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I'm having a bit of an issue with my Debian installation on my new Dell XPS 13 2021. It's booting directly into GNU GRUB with no errors, and I can't get it to boot into Debian even with this guide.

I've tried using the official netinst CD dd'd onto a USB stick + a USB stick formatted as FAT32 with the iwlwifi package on it, the netinst CD with proprietary firmware dd'd onto a USB stick, and also the full DVD dd'd onto a USB stick, all with the same issue.

I've been following this guide to set it up, though, before step 4 I created a partition named boot that is used as an EFI system partition (I'm not able to mark the other partitions as bootable). I've tried not creating a boot logical volume on the encrypted partition.

Specifically, here are the partitions I tried configuring (diagram I made):

Partition 1: boot, EFI system partition (unencrypted)

Partition 2 (LUKS)
├── root (64GB)
├── swap (12GB)
├── boot (1G), tried leaving this out, still doesn't work
└── home (whatever space is left over)

I would take a screenshot, but I can't really do that when the machine is a physical machine that doesn't have a working OS on it yet.

A. Owl
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  • Did you respect the fact that an EFI system partition must have as content a FAT32 filesystem, not for example EXT4? As your guide doesn't create any other partition, I can only conclude this Q/A is geared for older BIOS systems, not for UEFI systems. – A.B May 16 '21 at 14:41
  • @A.B. I'm confused: am I using the wrong guide? If so, what should I change to get it to work? I think my system is UEFI. – A. Owl May 16 '21 at 15:26
  • The easiest is to use the menu right before "manual": "Guided - use entire disk and set up encrypted LVM". You'll get an unencrypted /boot which could have maybe been encrypted (depends on GRUB's version) but anyway, start simple if you don't understand all of it. Everything else beside the ESP and /boot will be encrypted. – A.B May 16 '21 at 15:28
  • @A.B Does that still encrypt all of my data though, without storing the key on disk (which would defeat the purpose of encryption)? Will that allow me to control my swap space? – A. Owl May 16 '21 at 15:36
  • I wrote: "Everything else beside the ESP and /boot will be encrypted." – A.B May 16 '21 at 15:39
  • Also, what's in /boot and the ESP that may be needed to be encrypted? – A. Owl May 16 '21 at 15:39
  • Sorry that's where I end in my comments. Maybe somebody else will provide an answer which addresses all your points, but this looks way too broad for me. Check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_maid_attack this is related to your last question. – A.B May 16 '21 at 15:40

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