Linux Mint install on FW12 failed, left machine unable to boot an OS

Hello, all.

I was attempting to install Linux Mint 22.2 on my new FW12 yesterday and it failed after partitioning but before installing, enabling Secure Boot on the way out. Now I’m sort of at a loss as to what I should do next, because I can’t boot the Live USB anymore and I don’t have an OS installed. Any thoughts?

The error I’m getting on boot is as follows:

Failed to open \EFI\BOOT\mmx64.efi - Not Found
Failed to load image ▒▒: Not Found
Failed to start MokManager: Not Found
Something has gone seriously wrong: import_mok_state() failed: Not Found.

  • OS: Linux Mint 22.2 ‘Zara’ (or N/A, really?)
  • Product: Framework 12 laptop

You can manage secure boot from the BIOS.

These instructions only talk about enabling or disabling it, but you can see in the screenshots there’s also options for resetting it.

That being said, if you’re using the official Mint live image for USB, I’m surprised it’s not trusted by secure boot. I haven’t tried the Mint one, but both the Fedora and Ubuntu ones work fine with secure boot enabled.

Have you tried going to the boot manager and selecting the USB drive explicitly?

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Just to expand on the links and what @UltraLaser posted, to break things into steps,

It sounds like the steps to try would be

1) allow booting from USB, one way or another.
1a) reboot and interrupt boot by “rapidly tapping (continuously) the F12 key” to check if boot manager will let you select the live USB drive.
1b) reboot and interrupt boot by rapidly tapping the F2 key the same way. Then disabling secureboot. Seeing @UltraLaser link https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Fedora+42+Installation+on+the+Framework+Laptop+12/410?lang=en#s2841
2a) attempt to reinstall mint, if successful, it should fix your bootloader setup during the process.
2b) flash one of the officially supported OS’es, https://frame.work/linux, to a live USB and try installing that.

Did you have windows on your FWL12?
If you did, the Linux installer should automatically detect it & add an option to boot to windows when it installs its bootloader. If you had windows, and it does not automatically detect it, I would not go through with installation. Instead, be sure you have an officially supported Linux OS & make a thread asking for help. Using an officially supported Linux OS will also allow you to contact FW support for help if you wish to. You could contact the now, but they’ll likely ask you to try with an officially supported Linux OS before they’ll be able to help more.

This was an entirely new, DIY FW12 (no prior OS). I’ve reset Secure Boot and disabled it (having run the boot sequence separately with both), but I’m still getting the same errors from before. When I select the USB as the boot device in the boot manager it gives the same errors, too. I’ve also taken out the SSD, deleted the partitions and retried with the same errors. I booted from the Live USB on another computer and it still works completely fine there, too. Pretty weird, right?

You’re getting the exact same error, correct?

So never had Windows and then never had Windows Fast Boot turned on, that’s good.

It seems your install attempt died at a pretty bad time.
I don’t have direct experience with MOK, the Machine Owner’s Key prompt, but as I understand it, it’s part of Framework’s UEFI/BIOS firmware which is triggered by attempting some changes to boot. I presume it’s to prevent a virus from embedding a rootkit.
community.frame.work/t/71573/3

See if you can try this, forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=2427395#p2427395

MOK is an implementation of secure boot that operates outside the firmware. It is an extension of secure boot that allows a machine owner to enroll additional keys without using the firmware key database.

It is implemented in shim and MokManager. I suspect that MokManager is expected to be found in mmx64.efi.

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I wrote a Fedora USB stick, when it boots it gives the blue screen with the “Continue boot/Enroll MOK” options. So it does seem like an issue caused by my specific burned Live USB. I made my Linux Mint USB with dd, so I’m going to try the way Linux Mint recommends and see if that makes a difference.

edit: Does not make a difference. I can’t edit anything on the LM USB filesystem under Linux for some reason, so I’m going to hunt down a Windows computer to do it.

Thanks for the correction. The details of secure boot are never something I’ve known much of. I currently just keep secure boot off.


Can you choose to enroll MOK?
With Mint, had you not got to the point of choosing a MOK password, and MOK is now asking for one that you never made?

I have fixed the issue by installing Fedora to use it as a staging platform to install Linux Mint. So goofy.

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