How does one add the “nomodeset” option on ELILO as used when booting the 64-bit 12.2 install DVD in EFI mode?
It’s an Nvidia card. ELILO loads the kernel from the DVD, and the screen goes black. Presumably, “nomodeset” will fix this.
I’m trying to install on a 3TB GPT drive.
If I install from the DVD in non-EFI mode, the standard install routine runs its course. The system fails on the first reboot, claiming “No Active Partition Found”. This is an error; parted shows the boot partition is marked correctly.
Is there guidance somewhere about how to create an EFI boot partition that OpenSuse will find acceptable? The automatic partitioner used in the installer creates unacceptably tiny partitions (at least in non-EFI mode) so I do not want to all it to automatically create the EFI partition.
I don’t know how to set the parameter at installation time with ELILO, but once ELILO is installed and you can access /etc/elilo.conf and /boot/efi/efi/SuSE/elilo.conf (by booting from a live system for example), you can add ‘nomodeset’ to the “append” line of the kernel you want to boot. Example:
I presume it will work, but add it in /boot/efi/efi/SuSE/elilo.conf too, because it’s not going to be updated (unless maybe you use YaST, etc)
Indeed, if you use ELILO, kernel and initrd images are stored in the ESP. Thus it makes sense to have a bigger one. I would just resize the ESP, so that you don’t change its type. It can not be a ‘regular’ FAT partition. I’m not sure if you can specify the type “EFI” when you create the partition in YaST partitioner, but the one created by default already has the right type. I did resize it under 12.1, and it worked.
This is an install. Do I have a choice? From what I gather from this forum and elsewhere, installation on in EFI mode requires the DVD and that boots up in ELILO.
Indeed, if you use ELILO, kernel and initrd images are stored in the ESP. Thus it makes sense to have a bigger one. I would just resize the ESP, so that you don’t change its type. It can not be a ‘regular’ FAT partition. I’m not sure if you can specify the type “EFI” when you create the partition in YaST partitioner, but the one created by default already has the right type. I did resize it under 12.1, and it worked.
What’s an optimum size for the ESP? I need to do create all partitions manually, not just the ESP.
Yes, thank you. However, that does not discuss how to add the nomodeset kernel parameter to ELILO at the install DVD boot. Without that, I can’t even attempt to proceed with an EFI install because it boots into a black screen.
For what it is worth, the Ubuntu 12.10 Beta installed smoothly in both EFI and non-EFI mode. It recognized the 3TB drive in either mode. In EFI mode, it automatically created the ESP if I let it handle the partitions. If I did not, it offered that option in the manual partitioner.
With large GPT drives now common and UEFI machines about to become very common, all Linux distributions need to handle both transparently and without requiring user intervention. Software that requires installation from a particular medium (the DVD, and that info is buried) on certain machines and then boots to a blank and black screen ought to be considered broken.
I requires the DVD, yes. I’m not sure 12.2 still boots up in ELILO, but previous versions did. The default boot loader should be grub2-efi now. You have the choice to install grub2-efi or ELILO during setup … assuming you reached this point.
100 MB is OK if you use grub2-efi, because it only stores the boot loaders there. However if you use ELILO, the size depends on the number of kernels you’re going to use. If you don’t have a good reason to use ELILO, I would suggest keeping the default size and installing grub2-efi. This system (12.1) has both ELILO (in red) and grub2-efi (in blue) boot loaders installed:
As you can see in the example above, grub2-efi (in directory opensuse) uses 713K, while ELILO (in directory SuSE), including 1 kernel + initrd uses 17496K.
To boot with ‘nomodeset’ from installation DVD, select “Installation” and type “nomodeset” in the “Boot Options” line at the bottom. Does it answer your question?
Press TAB at elilo pormpt, you get linux, rescue, lilo-noGOP, rescue-noGOP. “lilo-noGOP” will result in text only install.
You can also try “linux nomodeset” at elilo prompt. It boots but I am not sure whether it accepts the option. Try …
Also it is possible that it is elilo that has problems not kernel. In which case using noGOP will be the only way.