X1E-78-100 (2026)

Clean-install of Ubuntu 26.04

2026 the simple start

Preconditions

I had a running installation of an older Ubuntu, se X1E-78-100
Windows was still installed in parallel
I did a backup of my data

Steps

Download the aarchc64 image of Ubuntu 26.04
Create an installation USB stick (see X1E-78-100#Prepare_a_USB_memory_stick)
Run the test/install environment
- Select manual install
- select the partitions
  - /boot/efi is on my system nvme0p1
  - / is on my system nvme0p6 (it is marked as format/overwrite)
  - /home is on my system nvme0p7
- Install and reboot

Postconditions

The grub bootloader does not start
- In one case, the screen stated white text on black ground:
  - Unexpected return from initial read: Volume Corrupt, buffersize 1000
  - Failed to load image ]]]]: Volume Corrupt
  - start_image() returned Volume Corrupt
- In another case (during installation, there were already logs complaining about missing write access to boot/efi/...), it took quite long (maybe a minute) that a minimal grub console came up:
  - GNU GRUB version 2.14
  - Minimal bash-like line editing is supported for the first word, TAB lists possible command completion...
  - grub> _
  - you can type some commands here like reboot

Solution

I did the exact same procedure as above 3 times with different results
- After the 3rd try (where i did not immediately reboot after installation but started a terminal first and typed reboot there), I had a booting grub, a booting linux and also windows is booting again.

Below I describe some of the scenarios in the hope that these may be of help to the reader.

HP Omnibook X14

Boot selector

There is a build-in boot selector:

A long-press (30 sec) on the power button reboots your system
During the first 10 seconds immediately after the reboot, constantly hit the F9 key
You then can choose between the linux/grub bootloader, a microsoft bootloader or starting from the USB-A memory stick again.

grub

Windows does possibly not boot

In case windows still starts booting but does not succeed and ends up in a black screen:

Most likely I had my external monitor either not connected or not turned on.

Instead I did the following:

remove all devices from USB ports
boot into linux
- run the grub install and configure scripts there

 sudo fdisk --list # search your disk
 sudo grup-install /dev/nvme0n1 # adapt your disk name here
 sudo update-grub
 sudo reboot # to test the boot process

This process did detect the parallel windows installation. On my system, windows was booting again afterwards, most likely I had my monitor then connected and turned on.

qcom-firmware-extractor

When trying to run the qcom-firmware-extractor, it will complain about incompatibilities.

The problem is that the device name does not exactly fit to the expectations:

 > cat /proc/device-tree/model 
 HP Omnibook X 14-fe0

Update the device name in qcom-firmware-extractor and run the script:

 sudo vi /usr/sbin/qcom-firmware-extract # replace the model name by what you have found
 sudo qcom-firmware-extract 
 sudo reboot