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I want to dual boot Debian and Windows 8, installed on separate disks. This is what I've done so far, following this tutorial.

My drive config & partitioning is as follows:

/dev/sda1 - Windows System Reserved
/dev/sda2 - Windows 8 partition
/dev/sdb1 - NTFS partition (where I keep Windows data)
/dev/sdb2 - Linux swap
/dev/sdb3 - Debian
/dev/sdc1 - Live CD (explained later)

Both swap and Debian are primary partitions.

During installation I got this error: GRUB installation failed (which was fine according to the tutorial)

Now the tutorial suggests installing the GrubEFI, using a Live Ubuntu USB (dev/sdc) that boots into EFI.

The problem is I'm supposed to find a EFI system partition, to mount it on /boot/efi

But it seems there isn't one.

Can you please help me out to solve this?

More details on disks and partitions below:

Disk /dev/sda: 250069680 sectors, 119.2 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 994A5C74-12AD-400E-9123-A000AC1F78CB
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 250069646
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 4717 sectors (2.3 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048          718847   350.0 MiB   0700  Microsoft basic data
   2          718848       250066943   118.9 GiB   0700  Microsoft basic data

Disk /dev/sdb: 1953525168 sectors, 931.5 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): AC0FBF3D-5C6C-494A-9F25-C5E6261B66DA
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 3437 sectors (1.7 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048      1707761663   814.3 GiB   0700  Microsoft basic data
   2      1707761664      1739012095   14.9 GiB    8200  Linux swap
   3      1739012096      1953523711   102.3 GiB   8300  Linux filesystem

Warning! Secondary partition table overlaps the last partition by
33 blocks!
You will need to delete this partition or resize it in another utility.
Disk /dev/sdc: 62324736 sectors, 29.7 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): A17CC70D-C650-4E4E-9DC6-865D719BE5B7
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 62324702
Partitions will be aligned on 1-sector boundaries
Total free space is 29 sectors (14.5 KiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              63        62324735   29.7 GiB    0700  Microsoft basic data
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  • 1
    Which command did you use to list your partitions? fdisk or gdisk?
    – eyoung100
    Jun 24, 2015 at 1:43
  • 1
    I used gdisk -l /dev/sd* Jun 25, 2015 at 19:49

1 Answer 1

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You might be interested in Rod's EFI bootloaders introduction and my ALT Linux Rescue might come handy as it contains both Refind boot manager and all the tools needed to mess with partitions and filesystems (e.g., to create another ESP if debian installer didn't do that for you).

Note that ESP -- a FAT32 partition with a special GPT UUID -- is both required and lacking in the above fdisk output; here's an excerpt from localhost:

Disk /dev/sda: 234.7 GiB, 252000000000 bytes, 492187500 sectors
[...]
Disklabel type: gpt

Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1       2048    616447    614400   300M EFI System
[...]

This one, then efibootmgr will come handy if you don't use e.g. grub-install (which calls the former when OS is booted in EFI mode), and don't forget to modprobe efivars as /sys/firmware/efi won't be available for bootloaders otherwise.

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  • I understand that I have to use these tools to change a partition into ESP, in order to act as an EFI system partition? If so, which partition should I choose? Jun 25, 2015 at 19:52
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    Apparently I have to wipe the Windows system partition, then reinstall it and convert it to GPT in the process. Jun 28, 2015 at 21:31
  • Erm, yes, the partitioning scheme has to be GPT for firmware to boot off it (as far as I understood). Jun 29, 2015 at 7:36

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