Ubuntu MATE 20.10 not installing as CSM/BIOS

Support & Help Requests
#1

HI everybody,
I'm migrating my workstations to 20.10, no problems at all, for real.
But one is being a pain here.

I'm using an Samsung Odyssey and can't boot as CSM/BIOS mode.
I put the memstick, choosing CSM (not UEFI!) and the system boots without support to UEFI binaries. Until here, everything Ok.

I click then on Install Ubuntu MATE20.10, next next, and then, when the system will be partitioned, it thinks everything is UEFI!

So, the problem is: Even on CSM/BIOS boot, the installer is telling me that my disk is designed for UEFI and I can't install, GRUB2 give me errors.

On Ubuntu 20.04 LTS was no problem like this, I installed the system as CSM/BIOS normally. But with 20.10 I'm seeing this issue.

I tried to format the disk, making the partition table as MSDOS and then trying again, the problem persist: Installer force me to create UEFI partition and is impossible to install as CSM.

I need the CSM because Ubuntu since 14.10 (yes!) can't recognize the Samsung Keyboard LEDs module as UEFI, only on CSM. If I install as UEFI, I can't control the LEDs from the keyboard.

Anyone has this kind of issue? Impossible to install as CSM on an specific computer.

#2

@urbancompasspony, it is an issue with 20.10 release. The solution is to create EFI partition as it says in the pop-up message. It will install properly if we do.

Please partition as below.

  • first partition 1M, select 'Reserved BIOS boot area' (or set flag 'bios_grub' if using Gparted), do not format
  • second partition 512M (200M will also do), select 'EFI System Partition' (or select flag 'esp' if using Gparted), do not format
  • third partition for you system, reminder of the space, separate swap partition is not required now.
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#3

Is this documented anywhere as a bug / known issue / etc.?

#4

@maximuscore, there is a bug report for this. Probably others. Last comment was,

Given that there is a warning presented for this situation we've decided to save this for fixing in the HH release of Ubuntu.

#5

My solution was to create a 100 Megabyte partition using Gparted and to flag it as boot and esp. Could have been smaller I suppose. I selected this partition during the 20.10 install and made it (changed it) to EFI System Partition. I then selected a partition to install root (/) in and also selected a data partition too. I installed grub to /dev/sda and got no crash after multiple reinstall crashes a few days ago.

On this laptop, sda1 (the Dell recovery partition, 70 Megabytes, fat 16) is labeled mount point /boot/efi and its flags are boot, esp. Both machines boot multiple versions of MATE including the final version of 20.10.

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