I have a Thinkpad X120e pre-installed with windows 7. I want to install openSUSE 11.4 with dual boot. I selected custom partitioning for experts. I shrank the windows partition to 50 GB. Then I added an extended partition. I created a FAT partition /boot/efi (which was apparently required, otherwise it complained that I might not be able to boot my system), along with partitions for SWAP, var, / and home. However, when I click “Accept” it complains:
“Warning: With your current setup, your installation will encounter problems when booting, because the disk you have your /boot partition on does not contain a GPT disk label.”
If I destroy the current disk label and create a GPT label, it means that my existing windows partition will be deleted. Is there any work around? I would like to keep my current windows partition. Why do I need efi? What shall I do?
Installing openSUSE has always been easy for me. I’m stuck for the first time.
I have a Thinkpad X120e pre-installed with windows 7. I want to install openSUSE 11.4 with dual boot. I selected custom partitioning for experts. I shrank the windows partition to 50 GB. Then I added an extended partition. I created a FAT partition /boot/efi (which was apparently required, otherwise it complained that I might not be able to boot my system), along with partitions for SWAP, var, / and home. However, when I click “Accept” it complains:
“Warning: With your current setup, your installation will encounter problems when booting, because the disk you have your /boot partition on does not contain a GPT disk label.”
If I destroy the current disk label and create a GPT label, it means that my existing windows partition will be deleted. Is there any work around? I would like to keep my current windows partition. Why do I need efi? What shall I do?
Installing openSUSE has always been easy for me. I’m stuck for the first time.
Thanks!
It is not possible to use the openSUSE Grub Legacy OS Selection program to work on a GPT partitioned disk. Unless the disk is over 2.2 GB, it does not required a GPT partition to be used in the first place, but you would indeed need to reinstall Windows 7 in order to get both openSUSE and Windows 7 on the same internal hard disk. So, it could be repartitioned, at least the first 2.2 GB or less and install both Windows 7 and openSUSE. If you do not wish to take this course, then I must suggest you install openSUSE on an external hard drive and preserve your internal one. I use such a method with my work Dell Laptop and the external 2.5 inch USB 2.0 Hard disk is 500 GB, needs no external power supply, works very well with openSUSE and Windows and required no modification of the internal hard drive. Further, its possible with a kernel startup change, get it to read from the internal hard disk. Reading a GPT partition is possible but booting from one will take a different boot manager than comes with openSUSE and indeed I am not sure I would try it even with Grub2 (like comes with Ubuntu) since the kernel mod is still required to read the GPT disk and unless I was really into such things. If I had an original Windows 7 install disk and no desire to use an external hard drive, then wipe it out or if you decide you don’t need Windows 7, then do the same. It is up to you.
The only work around I can think of - but never tried - would be to install a minimal Ubuntu, Mint or other Grub2 based distro - which is able to handle GPT - for booting purpose, create the openSUSE partition(s) in advance - meaning before installing openSUSE - and install openSUSE in expert mode without creating or resizing any partition, just selecting and formating the partitions you need (formating is OK because it modifies the content, not the geometry) and without doing anything to the MBR ( = explicitely uncheck “Write Generic boot code” as well"). But again, I’ve never done it. If it were a Mac, I would tell you to use rEFIt.
On 2011-10-19 04:06, jdmcdaniel3 wrote:
> It is not possible to use the openSUSE Grub Legacy OS Selection program
> to work on a GPT partitioned disk. Unless the disk is over 2.2 GB,
2 TB, not 2 GB. And perhaps TiB.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
Don’t you think that it could be possible to change in the BIOS from UEFI to Legacy BIOS? Then, I would not have the need to have efi boot. They discuss this in the arch-linux blog:
Why do you say that I have to reinstall Windows 7 in order to have both Windows 7 and openSUSE on the same harddisk? The problem seems to be the opposite, i.e., the disk is not labeled as GPT and Yast requires it to be GPT.
I like your idea with the external harddisk. Do you think that it will not affect IO performance? USB2 is fast but not as fast as SATA.
Don’t you think that it could be possible to change in the BIOS from UEFI to Legacy BIOS? Then, I would not have the need to have efi boot. They discuss this in the arch-linux blog:
Why do you say that I have to reinstall Windows 7 in order to have both Windows 7 and openSUSE on the same harddisk? The problem seems to be the opposite, i.e., the disk is not labeled as GPT and Yast requires it to be GPT.
I like your idea with the external harddisk. Do you think that it will not affect IO performance? USB2 is fast but not as fast as SATA.
