I have taken delivery of a new MoB and AMD chip ready to invigotrate my old i7 and failing (read only one mem slot works) Gigabyte UD5 MoB.
The new MoB is UEFI and this is all new to me!
Done a bit of research and find conficting info; openSUSE will be the only OS on the machine with ’ / ’ on a seperate 160gb SSD to ’ /home ’ which will be on a 1tb drive as it all is now.
I know openSUSE has good support for UEFI; but is there any prep work I need to do in the new UEFI GUI to ensure a smooth install?
Done a bit of research and find conficting info; openSUSE will be the only OS on the machine with ’ / ’ on a seperate 160gb SSD to ’ /home ’ which will be on a 1tb drive as it all is now.
That’s confusing. Is the part of the sentence following the semicolon supposed to be related to the part before the semicolon?
I know openSUSE has good support for UEFI; but is there any prep work I need to do in the new UEFI GUI to ensure a smooth install?
Not really. But you could create the EFI partition in advance, though the installer will create it if there isn’t already one.
The most important thing to watch, is that you boot the installer in UEFI mode rather than in legacy mode. If you get that right, then the boot menu will look like a grub2 boot menu and there won’t be anything about Fn keys along the bottom of the screen.
Sorry did it on my phone, I must have deleted some of the sentence it should have read “Conflicting info around w7/w8 preloaded and dual boot machines;…”
Thanks for the other information.
On one of the Ubuntu forums it mentions disabling ‘Fastboot’ as this is an issue with Grub. Is this true?
I recommend disabling fastboot, though that’s not really UEFI related. With fastboot, the Windows drive is in a somewhat corrupted condition, with part of the file system state saved as hybernation data instead of being properly recorded on the disk.
As for dual boot with Win 8.1: that’s working fine here. The general principle, though, is that either everything should be set to use UEFI or nothing should be set to use UEFI. They don’t mix and match very well.
>
>
> Not really. But you could create the EFI partition in advance, though
> the installer will create it if there isn’t already one.
>
So… If I want to use a GPT partition table (instead of the legacy
MBR one), do I also need to create a small partition for GPT code?
Formatted as what and how big?
I get so confused with this UEFI, GPT, legacy MBR, fast bootup, Secure
Booting business…
(PS: Let’s assume that I want to install openSUSE on a PC that does
not have any kind of Microsoft Windows version also installed.)
>
>
> Not really. But you could create the EFI partition in advance, though
> the installer will create it if there isn’t already one.
>
So… If I want to use a GPT partition table (instead of the legacy
MBR one), do I also need to create a small partition for GPT code?
Formatted as what and how big?
I get so confused with this UEFI, GPT, legacy MBR, fast bootup, Secure
Booting business…
(PS: Let’s assume that I want to install openSUSE on a PC that does
not have any kind of Microsoft Windows version also installed.)
Hi
I always pre-configure the drive by booting from an openSUSE rescue cd
and the open a terminal and su - to root user and run gdisk to
configure;
sda1 - size 260MB type ef00 [vfat]
sda2 - / type 8300 (default) [btrfs]
sda3 - /data type 8300 [xfs]
sda3 - swap type 8200 [swap]
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel
3.12.43-52.6-default If you find this post helpful and are logged into
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If you boot the installer as EFI it will do it all for you. But just to let you know what is to happen
You need a small EFI boot partition formatted as FAT It should be -100 meg You want to use grub2-efi not just plain grub. Check the box for secure boot. It does no harm even if you do not have it turned on in the BIOS. This should be set automagically if you boot the installer to EFI mode. How tpo do this is dependent on the EFI you have on the board so read the instructions. There should be a boot menu available using F12 or F10 maybe. Anyway RTFM
If using the default BTRFS file system for root you need at least 40 gig for root to allow for the snapshot feature. If you use EXT4 20-30 gig is fine. Since you plan to have home on separate drive you do have to take control and set the /home mount point to the partition that has your home. The new default home file system is XFS but your current one is probably ext4 so DO NOT format home and set it to ext4 or what ever the current format is.
Always read the screens and be certain things are they way you want before you accept.
Note you can install the old MBR way but you need to boot to legacy mood . Details depend on if dual booting etc…
I do much the same as indicated by malcolmlewis. I boot the live rescue CD (written to a USB), and run “gdisk” to partition the disk. It will take care of GPT. If the disk already has legacy partitioning, it will try to convert and warn you if that will cause errors.
