major booting issues for a totally blind user trying to boot debian 12.6 and windows 10 pro 64 bits on different drives with uefi booting

[Nick Gawronski]

Hi, I did more checking and found that this system does not support master boot record booting as the two drives are two terabytes and from what I have read that size does not support the master boot record option. The windows drive does not have an efi partition but the first drive with debian does. I am now trying to find an accessible way to create a windows bootable usb stick which so far I have not been able to do yet as etcher acts like it is not for this purpose and woeusb is not packaged in debian as pipx install wants the gtk development libraries which were not installed with build-essential. I had someone look and no windows boot manager exists in the f7 boot menu but it just takes me back to the top of the list of boot drives and etcher created drives do not boot. What other options can I do to fix this setup? Nick Gawronski

----- Original Message -----
From: Pascal Hambourg <***@plouf.fr.eu.org>
Date: Wednesday, October 23, 2024 08:14 AM
To: Nick Gawronski <***@nickgawronski.com>;debian-***@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: major booting issues for a totally blind user trying to boot debian 12.6 and windows 10 pro 64 bits on different drives with uefi booting

Hi Nick,

During the installation grub told me that it can modify the
nvram to have grub boot into debian by default but I told it no as I am
totally blind and had someone set the uefi boot order so that the windows
drive was booted first.

That's not exactly how it works. Either you accept to update the NVRAM
and the installer will register Debian in EFI boot variables and set it
first in the boot order, or you do not accept and the installer will not
even register Debian in EFI boot variables, making it unbootable unless
you forced the installation of GRUB in the "removable media path" and no
valid EFI boot entry exists.

Now when I reboot I hear the grub beep and no
windows option and os-prober is running as it told me that it could not
detect any other operating systems during installation. I did some
reading and it appears there is an esp partition that contains the efi
boot files which only exists on the first nvme drive with debian and no
windows efi files exist.

Do you mean that the Windows drive does not have a EFI partition ? And
its partition table is MSDOS, not GPT ? Then it means that Windows was
installed in legacy (BIOS) boot mode, so it is normal that os-prober
does not detect it, GRUB for EFI would not be able to chainload it anyway.
If the UEFI firmware allows to select "BIOS/CSM/legacy boot" only or has
a boot menu which allows to select Windows' drive (legacy boot), then
you should be able to boot Windows. For dual boot with GRUB you have
three options:
- install GRUB for BIOS (grub-pc) in Debian and boot Debian in BIOS mode
- reinstall Debian in BIOS mode
- convert Windows from MBR+BIOS to GPT+UEFI with mbr2gpt.exe.

[Pascal Hambourg]

Post by Nick Gawronski
Hi, I did more checking and found that this system does not support master boot record booting as the two drives are two terabytes and from what I have read that size does not support the master boot record option.

DOS/MBR partition table format supports up to 2 TiB (2.2TB) on drives
with 512-byte logical sectors (and 16TiB on native "Advanced Format"
drives with 4096-byte logical sectors). So it supports 2TB drives.

Also, the partition table format (DOS/MBR or GPT) must not be confused
with the boot mode (legacy/BIOS or EFI). It is Windows which only
supports legacy/BIOS boot on DOS/MBR or EFI boot on GPT. GRUB and Linux
do not have such limitation.

Post by Nick Gawronski
The windows drive does not have an efi partition but the first drive with debian does.

Can you post the partition tables of both drives shown by fdisk -l or
parted -l ?

Was the first drive present and did it already have a EFI partition when
Windows was installed on the second drive ?

Post by Nick Gawronski
I am now trying to find an accessible way to create a windows bootable usb stick which so far I have not been able to do yet as etcher acts like it is not for this purpose and woeusb is not packaged in debian as pipx install wants the gtk development libraries which were not installed with build-essential.

All I know is that Windows ISO images are not "hybrid" and cannot just
be written "as is" on a USB stick. Microsoft provides a tool to create a
bootable USB stick from a Windows ISO image but it runs only on Windows.

Post by Nick Gawronski
I had someone look and no windows boot manager exists in the f7 boot menu but it just takes me back to the top of the list of boot drives

Is the Windows drive present in the list of boot drives ? If yes, what
happens when you select it ?

[n***@nickgawronski.com]

Hi, Here is the parted print command for /dev/nvme0n1 the linux drive
Model: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 538MB 537MB fat32 boot, esp
2 538MB 1050MB 512MB ext2
3 1050MB 2000GB 1999GB

Model: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme1n1: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size File system Name
Flags
1 1049kB 17.8MB 16.8MB ext4 Microsoft reserved partition
msftres
2 17.8MB 1999GB 1999GB ntfs Nick Gawronski's system 76 1
msftdata
3 1999GB 2000GB 724MB ntfs
hidden, diag
4 2000GB 2000GB 557MB ntfs Unnamed
hidden, diag
It looks like somehow the esp partition got it's type changed to the ext4
partition type but the question is how can I change it back to the normal
type for that partition whatever it is? Nick Gawronski
On Fri, 25 Oct

Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2024 08:53:17 +0200
Subject: Re: major booting issues for a totally blind user trying to boot
debian 12.6 and windows 10 pro 64 bits on different drives with uefi
booting

Post by Nick Gawronski
Hi, I did more checking and found that this system does not support master
boot record booting as the two drives are two terabytes and from what I
have read that size does not support the master boot record option.

