Notebook Ultrabook Samsung NP530U3C
this notebook was working just fine, booting normally,
and with the UEFI/BIOS (A Phoenix one) with no problems.
Every time I wanted to enter the bios setup, I reset the computer,
then F2 while the bios logo was on screen, and done.
Yesterday, I decided to install Fedora30 in one of my pendrives.
(yes, in a pendrive, just like if it were a normal drive)
So, I used two pendrives… in the first one, I’ve put the Fedora30 ISO
(and, for that matter, it was booting and working perfectly in LIVE mode)
and the second one, was the target for the instalation.
The idea was installing and using the Fedora on that second pendrive,
booting from it, and, at any time, remove the pendrive,
and boot from the SSD inside like before;
this way, leaving the Notebook ‘untouched’. So… didn’t work.
The installation process went well, and the system is working perfectly even now
(I’m writing this from this same Notebook, with this Fedora30 system working perfectly)
The problem is when I remove the pendrive and reboot the notebook…
When the BIOS logo appear, I press F2, but there is no way to enter the bios setup…
F4 is recovery: nothing either. I tried F1 to F12, quicky, slow, no matter what,…
it’s impossible to enter the bios setup or alike… and always end up in a menu that seems to be
part of the BIOS program, that it’s has an Entry with the name Fedora, but, obviously, cant boot, cause the pendrive is not connected. Every time I connect the pendrive, the system boots correctly and it’s working, but without the pendrive, it’s impossible…
This is what I see when trying to boot without the pendrive with this instalation:
I don’t think that I’d overwrote the boot sector or bootloader in the SSD inside,
but even in that case, the problem is not that the computer it’s not booting… the problem is that I can’t access the bios configuration, and it’s only booting from the pendrive with this installation… I can’t boot with other pendrives with CentOS ISO, for example, or any other distro… the BIOS seems to be always waiting for the fedora USB that has this instalation, and I can do nothing to change that. I don’t understand what happened…
Fedora touched my BIOS/UEFI and take control over it?
I took another pendrive, and cloned over it the MBR and the ESP partition from the pendrive with this instalation, and in that case, it boots… I think that I can problably figure it out a way to put another distro on that pen, mantaining those first sectors from this installation, but that it’s not the point… the point is: Suppose I lose this pendrive with this installation… my notebook is a brick, cause is only booting that (it’s problably looking for a specific UUID and ESP partition) and I can’t enter the bios to change it… so, I know that probably I can do something from this system with efibootmgr or something like that… but suppose I cant access to this pen anymore… is then my notebook a brick? what Fedora did? Why I can’t accesses my BIOS anymore?
here is the fdisk output (
sda is a ssd inside, that has and old linux instalation…
doesn’t matter right now.
sdb is a pendrive with the current linux instalation.
)
[root@localhost]# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 22.4 GiB, 24015495168 bytes, 46905264 sectors
Disk model: SanDisk SSD i100
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000f176f
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 * 2048 46903295 46901248 22.4G 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdb: 58.4 GiB, 62742792192 bytes, 122544516 sectors
Disk model: Extreme
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 35602835-D79C-4522-BDA6-954535A7F5E6
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdb1 2048 1026047 1024000 500M EFI System
/dev/sdb2 1026048 2050047 1024000 500M Linux filesystem
/dev/sdb3 2050048 122544127 120494080 57.5G Linux LVM
Disk /dev/mapper/fedora_localhost--live-root: 50 GiB, 53687091200 bytes, 104857600 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/mapper/fedora_localhost--live-swap: 7.5 GiB, 8002732032 bytes, 15630336 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
some output from efibootmgr
[root@localhost]# efibootmgr -v
No BootOrder is set; firmware will attempt recovery
and the output from lsblk --fs
[root@localhost]# lsblk --fs
NAME FSTYPE LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINT
sda
└─sda1 ext4 GeeXboX f7c2eda6-1c36-4d72-9d48-68222c3e6cc5
sdb
├─sdb1 vfat 18D7-F982 481.8M 4% /boot/efi
├─sdb2 ext4 07dea967-233f-438e-b18a-8b2374870aeb 322.2M 26% /boot
└─sdb3 LVM2_member 0IENVK-clHE-SzBE-zFMe-p4T3-v9SZ-1XFTNe
├─fedora_localhost--live-root
│ ext4 2dab37fd-57ed-443a-be29-ceaa4483418f 41.8G 10% /
└─fedora_localhost--live-swap
swap 7862bc8d-af85-480b-a1fe-caa2d283bfe6 [SWAP]
I’v also removed the BIOS battery for at least three hours, but same.
If you need some additional information, just tell me