Help with ASUS X501A, Windows 8, UEFI, no CD/DVD drive SuSE installation.

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Please help with installing OpenSuSE on a brand new ASUS X501A laptop with Windows 8 pre-installed.
This laptop does NOT have any optical drives - NO CD and NO DVD drives.
It does have two USB drives.
I also think it has UEFI.

Is OpenSuSE installation even possible on such a system?

Reqs: do not care much about keeping windows 8 on it as long as I can successfully install OpenSuSE.

Specs:
1). Intel 2.4 GHZ processor, 4GB RAM, 500GB HD.
2). BIOS vendor = Aptio Setup Utility from American Megatrends, Inc.
3). After hitting ESC key at start up a menu comes up. Not sure if its 100% BIOS, or 100% UEFI, or a mix.
Menu choices are: Main, Advanced, Boot, Security, Save and Exit.
4). Under Boot menu choices are: Fast Boot (disabled), Launch CSM (disabled) and Driver Option Priorities.
5). Under Driver Option Priorities choices are: Boot Option #1: [Windows Boot Manage…], Add New Boot Option, Delete Boot Option.
6). Under the top level “Security” menu the choices are (all either disabled or NOT INSTALLED): Admin password, user password, secure boot control (disabled).

My major question is: since this laptop does not have any CD/DVD drives and I do not see the familiar BIOS choices to boot from USB what do I do now? I suspect that this UEFI thingy is involved here also - judging by what I see in the BIOS setup screens.

Does anyone know how to make this Aptio BIOS utility accept a UEFI-enabled OpenSuSE installer? In other words how do I make it look at a particular USB drive where the thumb drive with the OpenSuSE initial installer files are?

In Windows 8 the “drives” are “C” 186 GB and “D” 258 GB.

Result of “list disk” in diskpart:


Disk ###    Status     Size   Free   Dyn   Gpt
---------   -------    ----   ----   ---   ---
Disk 0      Online    465 GB  0 GB          *

In case the text formatter removes the spaces - the star character above is under the “GPT” column.

Some detailed instructions would be wonderful but any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

2

You should know that !

OK. Step one.
Windows 8 requires secure boot.
Secure boot requires UEFI boot.

3

On Thu 03 Jan 2013 10:06:02 PM CST, ratzi wrote:

wantstoknow;2515342 Wrote:
> I also think it has UEFI.

You should know that !

OK. Step one.
Windows 8 requires secure boot.
Secure boot requires UEFI boot.

Hi
From the information provided by the OP, it looks like it’s disabled…?

secure boot control (disabled)

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.2 (x86_64) Kernel 3.4.11-2.16-desktop
up 3:18, 3 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05
CPU Intel® i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | GPU Intel® Ironlake Mobile

4

Step 2.

On the page openSUSE.org, in the upper right corner, there are some links covering “getting help”.

One of these is “Installation Guides”.

Click there and you will get to a list including “Create a live USB drive”
with a link to
Live USB stick

There you’ll find more comprehensive documentation on how to prepare an USB key (stick) to boot from

5

Step 3.

Try to boot from that (or of an image of live CD on the USB key/stick).

Don’t install instantly.

Just make sure that openSUSE runs - in this case from the USB stick/key instead of a CD/DVD.

6

A remark: what you see is the BIOS menu.
It’s 100% BIOS and probably 100% UEFI as well.
It’s a BIOS that is capable of booting in UEFI mode (which seems to be the future).

7

Another point:
these passwords will refer to the maintanance of the BIOS itself !
This means that if you choose these passwords and forget them, you’ll have a hard time,
because this may render your hardware unusable.

Read carefully:
“secure boot control (disabled)” does not necessarily mean the same as “secure boot (disabled)” !
The difference is the word ‘control’.
So be careful.

Mike

8

OK, OK, guys. Thank you and take it easy on me.
For a living I do C on Solaris. I dwell in a very conservative world, far from pcs.
I’ve learned about UEFI less than 24 hours ago. Bought that laptop yesterday on sale. The package said nothing about UEFI. I’ve figured I’ll remove that windows nonsense from the laptop completely and turn it into a nice zippy unix box. Went in to see what’s involved and discovered that UEFI business. Hence the post. It feels like the evil empire from Redmond is trying to make it more difficult to install unix on these new machines.

Anyway. Give me some time to digest ratzi’s suggestions and answer malcomlewis’ question.
I’ll be back.

9

Ok, guys.
Answering malcolmlews’ and ratzi’ questions about the secure boot options.

1). The “Security” screen has three sections. Passwords. I/O Interface Security. Secure Boot.

2). All the password fields (admin, user, HDD, Master) are empty and their “status” is “NOT INSTALLED”.

3). I/O Interface security leads to another screen where more options for LAN, SD Card and USB interfaces control - lock/unlock. All are [Unlock] now.

4). Remaining section wording:
System Mode state User
Secure Boot state Disabled
Secure Boot Control [Disabled]

5). My next question is. Let’s say I read the pages suggested by ratzi and create a bootable thumb drive. How do I make this BIOS/UEFI thingy read THAT USB port with THAT bootable thumb drive in it?

The “Boot” screen looks like:
Fast Boot [Disabled]
Launch CSM [Disabled]

Boot Option Priorities
Boot Option #1 [WIndows Boot Manage…]

Add New Boot Option
Delete Boot Option

6). I figure I have to “Add New Boot Option”. That takes me to the next screen:
Add boot option [pick a letter A - Z]
Select Filesystem PCI(1F|2)\DevicePath( Type 3, SubType 12)HD(Part1, Sig06a6efe0 and a bunch of hex digits…
Path for boot option

Any ideas?
Thanks a bunch,

10

This is a BIOS “screen”, apparently.
So these are passwords set by the BIOS, i.e. neither by openSUSE, nor windows, nor any other OS.
So leave this alone, as long as you don’t have to administrate a system to which several persons should have to work with.

