ASUS X205T OpenSUSE installation

English Hardware
#1

Hello,
was anybody able to install OpenSUSE 13.2 on ASUS X205T machine ? I am aware of a thread on UBUNTU forum regarding the installation but it actually does not help much with OpenSUSE.

Problems start right at the USB boot. It appears that the secure boot on this machine does not allow loading from the USB stick and boot automatically skips to the Windows 10 loader. Disabling secure boot at BIOS level does not help.

Vlada.

#2

Hi, I have a different ASUS, but at times booting OpenSUSE images from USB has problems with UEFI booting.
Try enabling [BIOS] >Boot>Launch CSM “Enable” and maybe review the order of your boot devices.

Hope this helps.

#3

Hello,
thank you for your reply. Unfortunately in my BIOS under BOOT there is no ‘Launch CSM’, however I do have under ‘Security’ an option to enable/disable secure boot but this did not appear to make any difference to booting from USB.

#4

Yes, Secure Boot has nothing specific to do with USB IMHO.
I cannot check right now, but maybe you have to disable UEFI booting (not only Secure boot) for “Launch CSM” to appear.
But that way you cannot boot Win10 I think…

More options:

  • Have you disabled fast boot (the first thing to do…) [BIOS] >Boot>Fast Boot>“Disabled”
  • Try [BIOS] >Security>I/O Security>USB Security>“Enabled” (or something like that) just to make sure that USB is not blind.
  • Burn your boot image to a physical DVD: usually they boot in UEFI mode with no problems.
  • Search this forum for similar problems… for instance https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/509786-New-Win10-dual-boot-install-issues/page2

Good Luck!

#5

Sorry Vlada, I didn’t realize that the X205T is an EEEBook, so no DVD and possibly a different BIOS compared to mainline ASUS laptops.
Maybe searching for “EeeBook” in the forum yields some hints though.

#6

Hi Bruno,

thank you for your suggestions, yes it is an EEEBook, but I could try external DVD but again through USB.

I did try to boot Linux Mint and to my surprise this worked without any problems. Looking at the USB stick file system there is a EFI/BOOT directory with bootia32.efi file which I presume allows booting into secure boot.

Additionally, following your suggestion, I looked further into the BIOS menus and there is in SECURITY an option which allows to save all Secure Boot Variables on selected file system’s root folder. I executed the save but i do not understand the location of the file, Acpi(a0341d0,0)\PCI(17|0)\DevicePath(Type 1, SunbType 5)HD(Part1,Sig ?)\ , it also states that the data is formatted as EFI_SIGNATURE_LIST. This option does not allow me to select or create a file of my own.

Going further down the SECURITY menu it states that if a chose to delete PK (platform key, presumably secure boot variable) this will reset System to Setup Mode, would/could this be normal BIOS setup? I did not go as far as this because I do not know where the Secure Boot Variables are stored or how to restore them.

Any ideas ?

#7

Fine, so your PC is not USB-blind. Maybe the USB bootable stick is not so “bootable”: try to follow “literally” one of the ways described at https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Live_USB_stick
since openSUSE images may be different from those by other distributions; do not follow directions taken from *buntu forums, for instance.

Going further down the SECURITY menu it states that if a chose to delete PK (platform key, presumably secure boot variable) this will reset System to Setup Mode, would/could this be normal BIOS setup? I did not go as far as this because I do not know where the Secure Boot Variables are stored or how to restore them.

I would leave the BIOS and UEFI setup alone unless I knew very well what to do; and I don’t know so well, sorry :’(

#8

The images ( whether on USB or on DVD ) are UEFI / Secure boot capable.
How did you create the USB? Have you tried to boot other machines from it? And if so, did that work, i.e. did the installer start? No worries, it’s not doing anything to your system until you tell it do do so.

#9

Hi,
I created the USB using SUSE Studio Imagewriter. USB does boot on my other machine without any problems, however the machine does not have Windows 10, I dual boot Windows 7, but I do not think there is a secure boot ( I will need to check this).

#10

Chances are that the older machine with W7 boots in the MBR mode (or “CMS” compatibility in recent ASUS BIOS language), with which USB images never had problems…

#11

Yes, I think that is so. Unfortunately that does not get me any further. There must be a solution as UBUNTU community appear to have solved it.

Any further suggestions/thoughts regarding the bootia32.efi, or what other direction should I take to solve this would be much appreciated.

#12

Hi, I found the following bug report that describes a similar problem.
https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=921221
Unfortunately it is still open: maybe you can help in chasing it down…

I swapped out my Win disk,so I can’t help down this path.
Hope this helps.

#13

Hi,

thanks for the pointer. Added my comment, but there does not appear to be any work done on this bug since March.

I found another thread where this topic is being discussed,
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/501032-openSUSE-Intel-Bay-Trail-ASUS-Transformer-Book-T100/page2