I’m trying to install openSUSE 12.3 on a MSI GX70 laptop. After removing Win8 I repartitioned the disks, disabled secure boot, and installed Win7 (which worked after some initial trouble with the special M$ partition). Now I want to get Suse on it.
Symptom:
booting from the installation DVD in UEFI (or UEFI with CSM) mode results in an immediate full freeze loading the initrd. I tried to “e” edit the boot options in the grub2 menu and added “noapic acpi=off nomodeset” with no success.
Switching to Legacy mode the default settings will also hang, but “F5” switching to safe settings with the additional string “noapic acpi=off nomodeset” will run fine, though I believe some switches are duplicate in this case.
If there anything else in the regular “safe settings” which I’m not aware of? Can someone point me to the list of valid kernel switches, please? Why is this “safe” option not available during UEFI boot, by the way?
If I installed in Legacy mode, couldn’t I change to UEFI mode from the running system, completing the (separate) Linux EFI partition and updating the bootloader settings? I didn’t find anything about that, so far. It would circumvent the DVD boot issue…
I believe I cannot easily switch the Win7 installation to legacy (Win installer sounds as if I need to repartition the entire disk for that, changing from GPT to MBR), so I’d like to get both OSes running with UEFI.
Yes, you can. Actually, in 12.3 you should be able to simply switch to grub2-efi using yast (I believe I had problems when testing switch to elilo), after mounting /boot/efi. But during first reboot you will need to manually select file using your system EFI menu (or jump into EFI shell and start it there), because efibootmgr won’t be able to add boot menu entry. You will need to run update-bootloader once more after booting in EFI mode to create EFI boot menu entry and add Windows to grub menu.
this may be different from the kernel command line parameter in ‘safe settings’ on an installation DVD (or liveDVD). I don’t have such a live (or installation) DVD handy at the moment.
Thanks for the info! Unfortunately this still doesn’t boot, even when I add acpi=off and noapic to the list. I recognized that the SUSE DVD sais “Welcome to grub!” when I boot in EFI mode…which irritates me because from other posts I learned that grub (1) is not able to boot in EFI mode?
The rescue system of the SUSE DVD also doesn’t boot. A SystemRescueCD (2.3.1) is not even recognized as bootable in UEFI+CSM mode Thus, installation on this machine seems only possible in Legacy mode at this time.
It is using grub2-efi, which is able to boot in EFI mode. The booting is handled by syslinux if you are not using EFI mode.
The DVD, either install mode or rescue mode, boot fine for me in EFI mode (and with secure-boot enabled). Likewise the live rescue CD boots just fine with UEFI booting.
I don’t doubt that you are having problems. But they seem to be a peculiarity of your particular system.
Thanks for the suggestions!
It didn’t really went straight forward, but I’ve been temporarily able to boot it in UEFI…though it didn’t run smooth and it’s not always repeatable, and I ended up using elilo for some reason.
The short answer is: conversion of a Legacy mode Linux installation to EFI is possible, but the result may be not quite as desired if the laptop apparently has problems with EFI such as my machine which won’t boot from DVD at all in UEFI mode.
Ok…here’s what I did (long story, just step by step with all failures):
From the previous Linux installation in “legacy” mode I ensured that the root partition has a boot flag set (check with parted) instead of the EFI partition. The EFI partition (in my case 500MB /dev/sda6) was still unformatted.
yast2 -> boot-loader -> change to grub2-efi
go to configure boot loader -> set kernel switches
-> this will create /boot/efi/EFI/opensuse/grubx64.efi
? other laptop with elilo setup has some more files such as
core.img, elilo.conf, elilo.efi, initrd* and vmlinuz*
copying /boot/initrd* and /boot/vmlinuz* to /boot/efi/EFI/opensuse/ to be on the safe side
parted /dev/sda
-> set boot flag on EFI partition (set 6 boot on)
(I left the root partition boot flag on…to be able to reboot Linux in Legacy mode)
reboot, change BIOS to “UEFI with CSM”
booted automatically Windoze … and now Win hangs with black screen
going to BIOS, change UEFI HDD BBS priorities: only knows windows
back to Legacy, booting Linux
trying update-bootloaded --refresh
and get error message: “Couldn’t open either sysfs or procfs directories for accessing EFI variables.
