My system and /home is run from an NVMe drive but the BIOS cannot boot from NVME so I have a small partition on my Multimedia storage hardware RAID array which is used for booting the efi system. This is now broken and I am seeking help please.
I have booted to a Leap 15.5 live USB stick running rescue system.
My first question is what is best way to be able to show what is on screen of rescue system in this thread? All I can do so far is take picture and post in susepaste. Is there an easier way?
Meanwhile I have:-
efibootmgr -v
EFI variables are not supported on this system
First thing that hits me in your images is that you have a disk names sda and that it is partitioned (partitions sda1, sda2 and sda5).
Then you try an fsck /dev/sda, but there is of course no file system there, there are hovever file systems on all of the partions. So better check those?
Hi Henk, Thanks for coming to my rescue. I can run whatever commands you ask and I think I can get the results on to another USB stick so I can upload them to you. This is slow and tedious but if you give me what commands to run I can run them in order, saving the outputs to USB and upload them all. Is this acceptable to you?
Yes I did. “So better check those?” is an instruction and I need to know how to check “those.”
The second message “I assume this is about your rescue system?” is a statement about your assumption. I ran the command efibootmgr -v on the rescue system which is running on the problem machine. I hope this is what you need to know.
It is YOU that decided to fsck a file system. Which one?
Then you concluded (faulty) that you should address that file system as being on /dev/sda. And then you got an error, because there is no file system on /dev/sda .
Now I asked YOU which file system (there are three on the partitions of /dev/sda YOU wanted to check:
the vfat on /dev/sda,
the ext4 on /dev/sda2 or
the xfs in /dev/sda5 ?
This as all found in the pictures you posted. What is difficult about this?
Then why are you interested in “managing efiboot” of the rescue system? And what has this to do with the problems on the problem system?
That’s the expected result of booting a rescue system in legacy/BIOS/MBR mode. The rescue system must be booted in UEFI mode to perform most UEFI boot analysis and repair. Disabling CSM (legacy booting) in your UEFI BIOS setup should block, or at least inhibit, booting in legacy mode. Legacy mode booting is of limited use on installed systems using UEFI configurations.
Hi mrmazda,
Returning to this and thanks. I had been trying to work out how to boot to UEFI mode. Will see if stopping Legacy is possible on BIOS settings and get back to you.
OK, there is no explicit option that I can find to turn off legacy booting but I have disabled all references to legacy on the system and re-booted to rescue system.
How do I find out if the rescue system is now using UEFI please?
Hi nrickert,
I had gathered that and found some more references to legacy deep in BIOS. Disabled what I found and have broken it. Now no access to the machine whatsoever. Looks like I have broken it completely. I have no idea how to access BIOS now, no screen and strangely no ethernet although this was not disabled.
The only data that might not be backed up is on NVME. I have an identical machine still running. Can I put that in a spare slot and would my spare machine be able to access the data?
Gps2010 forgot to mention those two options are a result of using your BBS menu hotkey during post, so that you get a BIOS boot menu before Grub appears. If it doesn’t appear before Grub, you waited too long.
Find your motherboard manual’s section on BIOS reset and do it. There should be a jumper for the purpose. If you can’t, unplug the power cord or turn the PSU switch off (if it has one), then remove the small battery from the motherboard for 10-15 minutes or more, then replace battery and check if PC will boot and let you into BIOS to set clock and disable CSM booting.
Hi and many thanks once more.
I have found the details of some of the mobo switch options. Would you be willing to look at what the manual offers before I break something else! Here are the relevant pages:-
Many thanks. In my ignorance I was concerned that that would leave me with no firmware at all. Will be able to try this later this afternoon.
The table 4 also refers to UEFI and I am wondering whether my problem with booting from NVME might have been due to my incorrect settings in the BIOS.
When I can boot again would you be able to check what settings I should adopt, not only to be able to start the openSUSE rescue in UEFI mode but possible be able to boot the system entirely from NVME so I do not have to mess with the uefi and boot starting files.