Boot from USB on HP Stream 7

[George Turner]

I recently bought a HP Stream 7 tablet and this is my first UEFI computer. I have a fully configured android-x86 4.4 r1 boot USB drive that works well on several of my non UEFI computers. I would like to boot from it on the Stream 7, but of course it doesn't work. I have gone into the BIOS on the Stream 7 and disabled Secure Boot. I have done some research, but really haven't found anything that looked worthy of trying. Any advise?

[George Turner]

By not booting I mean that on a normal startup the USB drive is ignored and Windows boots. I did change the BIOS boot order and it can boot off of USB. I made a recovery USB drive and it can boot off of that.

[Jack Padilla]

Try rEFIt/rEFInd and boot from the device. If it is still not recognized, then it probably uses a proprietary bootloader format (Like the T100 for instance) and I would suggest wait until a version with a bootloader that is compatible for the Stream 7 is made.

On Monday, December 29, 2014 5:59:18 PM UTC-5, George Turner wrote:

[George Turner]

Thanks. I will give that a try.

[George Turner]

Unfortunately, refind didn't much care for my android-x86 flash drive:

 (testbed)/usr/share/refind-0.8.4> sudo ./install.sh --root /media/gturner/Android-x86
Installing rEFInd on Linux....
df: ‘/media/gturner/Android-x86/boot’: No such file or directory
The ESP doesn't seem to be mounted! Trying to find it....
/media/gturner/Android-x86/ doesn't seem to be on a VFAT filesystem. The ESP must be
mounted at /media/gturner/Android-x86/boot or /media/gturner/Android-x86/boot/efi and it must be VFAT! Aborting!
(testbed)/usr/share/refind-0.8.4>

On Monday, December 29, 2014 7:14:58 PM UTC-5, Jack Padilla wrote:

[Jack Padilla]

Looks like it expects the filesystem to be VFAT. What format is the USB drive in?

[George Turner]

Yes, one of the problems is that it wants VFAT. My drive is ext3. The other problem is that there is no /boot when you install android-x86.

[Fajar A. Nugraha]

Quick question: do you know how efi boots? Including the fact that there has to be a fat partition on the boot device (in this case, usb)?

Android (and other os) can be on many types of fs, but the efi system partition must be fat. You can have two or more partitions on the usb drive if necessary.

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[George Turner]

This is my first uefi computer. Don't know much about it at all. Yes, USB. Perfectly good install of android-x86 4.4r1 that works on non uefi computers. It is just not uefi ready I guess. Ideally would like to make it boot with and without uefi without having to reinstall and reconfigure android-x86. I saw a Windows tool that looked like it might do what I want, but I didn't really trust it enough to install it and give it a try.

[Fajar A. Nugraha]

Its pretty much just the boot loader. You can have the same android/linux partition for both bios and efi. You can even have the same /boot (if you use grub, just create the directory if it's not there).

The difference is that in bios, bootloader code would be installed on MBR, while in efi it would be on the ESP that must be mounted on /boot/grub/efi during grub installation.

[George Turner]

Grub is already installed on the MBR. So now I create a VFAT partition on the USB, create a /boot directory there? Mount the VFAT partition and then run refind? I'm still not sure exactly how to do this.

[Fajar A. Nugraha]

If you have grub installed, you should already have /boot/grub on the android partition

Anyway, your error message shows where ESP should be mounted. Follow that. Not sure how to make refind reads the original grub config file though. Read the documentation and create similar entries?

[George Turner]

No, there is no /boot/grub. There is /android-4.4-r1 and /grub. Yes, how to get it to read the grub config is another concern. Maybe I will do a fresh install to VFAT tomorrow and experiment with that.

[rbg]

search these forums...plenty of others have installed android-x86 to uEFI machines...........

example:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/android-x86/uefi%7Csort:date/android-x86/D85Jq02cLrE/ldMq12o72MMJ

On Monday, December 29, 2014 5:59:18 PM UTC-5, George Turner wrote:

[George Turner]

OK, thanks.

--

[George Turner]

I followed the two partition approach posted by Fajar in another thread and I can boot the 5.02 2014-12-27 test release on my HP Stream 7 off of a stick. One thing I did differently than what Fajar said is that I installed the legacy grub to the MBR. So now the stick can also boot on an older desktop machine that I have as well as the Stream 7.

When running on the Stream 7 the internal WiFi is not working. The device is a Realtek RTL8723BS and I assume that there is no driver for it. Auto rotate does not work either. The big problem though is that the Stream 7 locks up after a few minutes of use. I can try to provide more info if any developer wants me too, but I don't have much time before it locks up.

[android...@gmail.com]

I also have an HP stream 7 and have tested ~20 versions of android x86 both from this site and various other corners of the internet. The best image I have found for our tablets is Kevin JF's Notion Ink Cain image posted here https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/android-x86/0aj8RZbRCic. it seems very stable and wifi works. it does have an issue with the touchscreen being "oversensitive", i.e. one key press being detected as multiple key presses in quick succession, but other wise it's the closest thing to a usable Android x86 image for our stream 7's that I've found.