No bootable devices found

[Osmario]

Hi
I have spent the last 2.5 hours trying to figure out the issue. The installation completes successfully, but when i restart my system it tells me there are no bootable devices found. What can i do here?

Thanks in advance

[p.H]

Did you install for UEFI or legacy boot ?
Which installer did you use ? Classic installer from the boot menu or Calamares from a live session ?
Can you post the partition table(s) ?

[Osmario]

Did you install for UEFI or legacy boot ?
Which installer did you use ? Classic installer from the boot menu or Calamares from a live session ?
Can you post the partition table(s) ?

I installed for UEFI and used Classic installer from the boot menu.
I don't know how to access the partition table.

Thanks for your support

[Segfault]

You run some disk tool like fdisk or parted and then you paste the output here, use code tags to make it readable. Like this:

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parted /dev/nvme0n1
GNU Parted 3.5
Using /dev/nvme0n1
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print                                                            
Model: CT250P2SSD8 (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 250GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End    Size   File system  Name                  Flags
 1      1049kB  211MB  210MB  fat16        EFI system partition  boot, esp
 2      211MB   250GB  250GB  f2fs         Linux filesystem

As you can see I have EFI partition with required flags. Now lets see yours.

[p.H]

I installed for UEFI and used Classic installer from the boot menu.
I don't know how to access the partition table.

You can launch a live system or the Debian installer in rescue mode (advanced options > rescue).
A graphical live system allows to run commands and paste the output to the forum easily.
The rescue mode allows to and execute a shell in the installed system or reinstall the boot loader (GRUB) easily.

Interesting commands are:

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fdisk -l      # shows the partition table
efibootmgr -v # shows EFI boot variables

If you reinstall GRUB in the rescue mode, it may help to choose to install it into the "removable media path" (it's just a name for a specific path in the EFI partition).

[firewire10000]

I too am having issues installing Debian 11.5 on an UEFI PC with Secure Boot off. The PC is a Dell OptiPlex 7040 and has a Crucial P5 Plus M.2 NVMe SSD installed. Windows 10/11 installs perfectly fine along with the server and desktop version of Ubuntu and Fedora. Debian on the other hand fails to boot every time. This is frustrating as I'm trying to install Proxmox on this system but I need to get a headless Debian OS installed first.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

an UEFI PC with Secure Boot off.

Debian 11 supports Secure Boot.

Debian on the other hand fails to boot every time

What does "fails to boot" mean, exactly? What happens when the machine starts? What do you actually see?

If you see the message described in the OP then please provide the output requested by p.H.

[firewire10000]

Debian 11 supports Secure Boot.

I'm aware it supports Secure Boot but I have I switched off at the moment because my Ventoy HDD containing ISOs for various OS's doesn't work with it on.

What does "fails to boot" mean, exactly? What happens when the machine starts? What do you actually see?

The Dell PC reports back saying there is no bootable devices on the selected UEFI path.

I seem to have found a solution for clean installs but don't understand why this isn't implemented in the default installations too. If I boot to the installer media and go to Advanced options > Expert install and then in the Debian installer main menu select the Install the GRUB boot loader this seems to allow my PC to boot to GRUB menu which it did not before.

This is the output of the currently working UEFI installation

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root@L-SRV-7040:/# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Disk model: CT500P5PSSD8
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 8FE46E7B-58BE-43EF-BC88-21532B3F04D1

Device             Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1      2048   1050623   1048576   512M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2   1050624 974772223 973721600 464.3G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p3 974772224 976771071   1998848   976M Linux swap

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root@L-SRV-7040:/# efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0000
Boot0000* debian        HD(1,GPT,8306046c-a375-49ed-b1be-3a648597a01d,0x800,0x100000)/File(\EFI\debian\shimx64.efi)