DOS/MBR partition table format supports up to 2 TiB (2.2TB) on drives with
512-byte logical sectors (and 16TiB on native "Advanced Format" drives with
4096-byte logical sectors). So it supports 2TB drives.
Also, the partition table format (DOS/MBR or GPT) must not be confused with
the boot mode (legacy/BIOS or EFI). It is Windows which only supports
legacy/BIOS boot on DOS/MBR or EFI boot on GPT. GRUB and Linux do not have
such limitation.

Post by Nick Gawronski
The windows drive does not have an efi partition but the first drive with debian does.

Can you post the partition tables of both drives shown by fdisk -l or parted
-l ?
Was the first drive present and did it already have a EFI partition when
Windows was installed on the second drive ?

Post by Nick Gawronski
I am now trying to find an accessible way to create a windows bootable usb
stick which so far I have not been able to do yet as etcher acts like it is
not for this purpose and woeusb is not packaged in debian as pipx install
wants the gtk development libraries which were not installed with
build-essential.

All I know is that Windows ISO images are not "hybrid" and cannot just be
written "as is" on a USB stick. Microsoft provides a tool to create a
bootable USB stick from a Windows ISO image but it runs only on Windows.

Post by Nick Gawronski
I had someone look and no windows boot manager exists in the f7 boot menu
but it just takes me back to the top of the list of boot drives

Is the Windows drive present in the list of boot drives ? If yes, what
happens when you select it ?

[Pascal Hambourg]

Post by n***@nickgawronski.com
Hi, Here is the parted print command for /dev/nvme0n1 the linux drive
Model: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name  Flags
 1      1049kB  538MB   537MB   fat32              boot, esp
 2      538MB   1050MB  512MB   ext2
 3      1050MB  2000GB  1999GB
Model: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme1n1: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name Flags
 1      1049kB  17.8MB  16.8MB  ext4         Microsoft reserved partition msftres
 2      17.8MB  1999GB  1999GB  ntfs         Nick Gawronski's system 76 1 msftdata
 3      1999GB  2000GB  724MB   ntfs hidden, diag
 4      2000GB  2000GB  557MB   ntfs         Unnamed hidden, diag
 It looks like somehow the esp partition got it's type changed to the
ext4 partition type

No, partition 1 is too small for a ESP. As indicated by the name and
flag, it is a MSR (Microsoft Reserved Partition). It is not supposed to
have any filesystem.

My only guess is that for some reason Windows' ESP was on the other
drive and was deleted when you installed Debian on the entire drive. You
need to reinstall Windows Boot Manager in the new ESP with a Windows
install/repair medium. I do not know if there is another way, e.g. by
manually copying specific files to /EFI/Microsoft in the ESP.

[Nick Gawronski]

Hi, I managed to fix the booting issues by booting into a windows 10
boot usb stick and going to the command prompt with shift and f10 then
using diskpart I found the esp partition and assigned a drive letter to
it.  After this I used bcdboot to recopy the windows 10 efi files to the
esp partition and then booted back into debian.  I then ran update-grub
and it found the windows boot manager so now I am able to boot into both
windows and debian just fine on different drives.  What installer log
file on the debian system can I post to the list so someone can see
exactly what I may have done to mess this system up so only debian would
boot at first?  Nick Gawronski

Post by Pascal Hambourg

Post by n***@nickgawronski.com
Hi, Here is the parted print command for /dev/nvme0n1 the linux drive
Model: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name  Flags
  1      1049kB  538MB   537MB   fat32              boot, esp
  2      538MB   1050MB  512MB   ext2
  3      1050MB  2000GB  1999GB
Model: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme1n1: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name Flags
  1      1049kB  17.8MB  16.8MB  ext4         Microsoft reserved
partition msftres
  2      17.8MB  1999GB  1999GB  ntfs         Nick Gawronski's system
76 1 msftdata
  3      1999GB  2000GB  724MB   ntfs hidden, diag
  4      2000GB  2000GB  557MB   ntfs         Unnamed hidden, diag
  It looks like somehow the esp partition got it's type changed to
the ext4 partition type

No, partition 1 is too small for a ESP. As indicated by the name and
flag, it is a MSR (Microsoft Reserved Partition). It is not supposed
to have any filesystem.
My only guess is that for some reason Windows' ESP was on the other
drive and was deleted when you installed Debian on the entire drive.
You need to reinstall Windows Boot Manager in the new ESP with a
Windows install/repair medium. I do not know if there is another way,
e.g. by manually copying specific files to /EFI/Microsoft in the ESP.

[Pascal Hambourg]

(...) now I am able to boot into both
windows and debian just fine on different drives.

But Windows totally depends on Debian drive for booting. If you remove
the Debian drive, Windows won't boot any more.

What installer log
file on the debian system can I post to the list so someone can see
exactly what I may have done to mess this system up so only debian would
boot at first?

The partitioning log is in /var/log/installer/partman. It shows the
existing partitioning scheme. But it does do not show your actions, only
their consequences. It can be quite big, so better compress it or the
list may delete it.

IMO the original sin was to have Windows ESP on a different drive than
Windows main system partition (but I don't know how it happened, maybe
the ESP was created before Windows was installed and Windows just used
it). Then you selected "guided partitioning using an entire drive" which
deleted the ESP. In order to preserve the existing ESP, you should have
selected "guided partitioning using the biggest free space" or "manual
partitioning".