Sony VAIO is booting directly into Windows without showing grub
- by Rohan Dhruva
I bought a new Sony Vaio S series laptop. It uses Insyde H2O BIOS EFI, and trying to install Linux on it is driving me crazy.
root@kubuntu:~# parted /dev/sda print
Model: ATA Hitachi HTS72756 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 640GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 274MB 273MB fat32 EFI system partition hidden
2 274MB 20.8GB 20.6GB ntfs Basic data partition hidden, diag
3 20.8GB 21.1GB 273MB fat32 EFI system partition boot
4 21.1GB 21.3GB 134MB Microsoft reserved partition msftres
5 21.3GB 342GB 320GB ntfs Basic data partition
6 342GB 358GB 16.1GB ext4 Basic data partition
7 358GB 374GB 16.1GB ntfs Basic data partition
8 374GB 640GB 266GB ntfs Basic data partition
What is surprising is that there are 2 EFI system partitions on the disk. The sda2 partition is a 20gb recovery partition which loads windows with a basic recovery interface. This is accessible by pressing the "ASSIST" button as opposed to the normal power button. I presume that the sda1 EFI System Partition (ESP) loads into this recovery.
The sda3 ESP has more fleshed out entries for Microsoft Windows, which actually goes into Windows 7 (as confirmed by bcdedit.exe on Windows). Ubuntu is installed on sda6, and while installation I chose sda3 as my boot partition. The installer correctly created a sda3/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi application.
The real problem: for the life of me, I can't set it to be the default! I tried creating a sda3/startup.nsh which called grubx64.efi, but it didn't help -- on rebooting, the system still boots into windows. I tried using efibootmgr, and that shows as it it worked:
root@kubuntu:~# efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0000
BootOrder: 0000,0001
Boot0000* EFI USB Device
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager
root@kubuntu:~# efibootmgr --create --gpt --disk /dev/sda --part 3 --write-signature --label "GRUB2" --loader "\\EFI\\ubuntu\\grubx64.efi"
BootCurrent: 0000
BootOrder: 0002,0000,0001
Boot0000* EFI USB Device
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0002* GRUB2
root@kubuntu:~# efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0000
BootOrder: 0002,0000,0001
Boot0000* EFI USB Device
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0002* GRUB2
However, on rebooting, as you guessed, the machine rebooted directly back into Windows.
The only things I can think of are:
The sda1 partition is somehow being used
Overwrite /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi and /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi with grubx64.efi [but this seems really radical].
Can anyone please help me out? Thanks -- any help is greatly appreciated, as this issue is driving me crazy!
