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I'm trying to install Kubuntu Linux on my Lenovo Legion 7i (15IMH05) laptop. I configured my computer's system menu settings to the correct configuration (disabling Secure Boot and ensuring the system boot mode was set to UEFI) and was able to boot off both a flash drive and an external optical disc drive.

However, it seems like my computer's BIOS is blocking access to the computer's internal SSD, which means I'm unable to install Linux as it doesn't see the internal drive. (It's not that it doesn't know how to interact with the drive, but that it outright can't see it at all because the BIOS is blocking access to it. I tried booting the same image on other computers and they could all access the internal storage drive, and also tried booting other images on the affected computer and neither of those saw the drive.)

How can I configure my machine to allow operating systems that have been booted externally (off a flash drive or an optical disc) to see the system's main internal storage drive?

The output of sudo lspci, as requested in a comment:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9b54 (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor PCIe Controller (x16) (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 9bc4 (rev 05)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor Thermal Subsystem (rev 02)
00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/v6 / E3-1500 v5 / 6th/7th Gen Core Processor Gaussian Mixture Model
00:12.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Device 06f9
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Device 06ed
00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Device 06ef
00:14.3 Network controller: Intel Corporation Device 06f0
00:15.0 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device 06e8
00:15.1 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device 06e9
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Device 06e0
00:17.0 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation Device 06d7
00:1b.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 06c0 (rev f0)
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 06b5 (rev f0)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device 068d
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Device 06c8
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Device 06a3
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device 06a4
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 1ed1 (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation Device 10f8 (rev a1)
01:00.2 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 1ad8 (rev a1)
01:00.3 Serial bus controller [0c80]: NVIDIA Corporation Device 1ad9 (rev a1)
06:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 2C 2018] (rev 06)
07:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 2C 2018] (rev 06)
07:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 2C 2018] (rev 06)
07:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 2C 2018] (rev 06)
08:00.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 NHI [Titan Ridge 2C 2018] (rev 06)
3f:00.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 USB Controller [Titan Ridge 2C 2018] (rev 06)
40:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)
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  • Have you tried booting it in legacy mode if that's an option? Also, what type of storage is in use (I suspect this is a driver issue for a chipset not well supported under Linux rather then a BIOS issue). Can you boot off a USB disk and provide the output of "sudo lspci" executed from a shell?
    – davidgo
    Jan 23, 2021 at 6:22
  • @davidgo I've run that command and edited its output into the question.
    – gparyani
    Jan 23, 2021 at 9:50
  • This is a bit beyond me (to solve remotely), but I postulate the key line is "00:17.0 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation Device 06d7" - Are you using RST/Fake RAID?
    – davidgo
    Jan 23, 2021 at 9:59
  • @davidgo Yes, I have Rapid Storage Technology enabled. However, the documentation states that if this were an issue, the installer would prompt me about it, but I didn't receive any such alert. It just outright didn't detect the drive.
    – gparyani
    Jan 23, 2021 at 10:00
  • I've not used RST - because I believe mdadm (Linux Software RAID) is superio for my usage cases. If its the only OS you are using you might want to see what happens if you disable RST and if it sees the disk use mdadm RAID?
    – davidgo
    Jan 23, 2021 at 10:04

1 Answer 1

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As davidgo commented, the problem was with the fact that the storage controller option in the BIOS was set to RAID/Rapid Storage Technology. The Linux kernel is not compatible with that, and the Kubuntu installer didn't warn me about this (which it is supposed to per the documentation).

Changing that setting to AHCI allowed me to install Linux just fine.

I did run into another issue with that, which was that Windows (which I had retained as a dual-boot OS) wasn't booting anymore, with a blue screen INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE every time I started it. The only way for me to work around it was to completely reinstall Windows after changing the storage controller setting to AHCI. (I later found out this wasn't necessary - by choosing to boot Windows in Safe Mode in the Advanced Startup menu, then changing the storage controller setting in the BIOS, it will start up fine, and then again in normal mode afterwards.)

(A quick note for my specific laptop: I initially tried to reinstall Windows using the Lenovo recovery image, but it wasn't doing anything: the progress bar kept getting stuck at 90%, and a later check revealed that it was changing nothing. I had to reinstall Windows straight from the Microsoft image and install drivers manually.)

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