Installing 14.04 alongside Windows 8.1 EUFI

Asked by Wesley Michael

I purchased an Asus R751JB laptop with Windows 8 pre-installed. I've upgraded it to Windows 8.1 and now I want to install Ubuntu 14.04 along side it.

I've modified the BIOS to turn off fastboot and secure boot. I loaded the Installing ISO onto a USB drive and booted onto the live update via UEFI.

The hard drive was not completely used, so I was able to add partitions following all of the Windows 8/8.1 partitions. This is how the sda drive looks (I am in the installation of 14.04 -- I haven't actually installed it yet)

/dev/sda1 efi <-- this is where the EFI directory is located
/dev/sda2 ntfs <-- this is the Windows 8 re-install stuff
/dev/sda3
/dev/sda4 ntfs <-- this is where Windows 8/8.1 is installed
/dev/sda5 ntfs
/dev/sda6 ntfs <-- this is the Windows 8/8.1 recovery
/dev/sda7 ext4 /
/dev/sda8 ext4 /usr
/dev/sda9 ext4 /var
/dev/sda10 ext4 /usr/local
/dev/sda11 ext4 /home
/dev/sda12 swap

I know that lots of people don't like to have separate partitions for /, /usr etc. but that is how I would like to set up my machine.

My question is: what should I specify for the "Device for boot loader installation"?
   /dev/sda
  /dev/sda1

BTW, the /dev/sda1 filesystem has a BOOTSECT.BAK file and an EFI directory. The EFI directory has ASUS, Boot and Microsoft directories.

When I first tried to install it was from a LiveUpdate DVD that did not boot from UEFI. I was never able to boot into Ubuntu -- it goes directly into Windows 8.1. I tried running boot-repair, but all I would get was a message telling me that I needed to shut some things down and try again.

Edit: swap is just swap, not ext4

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Ubuntu Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Solved by:
actionparsnip
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Best actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#1
Revision history for this message
Wesley Michael (wam-zoominternet) said :
#2

Thanks for your answer. As I said in my edit -- the swap partition is just swap. The ext4 in the original version of the post was just a typo.

I've read through both of these posts before and they don't really answer my question.

What should I specify for the "Device for boot loader installation"?
   /dev/sda or
  /dev/sda1 (where the EFI is located)

Revision history for this message
Wesley Michael (wam-zoominternet) said :
#3

Ok, I was a bit premature in that last post. Rereading the second article I see this statement:

if you use the manual partitioning ("Something else"), the difference is that you will have to set the /boot/efi mount point to the EFI partition. And if there was not any EFI partition on your HDD, you first will have to create it (see the "Creating an EFI partition" paragraph below).

So, assuming I am reading that correctly, I should pick /dev/sda1?

Revision history for this message
Wesley Michael (wam-zoominternet) said :
#4

That did it. I picked /dev/sda1 and the install went fine. Grub appears and I can boot into Ubuntu or Windows 8!

Revision history for this message
Wesley Michael (wam-zoominternet) said :
#5

Thanks actionparsnip, that solved my question.