Try ‘modprobe efivars’”
modprobe efivars
no error but lsmod doesn’t show that efivars is loaded…
Clueless what to do now with grub-efi. Since I have another laptop with elilo I give this a try:
booting in legacy mode
installed elilo
grub -> boot-loader -> change to elilo -> “suggest new configuration”
Tick the “create EFI Entry” checkbox
results in error about not booted via EFI firmware, “need to load ELILO from EFI shell”
and then same error about sysfs and procfs, as above
checking the /boot/efi, now has another folder “SuSE” with elilo.conf, elilo.efi, initrd* and vmlinuz*
trying a reboot, change to UEFI+CSM
HDD boot option for Windows disappeared, now is empty
Boot process is loading Windows7
need to reboot and capture the BIOS boot menu with F11 key
That shows with a win and a linux bootmanager
Selecting Linux will start ELILO, but this seems to be misconfigured. “fileops.c line 525: no devname schemes worked, using builtin” and “near line 2:
and are not allowed in quoting strings” and some more stuff
trying to get a manual boot setup from the ELILO prompt failed…
Switching back to Legacy mode,
booting Suse, checking the elilo.conf…which has some strange lines which I don’t have in my
other machine. Editing it to something like
now Linux boots, bux extremely slow and partially it appears to do everything 3x before it proceeds,
but finally I see a login screen
On login the sound hangs (kind of slow-motion) and some other fun (USB mouse not working, a previous shell window will not show up)
2 cups of coffee later the KDE init sound has finished and I can open a new shell
yast2 -> boot loader -> endless waiting for “reading partitioning”
killing yast, removing some kernel params with an editor, reboot
now faster boot, but still apparently loading the initrd 3x
Sound ok, USB ok, window behavior ok
yast2 -> boot loader -> Overview has a buggy entry again -> cleaning up
deleting the initrd* and vmlinuz* in /boot/efi/EFI/opensuse/ (from the grub2-efi setup)
after reboot elilo fails to boot :
Looks like manual editing is the safer approach than using yast
Still didn’t figure out how to manually boot from elilo prompt…
reboot in legacy
fixing elilo.conf manually again
running update-bootloader --refresh
update-bootloaded destroyed my edits…fixing it again
reboot in UEFI+CSM
1st try with normal settings failed, with failsafe boots fine
editing the normal setting and adding another one behind failsafe -> none of the boot option works, everything jumping back to elilo prompt
another attempt to install grub2-efi…but it starts elilo…
letting it in the reboot loop, uncountable attempts…until it finally boots to the KDE login and runs stable (?!)
repeated experiments show that the laptop only boots if I unplug my USB mouse. When KDE is up
I can plug it and it will work…
update-bootloader --refresh in EFI mode (setting is grub2-efi) will still keep elilo pop up, but it will not destroy the elilo.conf anymore
booting with elilo without USB mouse will still needs several attempts until it loads
How can it be that the boot process fails at random?
Why it fails always with USB mouse but afterwards runs fine? What has this to do with EFI vs. legacy?? In legacy mode everything is smooth.
Why can I run the finished installation with normal kernel params but the installation DVD is reluctant to boot even with the most conservative settings?
For now I give up! Maybe the boot loader setup is broken because I have all different versions somehow installed - grub, grub2, grub.efi and elilo?! Where does the yast2 boot-loader menu gets the information from? I’d like to clean up the boot loader mess…though I probably want to keep the option to boot it in UEFI and Legacy mode
BTW, is it normal that changing the UEFI/Legacy bios mode resets date and time? >:(
UEFI=Unfinished Experimental Firmware Interferer?
A very interesting thread. Thank you for sharing your experience with us!
Not so on my Toshiba Satellite P50-A, nor on my Asus S200E.
My Asus worked straight ahead according to UEFI/W8/Linux dual-boot theory without a single glitch.
My Toshiba is experiencing something like you describe here, but I will investigate other options before I will attempt installing Linux from CSM mode, as it shouldn’t work that way. I may have to reconsider that position some time down the road, though, as this may be a Toshiba issue just as likely as it being a Linux issue. I have made a thread myself in an attempt to get to the bottom of that. (https://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/install-boot-login/490605-toshiba-satellite-p50-uefi-w8-dualboot-cannot-install-12-3-nor-13-1-beta.html)
In many ways this sitiuation reminds me of the early DOS days of memory-resident program conflicts, and it took a few years to resolve those in a way everybody agreed on. But at the time, the rules of memory-resident DOS programming wasn’t predefined the way EFI is…
Thus, installation on this machine seems only possible in Legacy mode at this time.