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Where would Grub be installed?

kh flag

This is a follow up and a question branched from this question. In the question, I was asking about how to install portable Ubuntu on an external SSD.

From what I understand from the bug tracker. It says theres an issue that Grub would be installed on first EFI partition no matter user selection. As confirmed later, this seems to be fixed on Ubuntu 23.04.

Therefore, there is no need to manually partition the disk. Instead, I can use "erase disk and install Ubuntu", which is a more straightforward way to install Ubuntu 23.04.

The question is, if I use the above mentioned method to install Ubuntu to an external disk, where would Grub be written? From the previous question, I understood the EFI needs to be installed onto external SSD for a truly portable Ubuntu installation (that is, Ubuntu can run directly on any computer from external SSD without additional configuration).

I would appreciate any help provided. Thank you.

guiverc avatar
cn flag
What OS/release are you asking about? Your question has confused me, given you only mention 23.04 where the bug was fixed. Are you asking about Ubuntu 22.04.3 ISO? as that's not a released product, which is why the bug report is *open*, so it'll hopefully get implemented prior to the currently unreleased 22.04.3 ISO. In almost all cases; if you read the summary screen you can clearly see where the ESP is written to PROVIDING you wrote the ISO to your media as is documented, and didn't re-format it using that some tools allow; use QA-tested & documented methods to write ISO to media.
mook765 avatar
cn flag
If you don't want to make use of manually configuring the installation you'll have to live with the defaults the installer uses and are poved to work in most situations but the outcome may not be what you want. So I'd recommend to use manual configuration (you can use Gparted in advance to create needed partitions) and in the installer choose the needed partitions and there mountpoints, for the EFI-partition this should be `/boot/efi`.
sudoer avatar
kh flag
@guiverc Now my live USB is running Ubuntu 23.04, which I hope to install to my external SSD.
sudoer avatar
kh flag
@mook765 So choose "manual partition"?
guiverc avatar
cn flag
Ubuntu 23.04 ISOs are available with 4 installers; 2 for 23.04 Desktop, 1 for 23.04 Server, and 2 different installers available for *flavors* of 23.04 - thus options exist; with installers being `ubuntu-desktop-installer`, `ubiquity`, `subiquity` or `calamares`. In the end they all provide pretty much the same options, but show it differently, thus please be specific if you're asking for help - we can't know which 23.04 ISO you downloaded/are using, thus what installer you're using - unless we're told.
sudoer avatar
kh flag
Im using Desktop installer. Its the one WITHOUT legacy installer.
ar flag
See [Installing Ubuntu in a external hard drive and NOT placing GRUB of my C: hard drive](https://askubuntu.com/questions/327229/installing-ubuntu-in-a-external-hard-drive-and-not-placing-grub-of-my-c-hard-dr) for ways to get around the bootloader bug. In modern computers with UEFI, part of the grub goes into the (U)EFI System Partition (ESP) and part in the `/boot/ folder.
waltinator avatar
it flag
I suggest you read `https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-on_self-test` , `https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS` , `https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record` , `https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table` , `https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFI` . One will have the Answer. Read the others to understand that one.
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