internal system as a software RAID, but that complicates things as to what I can send you for you to make a proper installation.

Just like I did this time, I could do the same with the partitioning scheme (and filesystem settings you want, in case you prefer btrfs, or xfs, etc) only to be dd-ed to the internal disk instead. (I can also provide a live environment of Windows for you to boot up from that would see the disk no problem, and you could use ImageUSB from there)

All in all it's great news, we got to the point where you can boot an installed Linux, now we just need to figure out how to make it so for the internal drive.

PS. There was an old Intel whitepaper on RST in Linux, the the procedure may seem convoluted whereas in AHCI things work out of the box, and there's no performance detriments I could see in some tests I performed some month back: https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white-papers/rst-linux-paper.pdf

In any case, your preferred initial partition setup was:
 - ESP (partition needed for UEFI)
 - 40 GB swap (darn... haha)
 - 25 GB /
 - 5 GB /var
 - Rest for /home

I may need to use another smaller USB stick like this time to ease the operation, but you'll be able to grow /home to the full once GParted (or equivalent) fixes the GPT table. With compression and all I would expect a similar download size.