Hi !
Ready to install a new debian 12 on my acer chromebook spin 514 (ezkinil AMD picasso) with nvme drive and edk2 full rom, I’m stuck to the grub bootloader. Each time an option is selected in the gub, I reboot. Even doesn’t seems to boot any kernel 
. This bug was also present in the non Full rom edk2 stack. I used both dd and rufus to flash debian iso.
Is there any solution to bypass this bug ?
Hi there! I’m having the same issue on morphius (Lenovo Yoga C13 w/NVMe). GRUB loads, then reboots.
I downloaded the Debian nightly installer, and installed Trixie (Debian Testing). Trixie successfully installed but the bootloader partition didn’t get properly recognized, and when I manually entered the GRUB file, same problem- GRUB displays, then reboots in a loop.
I’ve got it uninstalled right now as I was trying other distros: Arch, Tumbleweed, and Fedora all booted and installed as expected. I’m planning on trying a fresh install of Testing again tomorrow to see if I can shed some light on what might be happening, but for whatever reason, Testing’s ISO booted while Stable’s ISO did not.
1 Like
Maybe the version of grub is too old or is missing some feature? Have you tried to boot debian with another distro’s grub?
Oooo, that’s a great idea.
I reinstalled Trixie- same problem. GRUB launches Trixie’s installer successfully but once installed, it just loops. This time I forced installation to the EFI partition, and Coreboot recognized it without issue.
Then I tried using Arch’s GRUB as a rescue- same thing. It gets as far as initrd and then simply restarts the machine. Meanwhile, Arch installs, and then boots from NVMe just fine.
On a lark, I tried Haiku, which happened to do the same thing- restart as soon as the bootloader began loading things. Don’t know enough about Haiku to guess as to what might be the culprit there.
I’m open to suggestions. Might try systemd-boot a bit later.
Hi!
Please try booting the machine with iommu=pt.
PicassoRidge is known for IO-MMU issues due to PSP - including corrupted framebuffer, sound and possibly this issue as well 
This is not an issue with iommu since I tried with and without it and it just doesn’t work anyway. However systemd-boot works (without the iommu).
No luck with editing GRUB commands to include iommu=pt.
I should mention GRUB is 2.06-13+deb13u1. I don’t know if it’s relevant but GRUB in the Trixie installer ISO I’ve been using is 2.12rc1.13.
Using the 2.12 GRUB from the Trixie nightly ISO, but modifying parameters to boot from the NVMe’s linuz and initrd appears successful, though! I’m currently playing around on a fresh MATE install on Debian Trixie. Audio doesn’t work yet but that was to be expected (haven’t run the neat script from @WeirdTreeThing yet).
So… the GRUB 2.06 used by Debian might have a problem?
1 Like
That’s really interesting, but not entirely unexpected.
We do state that support for LTS distributions is lacking, as we upstream patches often and expect people to use something that gets updates often (Arch, Fedora, OpenSuSE, Pop_OS! etc).
This is important, because even though those machines are x86 - they do significantly differ from “normal” x86. We’re essentially an x86 equivalent of Asahi 
1 Like
Debian 12 needs a custom kernel to run on Chromebook/Chromebox if you would have read the docs
Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distributions that are not based on 23.10 or higher may have issues.
WARNING
Debian versions older than Debian 12 (Bookworm) are not supported. Debian 12 (Bookworm) requires a custom kernel, the audio script will automatically install it for you.
I didn’t flag it as spam just because your info is not helpful, I flagged it as spam because I want you to stop necroposting on threads that have already been resolved or require no further action.
Can you elaborate on how you did this? I’m not terribly familiar with GRUB. I’m trying to install Mint LMDE, and unsurprisingly, it has the same issue.
Sure thing- the testing I did (using a booting GRUB from a live USB) involved using GRUB rescue to get a list of the partitions and file paths. Then I edited the GRUB prompt from the live USB to tell the live USB’s GRUB to boot into the kernel from the internal storage.
I talked about that briefly near the end of a video I uploaded to YouTube/PeerTube:
- PeerTube: Linux on a Chromebook, my favorite way - TinkerBetter
- YouTube: https://youtu.be/z6oyqrrXTLM?feature=shared&t=942
Note my video doesn’t cover the GRUB process command-by-command, though- that gets very in-the-weeds what with all of the differing drive configurations out there.
That didn’t solve the problem, though- it just let me boot into the installation. I solved the problem by pulling the GRUB packaged for Sid into my Trixie installation, replacing the GRUB from an older version to a newer version (using apt pinning). You’re on LMDE so those targets are not going to be exactly the same as mine- I don’t know off the top of my head if Mint modifies GRUB or if they’re using Debian’s repos for it.
If you’re able to boot into the installation using a different GRUB, you may have better luck replacing GRUB altogether with systemd-boot, but I have not performed this using Debian’s repos (and I’m on Trixie anyway so our installations aren’t 1:1).
Good luck!
@vkc Hello, i watched your video and would like to install debian on my chromebook, i used mr chromebox script but didn’t full rom, i installed legacy booting firmware. when i booted in the debian installer i got the same issue as you: boot loop, when i click install i reboot, i can access grub terminal tho, but you didn’t show how you fix this, could you please explain 
Im kind of a noob in grub stuff so please explain command by command. thanks in advance !
I’m afraid I can’t explain command-by-command as every device is different. I did explain in the video that I booted from a live USB into a working GRUB, and used the working GRUB to bootstrap the non-working GRUB. Again, can’t give you step-by-step as your device is certainly different from mine.
My (possibly blunt) advice is to do one of two things:
- Read up on GRUB and the command line switches, so you can learn how to do what I did.
- Consider another distro. Fedora has a reasonably nice installer and a newer GRUB.
Hi, thanks for your response I know it’s rude to ask this but if you find time and you wanna help me here’s my device to tell me the commands: Acer Chromebook spin 514 on EZKNIL board I think it’s spelled like that, if you don’t wanna help me for any reason just tell me so I don’t wait and in any case thanks for your help
It’s not that I don’t want to help, it’s that I can’t. The commands don’t necessarily come to me simply because I know the laptop you’re working with.
Your best bet is really to learn how to use GRUB’s command line interface if your heart is set on Debian. Or wait until Debian updates to a new GRUB. Or learn to use another bootloader and reconfigure Debian for your specific machine’s needs.
I wish I had videos covering all of those topics for every single device that’s ever existed but that’s just not feasible for little old me.
Ok ty for your help
I’m suprised that nobody has mentioned the Linux EFISTUB which allows you to boot it without any bootloader. MrChromebox firmware has built in ext4 support so you can create one straight from the bios menu.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFISTUB
For example if / is on nvme0n1p2:
root@archiso:~# efibootmgr --create \
--disk /dev/nvme0n1 --part 2 \
--label "Debian" \
--loader /vmlinuz \
--unicode 'root=/dev/nvme0n1p2 rw quiet splash initrd=\initrd.img'
2 Likes