Gigabyte Brix issues with mender i.c.w. Ubuntu Server 19.04

[PJK]

@kacf

It might be a setting in the UEFI firmware, that the Ubuntu directory is prioritized before the BOOT folder. Does it help to delete the former from the 1st partition?

Ok, removing the Ubuntu subdirectory has resolved the boot to Grub issue. The image now boots through to the correct partition if I leave the 4G dongle unplugged. Maybe a suggestion for the mender-convert tool to remove the old boot subdirectory for Ubuntu during conversion?

@kacf

This is a known problem, and the key issue is exactly that GRUB can use UUIDs of filesystems, but not of partitions. And Mender would need the latter, as filesystem UUIDs are neither stable nor unique in Mender context. This is something that could probably quite easily be implemented in GRUB, but no one has taken on the task yet. There is a task for it in our bug tracker.

There is no out-of-the-box workaround, but it should not be too hard to tweak the grub scripts to look for some key file on the available hard drives, and then assign the right one.

There might be a possibility to disable the built-in “driver CD” of the 4G dongle, searching the internet has shown possibilities for this for similar Huawei 4G dongles. We are also looking at different 4G dongles that don’t have this “extra” functionality.

If the task that is linked in your response is live/resolved soon, I’m willing to try it out to see if it fixed our problem.

I’m not at home in the capabilities of Grub, so going that route would require some serious investigation on my part. Not sure if I’m going to be able to invest the required time for that.

Thanks at least for the advice to solve the first issue!