11

From my experience on an UEFI booting system:
as long as you didn’t plug / insert a bootable drive (like an USB stick) / a bootable medium (like a DVD/CD),
the UEFI BIOS won’t show you the option to boot this one.
Hence, questions concerning the behvaviour in that case are pretty much theoretical,
until you connected such a drive,
and report what happens then.

I.e.: prepare an USB stick for booting openSUSE 12.2, boot it, and report the results.

Good luck
Mike

(edit: added “I.e.: prepare an USB stick for booting openSUSE 12.2, boot it, and report the results.”)

12

Hi
On my HP ProBook 4525s, I could browse to the EFI file on the DVD and boot from that via ELILO and install fine. On your system can you browse to files, or does it just provides a drop down list?

I just used dd to copy across the EFI partition on this system (DELL latitude E5510) to a USB device and it would boot, so it is possible… not sure about the install DVD on a USB device if you can’t browse to the efi file.

Have you downloaded the openSUSE DVD? You would need an 8GB USB device, else do you have an external USB dvd for connecting?

13

In addition:
laptops don’t always run that smoothly under Linux.
So booting from a Linux live system will give some clues on usability.

14

ratzi, thank you for a helpful direct link to making LiveUSB stick - couldn’t find it on the main web site.

Anyway. I’m using an old Dell laptop with 12.1 (Asparagus) OpenSuSE on it to prepare the LiveUSB stick.
Here’s what worked.
Read the “making LiveUSB stick” instructions.
Went to the main software download section.
Picked the Live GNOME 64-bit option.
Downloaded openSUSE-12.2-GNOME-LiveCD-x86_64.iso file.
Installed the GUI Imagewriter from YAST’s Software Managment program.
Imagewriter didn’t run as is - by clicking on it.
Switched to terminal.

which imagewriter
/usr/bin/imagewriter
imagewriter
You must run this program as the root user.
Abort
su - 
imagewriter

Imagewriter insisted on me being a user with id “root”.
OK, fine. Root I am.
Then it worked. GUI came up. Detected my pendrive.
Another quirk: the .iso file HAD to be under root’s path. In my case in

/root

, so I copied it there with

cp

Then Imagewriter insisted on unmounting the pendrive, ok, fine.
Then it finally moved the .iso image to the pendrive.

So, here I have it.

Inserted the pendrive into ASUS USB port.
Power on while holing ESC key.
Boot menu came up and that’s where I am stuck. I was hoping with something bootable in the USB port BIOS menu may show me some more reasonable choices. It didn’t.

So, ratzi’s suggestion to “Just make sure that openSUSE runs - in this case from the USB stick/key instead of a CD/DVD.” is where I am.

Can anyone shed some light as to how I make this BIOS read from my pendrive?

Thanks again.

15

ratzi, when you say “prepare an USB stick for booting openSUSE 12.2, boot it, and report the results” what do you mean by “boot it”?

Do I have to reboot my old Dell where I’ve created the stick AFTER I’ve created it or can I just pull it out and plug it into ASUS?

Thanks.

16

malcolmlewis, sorry if I wasn’t clear about it from the start.

The ASUS X501A laptop is brand new with windows 8 pre-installed on it, hot off the shelf.

That laptop has no unix software on it whatsoever.

That’s my goal - to put OpenSuSE ON it. Any software it has is windows only.

In this BIOS set up it is very crude text only ui. No mouse support.
May be I am missing something but everything has to be typed in by hand. No browsing capabilities.

17

You should boot from the USB stick on the new system.

No matter how or on which system you prepared the USB stick,
as long as it is prepared whithout errors.

Booting from a DVD/CD there usually is an option
‘check installation media/medium’, which will check that medium
by means of calculating a checksum.
You should see this choice as well.
Use it.

18

OK, guys. If it’s any help.

The only reasonable option in this Aptio American Megatrends BIOS Boot menu I see is “Add New Boot Option”

On that screen the choices are:

1). Add boot option name - one character between A and Z. Let’s say I pick U for unix.

2). Select Filesystem. This one has a few choices pre-typed in the square brackets. I mentioned those in a previous post. Though some helpful text for that option reads “Select one filesystem from the list” I do not see any way to select anything. The pre-typed text just sits there and can’t be changed. May be i am overlooking something…

  1. Path for boot option. Helpful text reads "Enter the path to the boot option in the format
fsx:\path\filename.efi

"

Any ideas?

19

OK, ratzi, got it about the LiveUSB stick.

Unfortunately this ASUS, as I’ve mentioned in the title of the thread, does not have any optical drives. Just two USB ports and that’s it.

Consequently, I do not see any “boot from CD/DVD” option in the BIOS setup. Could it be that since the mobo does not have CD/DVD drives this version of BIOS was specifically written to not have any such choices?

I think I need a way to find this mysterious .efi file on the LiveUSB stick and find a way to create a new boot option and enter this just as mysterious path thingy.

20

You created the bootable USB stick, right?

Now you don’t have to look for some mysterious file, but you have to find a way how to boot from the USB stick.

On an UEFI system this can be done by plugging the device to be booted from before power on.

Then power on, and enter the BIOS setup,
i.e. by pressing the respective key to enter BIOS setup before any OS is booted.

There (in the BIOS setup) you should be able to select the device to boot from,
in UEFI mode or non-UEFI mode.

If you downloaded 64bit openSUSE installer UEFI booting should be possible.

(edit: replaced ‘it’ by ‘the USB stick’)
(edit2: replaced ‘attaching’ by plugging)