Black screen after "UEFI Installer menu"

[Kostiantyn Ponomarenko]

Hi folks!

I am trying to install Debian on my new HP z240 box.
I tried Debian 8 and Debian 9 RC2 installers, but neither succeeded.
When I choose to boot from a pen drive I see "Debian UEFI Installer
menu". Then I choose "Install" and get a black screen. Switching to a
virtual console with Ctrl+Alt+F1 doesn't work.

To eliminate possible problems with hardware I tried to install the
latest stable Ubuntu 16.10. Installation went without any problems.

Where should I look and what can be wrong here?

Thank you,
Kostia

[didier gaumet]

a possible cause of your problem could be a need for a firmware,
probably for the graphic card, that is not included (proprietary) in the
installer. so you could either:
- install with the text-mode installer a text-only environment. reboot,
then install needed firmwares, then install a graphic environment if
that is what you want.
- install with an installer including firmwares:
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/8.7.1+nonfree/
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/stretch_di_rc2/

[Kostiantyn Ponomarenko]

My PC has only one integrated video card from Intel Core-i7 CPU.
If I am not mistaken the driver for this GPU is integrated into linux kernel.
Anyways I tried using this netinstall image with integrated
proprietary firmware and that didn't succeed.
Whatever boot option I choose from "Debian UEFI Installer menu", I see
black screen only.
I suspect that the grub config is missing some options.

Any other thoughts?
Thank you,
Kostia

[didier gaumet]

Le 13/03/2017 à 13:21, Kostiantyn Ponomarenko a écrit :
[...]

> Any other thoughts?
> Thank you,
> Kostia

look at:
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch05s03.html.en#installer-args

maybe you could for example try a combination of some parameters like
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=text|newt|gtk and vga=normal fb=false (thus disabling
KMS...)

[Kent West]

On Mar 13, 2017 08:27, "didier gaumet" <didier...@gmail.com> wrote:

Le 13/03/2017 à 13:21, Kostiantyn Ponomarenko a écrit :
[...]

> Any other thoughts?
> Thank you,

Maybe turn off UEFI (assuming your mobo has legacy BIOS support), just to see if that gives you any clues?

-- 

Kent

[Kostiantyn Ponomarenko]

I tried to boot with variations of these options
"DEBIAN_FRONTEND=text|newt|gtk and vga=normal fb=false", but no luck.
I was also comparing "boot/grub/grub.cfg" from Debian and Ubuntu. I
found that Debian has there all that Ubuntu has and even more
settings.
Don't know what to do.

Any other thoughts?

[didier gaumet]

Le 13/03/2017 à 18:25, Kent West a écrit :

> Maybe turn off UEFI (assuming your mobo has legacy BIOS support), just
> to see if that gives you any clues?

Yes, tinkering with the UEFI of the machine is a good idea, particularly
switch off secure boot, tpm and the like. Also HP is known for its
non-standard implementations of UEFI. And in this case, for the z240
series, Ubuntu seems to be a commercially supported OS by HP, unlike
Debian, that could be a hint...

[Kostiantyn Ponomarenko]

I managed to install Debian on z240.

There are next available option to choose from in my UEFI:
1. "Legacy boot enabled and secure boot disabled"
2. "Legacy boot disabled and secure boot disabled"
3. "Legacy boot disabled and secure boot enabled"

With v1.35 z240 firmware each option leads to these behavior:
1. Debian installation works, but firmware cannot find bootable file(?).
That means every boot you need to choose "boot from file" and point to
"grubx64.efi".

2. Black screen after "Debian UEFI Installation menu".

With v1.50 z240 firmware each option leads to these behavior:
1. Debian installation works, and it actually installs Debian in UEFI
mode (no problems with boot).
With installed Debian I switched to "Legacy boot disabled and secure
boot disabled" and in worked just fine.

2. Black screen after "Debian UEFI Installation menu".


Thought, I still wonder why Ubuntu works with "Legacy boot disabled
and secure boot disabled" out of the box.

[didier gaumet]

Le 14/03/2017 à 12:31, Kostiantyn Ponomarenko a écrit :
> I managed to install Debian on z240.

good news :-)

[...]

> Thought, I still wonder why Ubuntu works with "Legacy boot disabled
> and secure boot disabled" out of the box.

may be that has something to do with HP having a commercial agreement
with Canonical and a biased implementation of UEFI: on my HP laptop,
whatever I do, however I use efibootmgr, if I install Debian and want
Grub to be the bootloader, I have to rename /boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft...