Recently, I got the Ubuntu 17.10 upgrade from this link through command line. I remember getting a ton of y/n questions in terminal so after a while I just stopped reading the options so carefully and answered y to all of them. However, I do remember seeing something to do with efi and I selected yes anyway. The update works fine!
The troubles begin in trying to change BIOS settings. I can get into the BIOS configuration menu by hitting F2 continuously at startup. I can still change all of the options. It even asks me if I want to save my changes, to which I select yes, but at the next reboot, no changes are saved. I can't boot from USB drives either. Furthermore, when trying to go into system setup from the Ubuntu grub menu, it gives me Error: unable to set EFI variable 'OsIndications'
I use an Acer Aspire ES1-511 running a Dual boot of Windows 8 and Ubuntu 17.10. Both operating systems still load perfectly, but as stated above, USB devices can't boot after the upgrade took place.
I suspect that either the EFI partition is mounted as read-only, there are insufficient permissions, or the drive is in the wrong location.
This is the only forum I could find this problem on, but there is currently no solution, so still I cannot change BIOS settings. What went wrong during the update that would make BIOS settings unchangeable? Are there any commands I can try before just waiting for the next Ubuntu release? I'm running a Dual boot, so maybe I can do something from Windows 8? Any help is appreciated!
Best Answer
It seems like a specific issue with your laptop. I would try disconnecting disk and going to bios without any disks first. If you still can't change bios settings we can pretty much assume there is not much you can do. You could try upgrading bios to a newer version if you haven't done already though.
My assumption would be that the disk's boot section is confusing the bios and causing it to disfunction somehow. Unplugging the disk will reveal if that's the case.
Also sharing more details about your bios boot section would save you time here. Like sharing whether your usb drives show up in your bios boot menu or not.
I would advise you to try and boot by selection menu, please forgive me for bringing up such a simple detail which everybody already knows about but i had to tell you because you didn't mention it in your post. It's around F5,F6,F7 or ESC keys mostly.