Default boot and partition settings in openSUSE 13.1

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I have installed openSUSE 13.1 RC1 on my netbook. Note that my netbook has legacy BIOS, yet the default values of the installer were set to GRUB2-EFI.
Another annoyance regarding to this, that the default partitioning scheme contains a vfat partition with a “/boot/efi” mount point, and if I create my own scheme (discarding this efi partition), I get a warning that I did not create an efi partition.

Is this a bug or a feature? Those, who doesn’t have EFI BIOS but legacy BIOS, are no longer supported (I mean, the default preferences are for EFI PCs, and legacy PC owners must bother with this), or this is just a bug, and normally the installer should find out if it is an EFI PC or not?

2

As 13.1 is still not released, this belongs into the Pre-Release/Beta forum. That is where your co-testers are.

This is CLOSED and will be moved.

3

Moved from Install/Boot/Login and open for bussiness again.

4

As you have described it, that should be a bug.

I’ll note that I did not have that problem in any of my installs.

Are you perhaps seeing bug 829256?

I have not checked lately if that is still a problem. When I reported, it happened if you were installing from a live KDE USB (or, probably, live Gnome USB), and you first booted that USB on a UEFI box. It seemed to remember how it was first booted.

I have done 4 DVD-based installs and one live KDM install on non-efi boxes, and I did not run into the problem that you describe. But I have not tested what happens if I first boot a live USB (first boot after creation) on a UEFI box, then use it to install on a non-UEFI box.

5

Are you perhaps seeing bug 829256?

I don’t think so. I have created a USB installation media from the DVD. I have had 3 attempts. The first one (with GRUB2-EFI selected) failed, because the installer couldn’t create the GRUB and I had a chance to modify the GRUB settings, and try again. I didn’t change to GRB2, just tried again with the same settings. This time the installer crashed.
At the 2nd and 3rd attempts, I selected GRUB2 instead of the default GRUB2-EFI, and removed the efi partition, this way the installation was successful.

It is worth to be mentioned, that recently I tested other distributions (the latest stable ones, namely Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro) on the same netbook, and all of the installers set GRUB2-EFI as default. So it is not a normal behavior, right?

6

I think the kernel tries to talk to the EFI firmware. If that is successful, it attempts to use “grub2-efi”. Otherwise it should use “grub2”.

If I boot my box in UEFI mode, it will try to use grub2-efi. If I boot it in MBR mode, it won’t.

My guess is that your BIOS has some EFI support, and it is a bit flaky in how it works. It is more likely a BIOS bug rather than an opensuse bug.

7

My guess is that your BIOS has some EFI support…

I’m sure that this box doesn’t support EFI. There is no option like “enable/disable secure boot” in my BIOS, and non of my installations succeeded that were based on GRUB2-EFI and used /boot/efi partition.

Anyway, could you give me a clue, how can I make sure if my box supports EFI or not?

8

I don’t really know. I would also be inclined to go by BIOS options.

But, while running opensuse, you might try the command (as root):


# efibootmgr -v

and see what output it produces.

On a non-efi box, I get:


Fatal: Couldn't open either sysfs or procfs directories for accessing EFI variables.
Try 'modprobe efivars' as root.

On my main desktop, booted in UEFI mode, I get:


BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,0000
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager  HD(1,800,fa000,a0547a0a-57c0-405d-b6b9-a01ca4839f0f)File(\EFI	w\shim.efi)WINDOWS.........x...B.C.D.O.B.J.E.C.T.=.{.9.d.e.a.8.6.2.c.-.5.c.d.d.-.4.e.7.0.-.a.c.c.1.-.f.3.2.b.3.4.4.d.4.7.9.5.}... ................
Boot0001* tumbleweed-secureboot HD(1,800,fa000,c0b70134-6c3b-4722-835e-6bc174ade394)File(\EFI	umbleweed\shim.efi)
9

Regarding to efibootmgr, my netbook doesn’t have EFI BIOS.

10

“efibootmgr” is a unix command available in recent versions of opensuse and probably other recent linux releases.