TeraByte Unlimited

My UEFI system uses BIU to multiboot Win11, Ubuntu 18.04, and Ubuntu 20.04. I no longer use Ubuntu 18.04 and would like to install Ubuntu 24.04 onto the partition currently occupied by Ubuntu 18.04. Unfortunately when I tried installing Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS today I hit a roadblock shortly after starting.

After booting the installion USB stick I connected the live OS to wifi. Shortly after commencing the install process I accepted an invitation to download upgrades for the Ubuntu installer.

A couple of steps further along the installer presented the following disk setup screen:


The third option seemed the best match for my desired outcome. That choice was followed by this manual partitioning screen:


After using the greyed field at lower left to select the device for boot loader installation (nvme0n1) the entry in the device table corresponding to my system's EFI partition was appended with the mount point /boot/efi. That was promising because I expected BIU to create a boot item for the new OS using a new boot loader. However, on consideration there is no such directory in the EFI partition; I don't want to put Ubuntu's /boot directory in the EFI partition. The row became highlighted in pink after I clicked it with my mouse cursor.

Unfortunately that was where my progress stopped. The Next button at lower right remained greyed out preventing me from proceeding to the next step. I tried going back one step then forward again and using the Change button but couldn't see a solution there either.

What do I need to do to proceed to complete the installation of Ubuntu 24.04?

Radiogram,

What I'd do is delete the Ubuntu 18.04.6 partition and create a new Linux Native partition in BIU.

Then proceed as you have done and select the new partition as your root partition. Ext4, /, format.

For the Device for Boot Loader installation, select nvme0n1p2 which is your ESP. This is the UEFI default even if you don't choose the ESP. You get it anyway. Your current grub files are in the ESP. BIU is in the ESP.

BIU will create a Boot Item called Ubuntu. You see this after Ubuntu has been installed.

Brian,

By reading comments in another recent thread I found a TBI how-to video showing the installation of a system multibooting Win10 and Ubuntu 20.04. There were enough clues there to get me headed in the right direction.

https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/video ... Ubuntu.wmv

The key parts modified for the Ubuntu 24.04 setup were using the mouse to highlight the desired partition to install to, and using the Change button to make that partition the / (root) partition. Location for boot loader was selected automatically. Everything was straightforward after that. Had to reactivate BIU on after restart. New Ubuntu boot item had been created for me as expected.

I was going to delete my post but you were too quick to post your reply.

Since my previous post to this thread I've been busy merrily building up my new installation of U-24.04. Quite a way down the track I mucked things up and decided it would be best to start again from scratch.

Meanwhile a new point release was published by Canonical – Ubuntu 24.04.3. I used it instead of 24.04.2 which had been used for my first attempt. U-24.04.3 was installed to the same partition where U-24.04.2 had been installed.

With all the live practise I'd had doing the first install the second was easy and completely straightforward. However, as far as BIU was concerned, after system reboot I noticed the second install had not created a new boot item. The U-24.04.3 installation boots from the same boot item created for the installation of U-24.04.2.

The second installation of U-24.04 boots perfectly normally.

All was well until tonight. I needed to retrieve a directory from the first installation. My plan was to restore the first installation from an IFL image, copy the directory to a storage drive, then restore an IFL image of the second installation.

IFL restored the first installation with no errors. But the restored system would not boot. It stopped at this GRUB screen:

GNU GRUB version 2.12

Minimal BASH-like editing is supported. TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists possible device or file completions. To enable less(1)-like paging, "set pager=1"

grub> boot
error: you need to load the kernel first.
grub> _

The error above was produced after I entered the "boot" command after the grub> prompt.

I have restored the 2nd installation of U-24.04 from the most recent IFL image. It boots normally.

Why did booting of the restored 1st installation of U-24.04 stop at the grub screen?