I purchased a Z500 about 9 years ago from the Linux Emporium. It came with the then most recent Ubuntu and the LTS. It was for me to decide what to use. I chose the LTS and never booted the alternative as I wanted something stable with long term support.

I installed 18.04 over the old LTS about 4 years ago. Something got corrupt and stopped me doing updates and was beyond my abilities to fix. I have not used the laptop for several years and decided to format sda2 (the root partition for the old version that I never used) and run the installer from USB stick as a dual boot Ubuntu box with my 18.04 LTS for safety. I am keeping my home partition on sda6 and swap on sda5.

First time round I got an error about cannot mount efi system on Vfat. sda1 is 99mb, so I set it up as efi system and formatted as Vfat. I keep going round in a loop and cannot get past this point. I do note that the installer appears to be trying to mount sda9 as efi but that is a partition that I have not created. I am a bit rusty with my linux skills as I have had a few years away so it would be great to get some expert input to get this installation completed so that I can resume my relationship with an old friend :-)

I have opened Gparted on the live installation and note that my /home partition has been resized and sda9 tagged on the sda6 so that I now have a 295GB ext4 partition that I think that the installer is trying to use as the EFI System partition. Should I format this as Vfat so that it can do what I think it wants to do?

from a terminal post the output of

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo parted -l
Model: ATA ST1000LM024 HN-M (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 99.6MB 98.6MB primary ext4 boot, esp
2 99.6MB 48.1GB 48.0GB primary ext4
3 48.1GB 96.1GB 48.0GB primary ext4
4 96.1GB 1000GB 904GB extended
5 96.1GB 108GB 12.0GB logical linux-swap(v1)
6 108GB 676GB 568GB logical ext4
9 676GB 992GB 316GB logical ext4
7 992GB 992GB 199MB logical ext4
8 992GB 1000GB 7798MB logical ext4


Model: USB Flash Memory (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 16.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 32.8kB 4922MB 4922MB ISO9660 hidden, msftdata
2 4922MB 4927MB 5155kB Appended2 boot, esp
3 4927MB 4928MB 307kB Gap1 hidden, msftdata
4 4928MB 16.0GB 11.1GB ext4

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo efibootmgr -V
version 17

that was suppose to be a lower case v for efibootmgr
and the contents of etc/fstab of the installed system.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo efibootmgr -v
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0005,0004,0000,0006,2001
Boot0000* USB HDD : USB Flash Memory BBS(HD,��,0x500).......................................................................
Boot0001* EFI USB Device (USB Flash Memory) PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(0,0)/HD(2,GPT,a0891d7e-b930-4513-94db-f629dbd637b2,0x92b094,0x2754)RC
Boot0004* SATA ODD : MATSHITADVD-RAM UJ8B2 BBS(CDROM,��,0x500)................-...........A......#...................................
Boot0005* SATA HDD : ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB BBS(HD,��,0x500)................-...........A..........................................
Boot0006* Network Boot: Realtek PXE B01 D00 BBS(128,��,0x0)........................&..............................................
Boot2001* EFI USB Device RC

Not sure how to access the /etc/fstab via a live distro? Mount /sda3 somehow?

I think the original ubuntus were installed in legacy/csm mode, not uefi mode. To boot the usb in legacy mode make sure legacy/csm is still enabled in the bios and select a boot option that doesn't have efi in it.

Did you select "something else" at the parition stage and select sda1 to change to use as "efi system parition"? How did you format the efi partition?

When the efi issue first arose I formatted sda1 as Vfat and selected as efi system partition thinking that that would solve the problem. When it didn't I reformatted as ext4 as /boot partition to see what happened. Basically fishing in the dark :-)

What you say makes sense to me as I did not have this issue last time I did a fresh installation so put it down to something having changed in Ubuntu. I simply did not have the knowledge to work out what. I can now have a poke around the settings that you have suggested. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Hopefully I can make some progress from here.

The information you posted in post 4 above shows you have a Legacy install of whichever Ubuntu you have on the 1TB drive. It also shows as an msdos drive rather than gpt. Generally on an msdos drive, the OS will be installed in Legacy mode although it is possible to install EFI on an msdos drive. Generally not the recommended way.

If you want to keep 18.04 (support for it has ended) you will need to know which partitions it is currently using and then install the new OS on some of the other partitions or delete them. Since you have an Extended partition with logical partitions within it, you need to know that if you delete a partition, all partitions with a higher number will change, reduce by one. That could create problems in booting if your 18.04 is on an Extended partition.

An EFI partition must be formatted with a fat filesystem and generall that is FAT32 (vfat).

I selected a non-EFI USB option to boot the installation (HDD flash drive). The installer booted. When I get to the partitioning stage in the installation I get this:

Do you want to resume partitioning? The attempt to mount a file system with type vfat in SCSI2(0,0,0), partition 1 #1 (sda) at /boot/efi failed. You may resume partitioning from the partitioning menu.

I have the option to "Go Back" or "Continue".

If I go back I get stuck in a loop and never get past this point (not sure what I should do differently). I do not have the courage to continue because I do not know what the consequences will be.

continue, you don't need an efi partition in legacy mode.

I pressed continue 2 1/2 hours ago and I am still on the "Removing conflicting operating system files..."

Each entry in the shell output is anywhere from 10 minutes to 25 minutes. Very slow!!

Anyhow, as long as it is doing something I will leave it running. Extraordinary that it is taking so long just to set-up the environment to start the installation.

that is taking to long, something has gone wrong. Exit out, reboot the iso and go to "try ubuntu", open a terminal
exit out of the terminal and start the installer.

Thanks. So far so good. The installation has started with "copying files..." Didn't get this far last time.