On Wed 22 Jul 2015 09:56:01 PM CDT, nrickert wrote:
tb;2720577 Wrote:
> So… If I want to use a GPT partition table (instead of the legacy
> MBR one), do I also need to create a small partition for GPT code?
> Formatted as what and how big?
I do much the same as indicated by malcolmlewis. I boot the live rescue
CD (written to a USB), and run “gdisk” to partition the disk. It will
take care of GPT. If the disk already has legacy partitioning, it will
try to convert and warn you if that will cause errors.
Hi
If the disks have been used before for something like a raid setup or
ex mbr in gdisk I normally use;
wipefs -a /dev/sdX
gdisk /dev/sdX
w
gdisk /dev/sdX
x
z
y
y
gdisk /dev/sdX
<setup partitions>
This cleans out all and any cruft on the devices as well as wiping the
mbr.
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel
3.12.43-52.6-default If you find this post helpful and are logged into
the web interface, please show your appreciation and click on the star
below… Thanks!
>
> I do much the same as indicated by malcolmlewis. I boot the live
> rescue CD (written to a USB), and run “gdisk” to partition the disk.
> It will take care of GPT. If the disk already has legacy
> partitioning, it will try to convert and warn you if that will cause
> errors.
Do you boot up the live CD (or USB) in UEFI mode or legacy mode when
creating the vfat partition? (Which I imagine is where the GPT code
goes…)
It doesn’t actually matter. However, I would boot UEFI mode on a UEFI system.
I’m not sure what “GPT code” is supposed to mean here. The GPT partition table is structured very differently. Maybe you are calling that structure “code”. There does not need to be boot code in the GPT partition table, though you can install booting in the MBR (protected MBR of the GPT table if you want to mix legacy and UEFI systems. But it is better to not mix if you don’t want headaches.
The UEFI firmware already reads the GPT partition table. Booting uses an efi program that is stored in the EFI partition and pointed to by NVRAM (non-volatile ram managed by the firmware). It mostly works well, though a few of the early implementations were a bit lacking.
On 07/22/2015 06:16 PM, malcolmlewis wrote:
>
> tb;2720593 Wrote:
>>
>> Do you boot up the live CD (or USB) in UEFI mode or legacy mode when
>> creating the vfat partition? (Which I imagine is where the GPT code
>> goes…)
>>
> Hi
> I use UEFI mode, since it’s already running like that You should be
> able to access some boot menu at start and select the efi usb device?
>
>
On Thu 23 Jul 2015 04:20:54 AM CDT, tb75252 wrote:
On 07/22/2015 06:16 PM, malcolmlewis wrote:
>
> tb;2720593 Wrote:
>>
>> Do you boot up the live CD (or USB) in UEFI mode or legacy mode when
>> creating the vfat partition? (Which I imagine is where the GPT code
>> goes…)
>>
> Hi
> I use UEFI mode, since it’s already running like that You should be
> able to access some boot menu at start and select the efi usb device?
>
>
When you create this partition:
sda1 - size 260MB type ef00 [vfat]
What is it for?
Hi
That’s where the efi boot files are stored, similar to a separate /boot
on mbr type install. The system hardware looks for this partition (type
ef00) when booting in uefi mode.
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel
3.12.43-52.6-default If you find this post helpful and are logged into
the web interface, please show your appreciation and click on the star
below… Thanks!
OKay let me pull this one back together as someone else has started asking questions and my original post has become watered down; just to summarize.
Ensure I install in EFI mode
Fastboot off
Secure Boot On
My ‘/’ partion will be on a separate SSD drive; during install I’m turning snapper off; but keeping BTRFS
My ‘/home’ is on a 1tb HD which I will not be formatting - Just like when I do a system upgrade. (everything is backed up via Lucky backup)
Secure boot need not be on in the BIOS. But it does no harm to check the box in the install if you think you may want it sometime down the road. Checking the box does not turn it on it simply makes the install compatible with it. You have to turn secure boot off/on in the BIOS.
IMO secure boot is false security since anyone that gets to the point they can modify your boot stack owns the machine already.
You should be able to access some boot menu at start and select the efi usb device?
You should be