I got this warning message during installation of RC2 from Live KDE
DVD onto a UEFI machine with external drive attached. It went on to say
that the disc sequence might not be reliable. I was rather surprised as
I’m fairly sure that a successful NetCD install did not produce any such
message. Does it really mean what it says?
–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks.
openSUSE 12.3-RC2 (64-bit); KDE 4.10.00; AMD Phenom II X2 550 Processor;
Video: nVidia GeForce 210 (using nouveau driver);
Sound: ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA); Wireless: BCM4306
*
I installed using the KDE live image (on a USB), without any problem. But that was not on a UEFI box.
If you booted in UEFI mode, then I think you have to use either grub2-efi or elilo for booting. Indeed, both grub (legacy) and grub2 (non-efi) would not be compatible.
If the live image does not support either grub2-efi or elilo, then that’s probably a bug.
I started an install using the live KDE, with no intention of actually completing.
The first thing I noticed was that the partitioner recommendation did not include mounting the EFI partition as “/boot/efi”.
I already have 12.3 installed, and perhaps that’s the reason. Somebody should test this on a fresh UEFI system with no previous opensuse install.
It looked as if it wanted to install for MBR booting, rather than for UEFI booting. And I guess the warning might be appropriate in that case.
Moving along, I got to the screen with the warning. I clicked on “Booting”. I was able to switch to “grub2-efi”, and that removed the warning. I don’t know if that would have worked, however, since the EFI partition was not selected for mounting.
I aborted at that point, since I didn’t want to mess up my prior install.
The problems that I see here are:
the fact that opensuse is using a fixed name in the EFI setup, so that you cannot have two or more versions of opensuse installed for UEFI booting
a possible partitioner problem for a UEFI machine, but this should be tested on a system without a prior UEFI install of opensuse
a possible boot selection problem. But, perhaps if I had manually added the EFI partition in the partition scheme, that might have worked.
It is probably too late to fix any of this for 12.3. Some testing and some fixing might be warranted for 13.1
As previously noted, I have installed (using the same USB stick) on a non-UEFI system, and I did not see any problems with the boot setup.
Do you have any suggestion how it can be solved? This is serious question; I do not know how to generate name that would be a) nice human readable and b) unique at the same time.
As second installation will hopefully include the first one in grub menu, this may not be such a big issue as it looks on the first glance.
We could add a number after each to ensure uniqueness. But then we need a process to clean up entries that are no longer in use, so there are problems with that, too.
That doesn’t work well either.
Let’s suppose that I have 12.3 installed. I later install 13.1 M1, which takes over the entry and can boot 12.3. But then there’s a kernel update for 12.3, and 13.1 M1 won’t know about that. So I have to boot into 13.1 M1 to fix it. Or, maybe the kernel update takes over, and the 12.3 boot now boots 13.1 instead. It’s all a bit fuzzy on how it works.
A related question. Suppose 13.1 takes over, as above, and can boot 12.3 from its menu. Will secure-boot work for that? Or will secure boot only work for the one version?
Person opinion: I think the boot procedure for linux needs to be redesigned. If we are going to use something like grub2 to boot, then grub2 should be installed separately in its own partition. And then every subsequent linux install should be able to register itself with the existing grub2.
Perhaps a discussion should be started somewhere on linux booting. This thread is probably the wrong place.
>
> I installed using the KDE live image (on a USB), without any problem.
> But that was not on a UEFI box.
>
> If you booted in UEFI mode, then I think you have to use either
> grub2-efi or elilo for booting. Indeed, both grub (legacy) and grub2
> (non-efi) would not be compatible.
I did not boot in UEFI mode - I managed successful installs with GRUB
and eventually with GRUB2 - although I have experimented with GRUB2-EFI
on that machine. The
>
> If the live image does not support either grub2-efi or elilo, then
> that’s probably a bug.
>
The live image does support the EFI boot methods.
I’ve finally struck lucky and been able to repeat the install with
NetCD. No warning messages with this - as I remembered - so it’s
bug/feature of the Live KDE install process. I suspect that it’s a
warning left over from an old version of the installer. I’ll bung in a
bug report for this particular item though similar differences also
bug me.
–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks.
openSUSE 12.3-RC2 (64-bit); KDE 4.10.00; AMD Phenom II X2 550 Processor;
Video: nVidia GeForce 210 (using nouveau driver);
Sound: ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA); Wireless: BCM4306