SOLVED! The frustration is real… Acer One 10 S1002 64 bit Atom CPU but 32 EFI bootloader plus ElementaryOS Linux 6.x equals EFI shell after installation.

I own Acer S1002 “laptop”. Its one of those 2 in 1 tableto-laptop devices running on Atom CPU. It will only install Windows in 32 bit version because it has a dumb**s 32 bit EFI bootloader.

When installing ElementaryOS 5.1 everything (almost) is peachy. It installs it boots – few minor issues.

When installing ElementaryOS 6 it installs but after a reboot I get an EFI shell.

Upon closer look the EFI partition on 5 contains:

BOOTIA32.EFI

ubuntu (folder)

grub.efi

grubia32.efi

While ElementaryOS 6 only shows 64 bit files.

I tried copying files listed above to the EFI partition of the ElementaryOS 6 installation – that did not fix anything.

Machine’s bios does not allow to disable UEFI / enable legacy boot.

Chrooting into installation and installing refind does not help…

Tell me Gandalf, what I must do now?

Please do not leave me with Windows 10 32 bits as my only option 🙂

Kind regards.

Andrzej

Updated 18 June 2022

Solution below. Warning, beyond here there be dragons.

Ok I am sorted… I will show you how but do so at your own risk. You need to know at least basics and I am not taking any responsibility if you fubar…

First what I did was I’ve installed ElementaryOS 6 BUT I chose a custom partition setup

1st 512 mb partition ext4 /boot
2nd 512 mb partition efi /boot/efi
3rd 4 gb swap
4th rest of space ext4 /

I chose not to encrypt the drive. After install I rebooted.

I rebooted into ElementaryOS 6 LiveUSB.

Next I’ve connected to wifi and then followed a prompt and went into the “Demo” mode. You can connect to wifi after going into Demo mode too.

Then I’ve opened a terminal and ran:

sudo su

mount /dev/mmcblk2p4 /mnt

(mmcblk2p4 is my / this could be mmcblk1p4 – check fdisk -l)

mount -t proc none /mnt/proc/

mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev/

mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys/

mount -o bind /run /mnt/run/

mount /dev/mmcblk2p1 /mnt/boot/

(mmcblk2p1 is my /boot this could be mmcblk1p1 – check fdisk -l)

mount /dev/mmcblk2p2 /mnt/boot/efi/

(mmcblk2p2 is my /boot/efi this could be mmcblk1p2 – check fdisk -l)

chroot /mnt

apt update && apt upgrade && apt dist-upgrade && apt full-upgrade && apt autoremove --purge

(ignore messages about not being able to write the log)

apt install efibootmgr grub-common grub-efi-ia32 grub-efi-ia32-bin grub-pc-bin grub2-common mokutil secureboot-db && apt autoremove --purge

(You will be asked to type in a phrase to continue the installation)

Type it in exactly as you see it and confirm with enter.

grub-install /dev/mmcblk2

(this could be mmcblk1 – check it with fdisk -l)

update-grub

exit

reboot

After reboot I was finally able to boot 🙂

Kind regards.

Andrzej

AndrzejL

"Never meet Your heroes. Most of the time you'll only end up disappointed." White Polak Male Husband Employee Hetero Carnivorous Fugly Geek @$$hole with ADD Catholic “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

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