Blank screen while trying to install Kubuntu

[jlittle]

I might be a bit late mentioning this, but there was an Acer laptop in the family that when this appeared:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]8209[/ATTACH]

you had to press 'Enter', or nothing happened, just blackness. Not space, or any other key; if you did press any other key it was all over for that boot, Enter didn't work either. There was another, older, Acer where the little keyboard and man in a circle usually didn't appear (sometimes it flashed briefly) but you still had to press Enter, and just Enter only.

once Kubuntu is setup do you need to keep legacy mode active?

I thought that if you booted in legacy mode, you could only do a legacy, BIOS install. But maybe if you have a GPT formatted drive, with a UEFI ESP, you could boot into Kubuntu then install grub-efi-amd64 (that is, use sudo apt install), and use grub-install --target=x86_64-efi? I'm out of my depth on that, sorry.

It would obviously be simpler if you could boot the Kubuntu installer in UEFI mode. Rather than advocate this burning tool or that, I much prefer using a multiboot USB, where one just copies the iso to the drive (using any file manager, even Windows explorer). A multiboot USB can boot into the iso anywhere in your machine; if I'm testing isos or installers I do it that way because it's much faster (SSDs being faster than USB sticks). I don't know if that works with an iso in a Windows drive, though.

[jglen490]

claydoh, Qqmike, and many others have written volumes on the subject of UEFI, Linux, as well as dual boot. Don B. Cilly has written a good synopsis of the that advice, but I would further add that Legacy boot should be the last, not the first, boot option for UEFI installation. The usual list is UEFI, disable Secure boot, and set AHCI. Whatever you set in firmware/UEFI sets the stage for your OS install. Kubuntu does very well with a typical UEFI platform, and not so well with Legacy.

[Don B. Cilly]

Well, no, the legacy mode will be only to boot from USB.

Now, you have to make a few choices, like use btrfs or EXT4, MBR or GPT partitions, etc.
Personally I would got for GPT and EXT4. But you'll find some interesting recent topics on that here.

Also, you may run into the "ESP problem".
The Kubuntu installer is called Calamares. In Spanish, it means "squids" and pretty much behaves as such... er... not quite, but it usually does this thing that it complains that the EFI partition does not have an ESP flag.
You go and set it, the flag is not in the list.

So before installing, from the Live, I install gparted. (sudo apt install gparted) which has the ESP flag.
With that, I pre-partition the disk, and then install.

Partitioning:
Make a boot/efi partiton (if you don't already have it). Half a gig is plenty, 100 megs too. Try 50 Mb.
A main partition, with mount point / , big enough for your Kubuntu. Mine is 25 gigs altogether at the moment, I don't expect it to grow to more that 40 like, ever. You can always resize the partition anyway.
A swap partition, about the size of your RAM, or just a wee bit more. Used for suspend/sleep.
You could also have another one with mount point /home, but... next time maybe

[Knox3k1]

So I performed a quick test using Universal USB Installer as i'm not happy to use software that damages my pen drives (even if temporarily) and everything seems fine this time around, I did a Lime and Kubuntu Live USB. The Lime worked from boot, however the Kubuntu would not. So I went into the Bios and turned on Legacy mode and Kubuntu finally booted up to the start menu.. Yay...

Now, as I need my system to duel boot; windows will not work in legacy mode. So no use to me, however.. once Kubuntu is setup do you need to keep legacy mode active? If no, do you need to reactivate legacy mode to update the software? If yes then I guess Kubuntu is not the distro for me.. :/

[Don B. Cilly]

Hey, you know what?
I just checked. I have two USB sticks with distros on them.
One I made with Balena etcher. The filesystem is seen as ISO 9960. Which should let Windows see the files, but...
The other I made with Unetbootin, it has a persistence file on it, and Unetbootin is the only reliable app that allows that.

The filesystem is seen as FAT32.

[Don B. Cilly]

I was obviously typing when you posted.
You could double-check the folders on the drive with the dir command...

