Cannot install latest Tumbleweed "/boot/efi not found"

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi, I cannot install the latest OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. The installer complains about missing /boot/efi even that I made a 600MB one vfat marked EFI partition + format.

20251213_162248
20251213_1622481920×1440 301 KB

My root is on RAID on two other disks, if it has any meaning (did not have on Ubuntu).

2

And did you tell installer about this partition?

3

Thought the new requiment is 2-4 gig ESP

4

For grub2-bls, yes. For grub2-efi 600 MB should be enough. But the OP doesn’t tell / show us anything.

5

I attempted to install again. This time I enlarged the EFI partition but the installation ended with the same error. Here are the screenshots of the relevant steps (one per post due to quota for new users).

6

20251214_103513
20251214_103513400×217 40.4 KB

7

Here is the disk state after the previous installation:

20251214_103541
20251214_103541700×414 88.9 KB

8

I deleted the previous EFI partition and created in place a larger, 2GB one:

20251214_103644
20251214_103644400×270 80.5 KB

9

20251214_103659
20251214_103659700×469 143 KB

10

The new EFI partition, root and /home mount points:

20251214_103813
20251214_1038131000×512 159 KB

11

20251214_103853
20251214_103853700×405 133 KB

12

20251214_104046
20251214_104046400×1030 123 KB

13

Then all packages installed, but a series of errors relating to /boot/efi followed:

20251214_104735
20251214_104735400×222 27.7 KB

14

20251214_104747
20251214_104747400×213 27.2 KB

And so on, saying that no bootloader would be installed.

15

FYI you can simply hit the “PrintScreen” key to get a screenshot from YaST (the Qt version). Just remember to copy it from the RAM disk to a permanent place.

16

Did you create that /dev/nvme0n1p2 partition created as type ESP (Efi System Partition)? This is important.

You can see the details of the partitioning during installation in YAML format at /var/log/YaST/storage-inst.

For that ESP, it should look like this:

- disk:
    name: "/dev/nvme0n1"
    size: ...
    ...
    partition_table: gpt
    ....
    partitions:
    - partition:
        size: 0.5 GiB
        start: 1 MiB
        name: "/dev/nvme0n1p1"
        type: primary
        id: esp
        ^^^^^^^
        file_system: vfat
        mount_point: "/boot/efi"
        fstab_options:
        - utf8
17

What partition scheme you use - DOS or GPT? You did not show or describe it anywhere and the number of partitions still fits into both.

18

Yes, I can reproduce it when I force DOS partition table. bootctl rejects disks with DOS partition and expects GPT. This is upstream systemd issue (but I would not hold my breath).

19

Yes it was it - the DOS partitioning. I replaced it and the installer worked this time, telling me at the end that the system would be rebooted.

Then, there was a boot menu with the new OpenSUSE distro. I choosed it but after a moment, it ended with an emergency shell. I will continue in another thread, as it might be a separate problem.

20

Make sure that EFI boot is configured in the BIOS.