I am trying to give new purpose to a 2006 era Apple Mac Pro as a server. The machine uses 64 bit Xeon CPUs but with a 32 bit EFI. This makes installing a challenge.
I have experimented with Refind and can successfully get the Refind boot manager up. However handing off to OpenSUSE has eluded me so far.
I feel that all I need is a 32 bit GRUB to play nicely with OpenSUSE?
I do not have any experience with Apple hardware. However, I do have 32-bit EFI running in a virtual machine. It is a bit tricky getting it installed, but it runs well once you get past the installing difficulties.
Simplest method: Give up on Leap 15.6, and instead install Tumbleweed. That should work out-of-the-box.
Next simplest: Install a small Tumbleweed on an extra partition. Then with a little trickery you can get the Tumbleweed system to boot your Leap 15.6 installer.
Third possibility, but a bit trickier: Put the DVD installer of Leap on a USB. Create an additional EFI partition (the one that comes with the installer is too small). Install 32-bit grub-efi on that additional EFI partition, and manually configure it to boot the installer.
With any of these methods, you can install. I tell the installer to use legacy booting (with grub2). I then install the package “grub2-i386-efi”. Note that this package is in the repos but is not on the DVD installer. So you will need to let it use online repos during the install.
Although I install for legacy booting, I make sure that the newly installed system also has an EFI partition. I then manually install grub2 (at the command line). And, after that it can boot normally.
Whichever of these you try, I can offer some help as you proceed.
Hmm, if you happen to live in the Chicago area, I could probably offer more direct help.
Wow. TIL the solution was as simple as “use Tumbleweed.”
You need boot loader, such as GRUB2, boot manager (rEFInd) cannot cope with that.
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