Universal Blue•3mo ago

Trying to install Bazzite on a Windows Surface Laptop 4, freezes on initial boot install

Have been trying to install Bazzite on my windows Surface Laptop 4 (the surface ISO & the base laptop ISO), it freezes on boot each time I try the install, secure boot off. Also unable to install Fedora 40 Silverblue, Have been able to install POP OS & Elementary OS without an issue though. Any help would be great TY

12 Replies

Swizzler•3mo ago

Having the same issue on surface pro 6. I've been following the surface firmware bug but according to the bug report that was fixed in May, so I'm not sure if this is related, screenshot of the freeze that occurs after getting past grub

Swizzler•3mo ago

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2113005 ^ bug i'm referencing Okay, was able to install bazzite by using Fedora silverblue 36 and rebasing to 38 then bazzite, but it bricked after the grub config got reloaded. I think i'm going to wait until whatever that grub issue is gets fixed in bazzite's installer.

wolfyreload•3mo ago

Are you using the desktop ISO or the gamemode ISO. Gamemode is a bit more finicky with what hardware it works on.

Swizzler•3mo ago

desktop

Swizzler•3mo ago

downloading the iso this combo spits out

wolfyreload•3mo ago

When you get the blank screen see if you can get to the terminal with CTRL+ALT+F2 or F3, it might also help to press escape during the boot to see if there are any useful error messages. If that fails, maybe try the fedora silverblue and then rebase to an older version of Bazzite and see if that makes a difference

Swizzler•3mo ago

well like I said I was able to rebase to the newest version of bazzite, and it worked fine until grub was rebuilt, that bricked it, so there's clearly something wrong with how bazzite handles it's grub config on surface devices ujust configure-grub to remove a duplicate grub entry for bazzite is what bricked it

wolfyreload•3mo ago

That's interesting. Did you run the "remove duplicates" option? That's the first I've heard of it breaking a boot. Might be something unique to the surface laptops

Swizzler•3mo ago

yes from what I understand is the last version of certain surface firmwares require very specific features to be enabled for grub to work, fedora 36 has that set correct, i'm guessing whatever those settings are, bazzite has them set incorrectly, which leads to an unbootable state when a grub config is built

wolfyreload•3mo ago

I had a quick look at the source code for that script and this is what it runs, no clue what grub2-switch-to-blscfg does but that might be your issue. Unfortunately I don't have a surface device to debug. If you can reproduce your issue consistently and or find a fix, it might be worth logging a github issue with your findings

sudo grub2-switch-to-blscfg
if [ -d /sys/firmware/efi ]; then
   sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /etc/grub2-efi.cfg
else
   sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /etc/grub2.cfg
fi

sudo grub2-switch-to-blscfg
if [ -d /sys/firmware/efi ]; then
   sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /etc/grub2-efi.cfg
else
   sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /etc/grub2.cfg
fi

Swizzler•3mo ago

Currently trying to get back to bazzite, had a bumpy road because I guess fedora silverblue freaks out if it finds a previous fedora entry in the efi partition so had to go in there and nuke that, will report back any findings o7

HikariKnight•3mo ago

removes the duplicate entries by switching to "bootloader config" mode might be worth trying to just regenerate grub directly with

if [ -d /sys/firmware/efi ]; then
   sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /etc/grub2-efi.cfg
else
   sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /etc/grub2.cfg
fi

if [ -d /sys/firmware/efi ]; then
   sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /etc/grub2-efi.cfg
else
   sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /etc/grub2.cfg
fi

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Trying to install Bazzite on a Windows Surface Laptop 4, freezes on initial boot install