So this is not an error message I have seen without having a GPT partition and it is for sure the openSUSE Grub Legacy will not work on it. I do have an install of openSUSE with the uEFI BIOS at home and did not get such an error message. As to an external hard drive it works great and avoids any such issues on the Windows hard drive. I purchased an iomega helium which is very small and compact. I have had no i/o issues with openSUSE on that hard drive. Realize that among other things Linux will be faster on the same PC including I/O throughput. By maintaining a dual boot system you can run those apps that require Windows while you learn and transition to Linux. This is how I did it and it may take a while to find your way in Linux. But when you do, you will see why there is no turning back later. If you want to go with an external drive, just say so and I will post some info on it. Then get the drive and let us know what you got, but hang off on the final install until all is clear to you. Basically, since openSUSE is trying to use your boot drive to start and does not consider you could designate the external hard drive as the boot drive, it will try to load the boot loader on the internal drive. Once you see how that works, its easy to point the entire install external and to confirm that is true by looking at the installation summary under the Install option. On my Dell, I put the boot order so that USB is before the Hard drive. So the boot order is CD/DVD, USB & then SATA Hard Drive. If USB is missing, because its not plugged in, it just goes on to the internal hard drive. ON some you can press F12 and select the boot order, but you often must be fast on the trigger to get this to work.
On 2011-10-19 05:46, gianluca4 wrote:
>
> Don’t you think that it could be possible to change in the BIOS from
> UEFI to Legacy BIOS? Then, I would not have the need to have efi boot.
> They discuss this in the arch-linux blog:
You could try.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
I just did. It hangs right after loading the kernel. The screen goes blank and stays there. I managed to actually get beyond this point once, but then the network card did not work and I had to reboot. I have had no luck so far. I also specified ‘splash=0’ at boot prompt, but still nothing appears. I don’t understand why I can’t boot the linux kernel with GRUB after specifying Legacy BIOS. This should be independent on whatever the hard disk is. I’m going to test it with KNOPPIX. Theoretically, it should boot KNOPPIX from an external DVD drive.
I have NOT installed linux at all. I have not gotten that far yet The laptop is still in its original constellation as I received it. Windows 7 boots no matter what, even if I set “Legacy only” in the BIOS. Also KNOPPIX live CD boots perfectly fine from an external DVD drive. With KNOPPIX I even get Xorg up and running and I am able to read the Windows paritions of the hard disk. I’m going to try out the DVD installation of openSUSE 11.4 instead of the network installation. Wish me luck. I will post updates here.
On 2011-10-20 00:46, gianluca4 wrote:
> I’m going to try out the DVD
> installation of openSUSE 11.4 instead of the network installation. Wish
> me luck. I will post updates here.
Ok, I understand. Good luck
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
ok, it’s working now. I downloaded and burned the DVD installation. It loaded the kernel and booted into the Yast installer. I was able to select custom partitionining: shrink windows, create partitions for linux; select packages and install. Right now it’s installing.
I suspect that the network installation version did not support the network card correctly or maybe it’s some other driver that it does not have. Maybe, I have to submit a bug report? (Like, network installation of openSUSE 11.4 does not work with Thinkpad X120e?)
In summary, so far, I had to make two changes:
Switch in the BIOS from UEIF/Legacy “Both” to “Legacy only”.
Use the DVD installation instead of the network installation.
I will post updates as soon as I will be able to boot my new installation.
The installation worked thanks to switching to Legacy Bios and using the DVD installation. I am able to boot from GRUB into both Linux and Windows. It gives me three choices for Windows (Windows 1, 2 and 3). I chose 2 and it worked (I guess it is because there are three windows partitions). I installed the ATI catalyst proprietary driver and 3D acceleration works wonderfully.
The only problem is that I cannot make suspend to disk work. I use ‘powersave -U’ from the command line (as root or user) and the system hangs at “s2disk: snapshotting system”. Does anybody have a clue how to solve this? Or shall I rather start a different thread for this?
Thanks a lot for your comments and listening!
Gianluca
PS: As a tip, I used Sebastian Siebert’s script to install the ATI catalyst driver in openSUSE 11.4:
It’s in german, but it’s pretty easy to follow. Just scroll down until you get to
“Empfohlene Vorgehensweise:” and copy paste the commands into a shell as root.
says that I either have Realtek BGN or Broadcom ABGN Wifi card and that I should use one of the drivers from AUR. How do I find out which wireless card I exaclty have?
I spoke too early. After booting into windows 7 it performed a disk check (probably because I had resized the windows partition from the yast installer instead of from inside windows). When I tried to boot linux again, I got a blank screen after the GRUB menu. So, I powered it off and rebooted and everything went fine. I don’t understand why I get these random blank screens after GRUB.
The laptop is still in its original constellation as I received it. Windows 7 boots no matter what, even if I set “Legacy only” in the BIOS. Also KNOPPIX live CD boots perfectly fine from an external DVD drive. With KNOPPIX I even get Xorg up and running and I am able to read the Windows paritions of the hard disk. I’m going to try out the DVD installation of openSUSE 11.4 instead of the network installation. Wish me luck. I will post updates here.