good afternoon all

i tried installing Debian 11 (cbpp 11) on my surface pro 5.
installer at grub install part gave me:

the grub-efi-amd64 package failed to install into /target/. without the grub boot loader the installed system will not boot.

i do not know witch portion is the /target/.
it didn't ask me where to install grub or where i wonted grub.

any ideas ?

Debian may have booted in efi and windows is installed in legacy mode.
msinfo32 in windows will display information on windows bios mode.

If you selected manual partitioning, Efi partition not mounted or mounted and/or efi partition doesn't exist.

hi colorpurple21859
msinfo32 not working system information tells me :
bios mode uefi
secure boot off
boot device \device\harddiskvolume2

parted_server: OUT: 2 555745280-660602879 104857600 primary fat32 /dev/nvme0n1p2 EFI system partition

also i was able to pull all the files off the partial install:
hardware-summary
lsb-releaselsb-release
partman
questions.dat
status
syslog
templates.dat
Xorg.0.log

During the partitioning stage did you use "guided partitioning" or manual partitioning?

no i didn't but i tried to install a systeback image and it failed to , where you usually could chose where to install grub-boot-loader, it was grayed out.
so i tried to install open-sues , going through the install it gave me a error efi is only 100mb and open-sues needs 128mb. i aborted the install right there.

/dev/nvme0n1p2 EFI system partition needs to go from 100mb to 128mb +

pic shows my first portions

so:

/dev/nvme0n1p1 529mb but is only using 10mb according to gparted.
/dev/nvme0n1p2 100mb evidently isn't big enough.

so do you think i could shrink /dev/nvme0n1p1 429mb
and grow /dev/nvme0n1p2 200mb

I don't think debian sets that size limitation for the efi partition and will install to a 100mb partition.

What is a systeback image. If /dev/nvme0n1p6 is the root partition of the debian installation something went wrong. There is less than 1gb of system files.

sorry that is a capture before i partitioned it .
i was mainly using it for the first couple of portions as an example .
systemback image is a back up image, everything went well with its install, until it got to grub.
i will get a capture of how it is now.
after doing a lot of reading 100mb is small :

grub-efi-amd64 package failed to install into /target/

what else could the problem be.
i tried cbpp11 failed to install grub
i tried systemback .img and it boots into windows
i tried to install open-sues and it told me efi needs to be at least 128mb

i'm just not sure what to do.

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is the efi partition mounted /target/boot/efi, when grub attempts to install?
You may have to manually mount the efi partition in another terminal before the installation gets to installing grub.

i do not know, i know i didn't mount it. googling uefi portion size and resizing there a lot of people have had problems. i guess i'm going to back up:
/dev/nvme0n1p1
/dev/nvme0n1p2

and try gparted to resize.

but that is a tomorrow thing

open a second terminal and run to see if it is mounted when grub is attempting to install. If the backup image doesn't have a /boot/efi directory you will need to create before the efi partition can be mounted to it. If mounting of the efi partition is the problem, resizing the efi partition won't fix the debian installation.

ok i have some artwork same error happened again this time i figured out how to take a screen shot lol .
the first screenshot shows the error.
the third is screenshot df -h when the first error came up, it was done in the middle of the install .

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Expert partitioning, start with existing partitions

For the root partition, highlight, select edit, format, mount point /, next

highlight the efi partition, select edit, "do not format" mount point /boot/efi, next

hum i just went through installing it, and it gave me the same error before install, i installed it anyway and at the end another error,
artwork below:
also gparted live tells me:

/dev/nvme0n1p2 = used 30.49mb 30% unused 69.51mb 70% so the efi portion isn't full ?

/dev/nvme0n1p1: LABEL="Recovery" BLOCK_SIZE="512" UUID="40129A39129A33BE" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="3918e8d2-ad44-477a-ba99-42712248d0c8"

/dev/nvme0n1p2: UUID="D49B-A170" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI system partition" PARTUUID="871fbb49-4640-4453-830a-2b5c98c6175a"

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Aug 26 21:47 2021-09-23-19-42-32-00 -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Aug 26 21:47 614C-D8A8 -> ../../sda2

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Aug 26 21:47 024CCDAF4CCD9E33 -> ../../nvme0n1p5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Aug 26 21:47 0e502046-2deb-4224-a0cc-89e773dcc0d6 -> ../../nvme0n1p9
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Aug 26 21:47 27595ac7-79c3-42c2-89a2-c39af88c7c36 -> ../../nvme0n1p7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Aug 26 21:47 40129A39129A33BE -> ../../nvme0n1p1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Aug 26 21:47 614C-D8A8 -> ../../sda2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Aug 26 21:47 b335bd90-f7ca-4d11-b131-8696149e001a -> ../../nvme0n1p6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Aug 26 21:52 ca61ab23-0e09-4fbe-b36f-d22f7b015ea9 -> ../../nvme0n1p10
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Aug 26 21:47 D49B-A170 -> ../../nvme0n1p2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Aug 26 21:47 E2A0A31EA0A2F7E5 -> ../../nvme0n1p4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Aug 26 21:47 fea80a6f-4fcb-4d48-bd7d-49cc9ecc3a51 -> ../../nvme0n1p8

so i have been poking around a little.
open-sues is installed on /dev/nvme0n1p7
cb++11 is installed on /dev/nvme0n1p6
swap is on /dev/nvme0n1p8

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can i just install the boot loader or should i just reinstall the hole thing?