I would like to install Zorin OS education as a multiboot next to debian 11. I used balenaEtcher to create the installation USB key. The hard disk is 250GB SSD ATA PNY with 4GB RAM.
During installation I get the following warning message:
Solutions are proposed in the link above but for Windows. I want to keep debian 11, which takes up half the hard disk, and replace another debian 11, which takes up the other half, with Zorin OS education.
Hi and welcome. Can you boot into Zorin with the USB drive, select Try Zorin, then launch GParted and take a screenshot to show us your current partitions.
OK, so I'm a bit puzzled as none of the partitions are marked as bootable, and the Debian Bullseye partition does not have any label and no flag, so puzzled how you can boot at all. Clearly there is no /boot/efi partition which is what Zorin will be looking for. Which part of the drive are you attempting to replace as I think if you delete either I can't see how you will boot the other OS. Did the machine originally have Windows on it? Does the BIOS have any reference to EFI, Fast Boot or Secure Boot?
I don't know if the machine had windows, I bought this computer second hand and it already had linux. But I installed a new ssd hard disk and only installed debian. It's a thinkpad L520. I think grub was installed on dev/sda. Both use zram-tools. I think it's a classic BIOS.
Disable secure boot and fast boot.
Don't change legacy BIOS to UEFI or vice versa, only look if there is an option for UEFI and what is set. But it seems that the L520 only uses BIOS.
Thanks for your reply.
It seems that there isn't Fast boot, I have only the option Quick boot or Diagnostics.
It's an old bios (2013).
I didn' find any reference to EFI or Secure Boot.
I'm not that experienced yet, so I can't help you at the moment.
I would now try to find out where the Grub bootloader is installed, which controls the start of the two Debian versions.
I would check what is entered on sda1 and sda2 in the following file (but don't change anything!):
Thanks a lot.
sda1 and sda2 have both /boot/grub/grub.cfg
When booting I go by default to the debian 11 that I want to keep (sda2).
When booting, I can choose to go to the other that is on sda1.
When I open /boot/grub/grub.cfg on sda2, I can see "....sda1" to boot to the other debian that I want to replace. So I think that actually it's /boot/grub/grub.cfg that is used on sda2 that is used to boot.
There is a lot of things in this file, which information I can post here?
Hmm ... from this Point on, theoretically you would have to delete the Partition that you don't want to keep. then start the Zorin Installer, choose the ''Something else'' Option and for the free Space choose the ext4 File Format and / for the Mounting Point.
And under the Partition Table, you would choose the Place where Your Bootloader is. But You don't have a Boot Partition. When You click on this:
Thanks for your help. I'm trying to use Ventoy now. When using Ventoy, if choose normal mode, the error message is the same. If choose grub2, let's see, I'm actually trying this.
When I click for the place for the bootloader, I can choose sda or sda1 or sda2.
I have also the same warning message with ventoy using when starting grub2.
Maybe I just have to select the 1Mo free space of sda and selecting for it "reserved area for bios boot loader? " (or EFI but it seems that I can't use it with my laptop, but I'm not sure ). Edit : it say Unable to satisfy all the constraints on the partition" with 1Mo and choosing reserved area for bios boot loader.
Well it works As the bootloader used was the sda2 one, and I had indicated to use sda1 to set it, when rebooting nothing had changed. I then went into debian on sda2 and did a sudo update-grub2 and that made it possible to have zorin proposed at boot. I'm very happy that it works and that I can finally test this famous Zorin OS education Many thanks to all of you for your help.