Personally, I have had the most reliable results in writing ISOs to USBs with Unetbootin.
Slowish, not too intuitive, but reliable, I found.

Still, I believe the BIOS boot options are worth a try.

[Don B. Cilly]

The "reduced drive space" is quite common. See here for a solution.

Still, I guess we're curious to see what the dir shell command says, and whether you've tried other BIOS options.

[Knox3k1]

Now restored both pen drives to their full capacity using the DOS command "Diskpart". So stress over.

Back to the main issue, something must be going wrong when the ISO is being extracted to the drive as when I checked the drive for the folders it was then that i noticed the drive was reduced to less than 4mb, hence why none of the other files are present on the drive.. I am going to try a Lime ISO again and see what the result is on the pen drive and then once again a Kubuntu ISO and compare.

[Knox3k1]

The ISOs are both fine:

18.04.2
844762a208593ee5cf396cb09522b1dfa127c65b79f71f4863 c062039215d0d8
844762A208593EE5CF396CB09522B1DFA127C65B79F71F4863 C062039215D0D8

19.04
8e43da4ddba84e1e67036aac053ba32079e6fb81a28aaedae8 a8e559ac1a4d3f
8E43DA4DDBA84E1E67036AAC053BA32079E6FB81A28AAEDAE8 A8E559AC1A4D3F

I now have another issue. I have been using a 4GB stick and a 32GB stick. As of today both of the drives have been reduced to 3.9mb!!! Tried to reformat but there is no option to restore the original drive space, I do hope they have not been screwed up! They are original Kingston and SanDisk drives that i have been using for a long time, so nothing dodgy about them, is this something Etcher has done?

[claydoh]

The file structure of the USB stick should look like my image.

I wonder of the isos are corrupting on download for some reason
Are you using any tool to download the isos, or just a straight download?

You can check the images:
https://ubuntu-mate.org/how-to-verify-downloads/
using the hashes from:
https://kubuntu.org/alternative-downloads

[Don B. Cilly]

I do not have any other folders on the stick bar the ones I stated!

Oh boy
The plot thickens...
Can you open a CMD/shell/terminal in Windows, go to D: or whatever your USB drive is called, and type dir ?
Or dir /w |more...

Still, if your BIOS is anything like mine, it will boot any option other than UEFI :·)

[Knox3k1]

Odd, especially as Mint and *buntu 18.04 use the exact same files, installer, and boot mechanism.

Are you booting with EFI or legacy bios? Is your bios firmware up to date?
The *buntu installer disk can boot to either one, so it should not matter. I am stumped for sure.
The USB does have a top-level /boot directory, correct?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]8210[/ATTACH]

I do not have any other folders on the stick bar the ones I stated! I believe I'm booting EFI and am unsure if there is legacy option. I'll need to check later as windows is currently borking the update process for 8.1. Lol

[Don B. Cilly]

My boot options are for UEFI USB boot.

I was never able to boot in UEFI mode from USB on this PC.
Have you tried the other option(s)?

[claydoh]

Correct Don, nothing appears to boot. Not sure what KDE is, but can give it a go.

Gave Etcher and the 19.04 and the LTE version, same blank screen.. thanks for the information claydon.

Just noticed a brief message popping up before the boot menu appears:

Error file: "/boot/" not found. This probably explains it.. now how to fix it?

Odd, especially as Mint and *buntu 18.04 use the exact same files, installer, and boot mechanism.


Are you booting with EFI or legacy bios? Is your bios firmware up to date?
The *buntu installer disk can boot to either one, so it should not matter. I am stumped for sure.
The USB does have a top-level /boot directory, correct?

[Knox3k1]

Seems a bit odd. When i look at the file structure all i have is:

efi/boot/boot64.efi along with a grub64.efi file.

I can remember seeing a full file structure when I had Lime on the stick. Something must be going wrong. My boot options are for UEFI USB boot.