eatandwonder

Awesome! Thank you. I was hoping someone would recognize the problem. Yes, I have nothing invested in the current install (it hasn't even booted), so I was going to take the opportunity to switch to 7.5 anyway.

Good question. I'm aware there are distros with better laptop compatibility and more features, and that CentOS is a bit of an unconventional choice. Here is my reasoning, but I have very limited experienced with the nuts and bolts of Linux and I appreciate any feedback I can get:

I work professionally in IT and one reason I'm installing it is to better learn my way around Linux. RHEL is the most prominent distro in business so CentOS seems the place to start. There's no better way to learn than to keep burning my hand. :)

I did make sure I used a Thinkpad to maximize the chance of a successful, functional outcome with CentOS or any other distro or 'nix. AFAICT, Thinkpads are by far the most popular machines among the developers of the various 'nixes.

One advantage to CentOS, for me, is its stability. I don't want rapid upgrade cycles. I have no need for the latest and greatest; I'm not gaming; I don't even use Bluetooth. Vim and a web browser should work fine regardless of the distro.

That's very kind, thank you. I'll try your suggestions and will keep your generous offer in mind.

> This may be related to having an older machine that doesn't support EFI boot.

The machine is a Thinkpad from the last couple of years. It definitely supports UEFI. I'd think it would have to be a very old machine to not support it at this point, or am I misunderstanding something?

Thanks! I'll check it out.

> try with Secure Boot turned off

I tried. I don't have the details, but no luck. Thanks.

For some reason I can't edit my post. I wanted to write that I know Hacker News is not a technical support forum, but I'm a little stuck so I was hoping some kind CentOS veteran could help or point me to where I can find answers to questions like this one. Thanks!

Technical problem for which I haven't found a hint of an answer online:

I'm installing CentOS 7.0 x64 on a Thinkpad, my first Linux install. The install seems to go fine but on boot, right after the BIOS splash screen, in text mode, I see the following, then it stops (I'm going to use italics to be nice to people with small screens):

Failed to open \EFI\BOOT\grubx64.efi - Not Found

Failed to load image \EFI\BOOT\grubx64.efi: Not Found

start_image() returned Not Found

Secure boot is enabled, in case that's important. I've no idea why backslashes are used but I'm going to overlook that for now.

I booted to rescue mode and looked at the file system. /mnt/sysimage/boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/ indeed lacks grubx64.efi; I did find /mnt/sysimage/boot/efi/EFI/centos/grub64.efi [0] (I'm assuming the paths in the error message are all relative to /mnt/sysimage/boot/efi, because that's the only place I see relevant files).

Do I just copy the grubx64.efi file to ../EFI/BOOT/? Change the path in some config file to point at ../EFI/centos/? Or am I on the completely wrong path?

[0] Sh-ucks. My notes say the filename is ../centos/grub64.efi; the error message says grubx64.efi (i.e., with an x between grub and 64). Hopefully it's a typo in my notes. I don't have the laptop with me to check.