I have an older laptop with windows installed on an internal drive.
I am attempting to install lubuntu 24.04 on an external ssd only.
I searched and found a broken link to “advanced” installation steps for older computers. Alas I am unable to source these steps or find an official guide which might cover my situation.
The external ssd is showing as GPT type in the installer.
Mainly just looking for steps/guidelines on manual partitions.
What order, size, type, and flags need to be set for successful install.
Installation on an external SSD is done analogously to installation on an USB stick described in this post.
In case you want to manually partition your ssd, please have a look at this post.
I don’t have the option to erase. As soon as I select my external drive the option to erase disappears. Oh, I see the second link now. I will try that. Thank you!
I tried formatting the drive and this allowed me to see the option to erase disk and go with the auto-partitioning, however that failed almost immediately with the message “the installer failed to create partition on disk.”
I followed the steps for manual partitions in the post you linked (creating the gpt partition table with a 300mb efi fat32 partition mounted at /boot/efi with boot flag, and the remainder mounted to root with root flag).
However when doing that, I boot to a black screen with a flashing cursor which does not respond to key commands.
For clarification: Manual partitioning has succeeded and Lubuntu 24.04 got installed? Then there might be a driver issue.
Yes, manual partitioning is successful and installation of 24.04 completes.
It is upon reboot that I see the black screen/flashing cursor.
Let’s try to reboot in recovery mode by pressing shift or esc key while booting to open GRUB menu → Advanced Options for Ubuntu → linux kernel (recovery mode) → resume
Then search for additional drivers by
Application Menu → Preferences → Additional Drivers
Are there drivers available?
I tried tapping/holding shift on boot, but nothing happens - it still goes to the black screen with flashing cursor.
Tapping/holding esc while booting brings up bios boot device menu.
I don’t have any solution/suggestions here, but I’ll comment what I’d likely explore
failure to boot; did the install summary screen look correct, as that’s usually the give-away for a failure to boot (esp. if you don’t see grub appearing)…
which is from the manual with the bit I mean here ensuring the “Install boot loader” pointed to the correct device! If that wasn’t correct, I’d not expect a successful boot. If that screen doesn’t look perfect, I don’t actually install; as using reformatted ISOs (ie. write of ISO to install media using non-documented procedures) will be detected here (beyond the obvious they won’t boot).
There can be multiple reasons for this, from kernel modules not suiting your hardware (ie. your hardware requires closed-source kernel modules (like NVidia drivers) we don’t include on our ISO), which can be installed manually post-install, as in this case your issue is only the GUI.
What I do here will vary on a number of factors; what install media was used (24.04 or the release is mentioned, but 24.04. & 24.04.1 are two different install medias that I’d consider differently, esp. if you allowed updates to be applied during install, as that will mean you maybe first booting into a different kernel than was used on install media; & different if using daily noble media), but I’d likely try other kernels in the Advanced menu here… just to check your hardware isn’t reacting to a specific kernel (patchset). What I’m doing here is considering what is different due to your chosen install & the kernel on install media; as your hardware is identical (which is why install media really matters)
Next I’d likely (on booted system) switch to text terminal ctrl+alt+f4 and use ubuntu-drivers autoinstall etc). I’d also explore system logs here and look for clues probably first; but you’ll have confirmation the system is booting correct given you can login, you have issues with the GUI which can be kernel module (driver) related etc.
Lubuntu only needs a single / partition to operate, though if using a uEFI device you’ll also need an ESP or EFI System Partition that is of the correct format and on a drive that is selectable to your machine firmware. The standard on uEFI allows machines is minimal (eg. only a single ESP can exist on a device); but most OS/tools allow users to write multiple (for a running OS they’re just partitions; a flag indicating ESP or not). Booting where multiple partitions are flagged as ESP is undefined by standard & thus machine specific; it may boot, or may fail to boot as both meet the undefined rule. I’d thus check to make sure you’re within standards, or most importantly how your machine firmware will act when outside standards. ie. checking you’ve not got multiple partitions flagged as ESP.
Thank you for the suggestions, this is very thoughtful and detailed.
I think the issue lies with the boot loader. I am installing on an external drive, and select that same drive for the boot loader.
When making manual partitions the selection for the boot loader would revert, I don’t know if that is expected behavior or not. It was easy to notice and re-select, however.