This is the directory structure of the working Debian installation

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├── boot
│   ├── config-5.15.53-1-pve
│   ├── efi
│   │   └── EFI
│   │       ├── BOOT
│   │       │   ├── BOOTX64.EFI
│   │       │   ├── fbx64.efi
│   │       │   └── grubx64.efi
│   │       └── debian
│   │           ├── BOOTX64.CSV
│   │           ├── fbx64.efi
│   │           ├── grub.cfg
│   │           ├── grubx64.efi
│   │           ├── mmx64.efi
│   │           └── shimx64.efi

The directory structure below is what would be a non-working installation. To cut a long story short, I have Proxmox installed and I have span up a Debian VM this time just using the Install option. Ironically UEFI actually works on this VM, so at least I'm able to boot into it and grab information about the system easily.

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├── boot
│   ├── config-5.10.0-18-amd64
│   ├── efi
│   │   └── EFI
│   │       └── debian
│   │           ├── BOOTX64.CSV
│   │           ├── fbx64.efi
│   │           ├── grub.cfg
│   │           ├── grubx64.efi
│   │           ├── mmx64.efi
│   │           └── shimx64.efi

From comparing the two directory tress, in the non-expert install (the second tree listing) there is no /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT directory and files. If I run the two commands on the VM too, I get the same results

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root@debian:/# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 32 GiB, 34359738368 bytes, 67108864 sectors
Disk model: QEMU HARDDISK
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: CC88EA60-B322-4EC2-9C0A-DFFD52C4813A

Device        Start      End  Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sda1      2048  1050623  1048576  512M EFI System
/dev/sda2   1050624 65107967 64057344 30.5G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3  65107968 67106815  1998848  976M Linux swap

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root@debian:/# efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0008
Timeout: 3 seconds
BootOrder: 0008,0002,0001,0000,0003
Boot0000* UiApp FvVol(7cb8bdc9-f8eb-4f34-aaea-3ee4af6516a1)/FvFile(462caa21-7614-4503-836e-8ab6f4662331)
Boot0001* UEFI QEMU QEMU CD-ROM         PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x5,0x0)/SCSI(0,1)N.....YM....R,Y.
Boot0002* UEFI QEMU QEMU HARDDISK       PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x5,0x0)/SCSI(0,0)N.....YM....R,Y.
Boot0003* EFI Internal Shell    FvVol(7cb8bdc9-f8eb-4f34-aaea-3ee4af6516a1)/FvFile(7c04a583-9e3e-4f1c-ad65-e05268d0b4d1)
Boot0008* debian        HD(1,GPT,086a4cd6-0541-4f00-84db-0d3b6a17e384,0x800,0x100000)/File(\EFI\debian\shimx64.efi)

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Your Dell laptop has a broken UEFI firmware implementation so it will only boot the so-called "removable" .efi loader (ESP/EFi/Boot/bootx64.efi).

The Expert installer mode will allow you to choose the removable loader as the default location for GRUB. Copying shimx64.efi to bootx64.efi & grubx64.efi to the same directory will also work.

Alternatively, from rescue mode use

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dpkg-reconfigure grub-efi-amd64

If the files are copied manually update debconf afterwards with

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debconf-set-selections <<<"grub-efi-amd64 grub2/force_efi_extra_removable boolean true"

EDIT: this is all covered in the wiki:

https://wiki.debian.org/GrubEFIReinstal ... bootloader

I wish I had known that before I started typing...

[diskonekted]

Hi all,

I have the same PC (a small form factor Dell Optiplex 7040) as the OP and just want to say that this post helped me out a lot.
I'd just installed Debian 12.7 on the machine (obtained from a garage sale and it had the original v1.4.5 BIOS firmware) - switched it into UEFI mode before the install, everything seemed to go well - then 'no boot devices found'.
Went to the page that @Head_on_a_Stick put from the wiki and followed the prompts. I didn't need to get into the command prompt/terminal, instead from the USB loader - I went to:

Advanced options
Rescue Mode,
When it got to the drive partition selection - I went into sda2 and then used the 'Force EFI installation into GRUB'.

Then all seemed fine.