Greetings,
I’m running openSUSE 13.1 on my HP Probook laptop which has 3 boot modes: legacy (bios), UEFI hybrid and UEFI native. I will try to explain exactly the issues (not particularily openSUSE related) I have encountered.
GPT partition table / legacy bios mode / two linux installations (arch, openSUSE) with openSUSE managing GRUB2. Tried to add the other installation (arch linux) but it wouldn’t show up in the GRUB menu.
The same installation but tried to install GRUB or syslinux from arch to /dev/sda or separate boot partition. When booting it said that no system was found (it didn’t even see the bootloader).
Switched to UEFI native, installed openSUSE with GRUB-efi and “No bootable image found, notebook will be shut down” error on startup. Although, if I press F9 (this shows bootable devices) I can choose “opensuse” and boot.
I’ve read some articles regarding GPT-bios compatibility so I’ve eventually switched to UEFI mode. But I still don’t understand why it doesn’t go to the GRUB menu automatically at startup.
I have a separate /boot/efi partition.
If you added arch after openSUSE, you need to recreate boot menu in openSUSE. You may also check whether “Probe foreign OS” is enabled in yast bootloader settings.
The same installation but tried to install GRUB or syslinux from arch to /dev/sda or separate boot partition. When booting it said that no system was found (it didn’t even see the bootloader).
That’s likely impossible on GPT. “No system was found” means no active partition and GPT does not have notion of active partition.
Switched to UEFI native, installed openSUSE with GRUB-efi and “No bootable image found, notebook will be shut down” error on startup. Although, if I press F9 (this shows bootable devices) I can choose “opensuse” and boot.
That’s confusing. Do you mean that your system boots if you explicitly select “opensuse” but does not boot by default? In this case please show output of “efibootmgr -v” after booting into openSUSE.
If you added arch after openSUSE, you need to recreate boot menu in openSUSE. You may also check whether “Probe foreign OS” is enabled in yast bootloader
Yes, indeed this works now in UEFI mode.
Do you also have Windows on that box? And, if so, is that booting in UEFI mode?
No, the only systems are openSUSE and various other distros that I test (but openSUSE is managing GRUB).
That’s confusing. Do you mean that your system boots if you explicitly select “opensuse” but does not boot by default? In this case please show output of “efibootmgr -v” after booting into openSUSE.
By default, it does not boot, I just get that error, which is an UEFI eror. Here, I’ve made some shots of what’s happening uefi - Imgur
First, there’s the error. Then I restart, press ESC to enter the BIOS menu, F9 to enter the boot menu, choose EFI file and it’s done.
Well, it sounds like your EFI NVRAM space is corrupted or for whatever reason kernel cannot access it. Could you test if “efibootmgr” behaves the same in other distros?
The /boot/efi partition wasn’t touched by anything other than openSUSE.
The other distro I now have installed is debian, but I’ve skipped the bootloader installation part.
I remember that the only system I could boot into directly was Fedora, and the installation process was the same as in openSUSE, with root, swap and /boot/efi partitions.
On 2013-12-11 21:26, bogdanc2011 wrote:
>
> arvidjaar;2607385 Wrote:
>> Well, it sounds like your EFI NVRAM space is corrupted or for whatever
>> reason kernel cannot access it. Could you test if “efibootmgr” behaves
>> the same in other distros?
> The /boot/efi partition wasn’t touched by anything other than openSUSE.
EFI NVRAM is part of the “bios”, not the hard disk. There is some
explanation on the release notes, I think - if that is what arvidjaar means.
Hmm … I’m a bit surprised to find Linux on UEFI system without efibootmgr, but well …
I still believe you have hardware problems; if system is still under warranty, I’d try to contact HP - may be it is possible to reinitialize whatever storage is used for EFI variables and then you will be able to add proper boot entry for openSUSE.
As I said, the other OS doesn’t have a boot manager, GRUB2 is managed by openSUSE.
And if it’s a hardware issue, why does Fedora manage to properly install GRUB2?
On Thu 12 Dec 2013 02:06:01 PM CST, arvidjaar wrote:
malcolmlewis;2607546 Wrote:
> UEFI isn’t working…
Please explain what you mean - I’m really interested
Hi
The HP 4525s implementation UEFI/BIOS (Ver. F21) sucks… it
works fine with openSUSE 13.1 though.
In my case I’ve re-deployed it with SLES 11 SP3 and couldn’t get it to
boot via UEFI, so installed via GRUB /boot on an SD card. Changed
bootloader to elilo for UEFI booting, rebooted and set the BIOS to UEFI
mode select the efi file and boot, it just falls back and uses the MBR
on the SD card and fires up grub and boots…
I’m still working on it to get it to boot in UEFI mode, only started
building it yesterday, so just an observation at the moment.
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SLED 11 SP3 (x86_64) GNOME 2.28.0 Kernel 3.0.101-0.8-default
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Can you boot the Fedora install media in UEFI mode, and get to a root command line without installing? If you can, then run “efibootmgr -v” from there.
On 2013-12-12 22:26, bogdanc2011 wrote:
>
> arvidjaar;2607544 Wrote:
>> So please show “efibootmgr -v” output from Fedora.
> For this, I’ll have to install Fedora and overwrite openSUSE’s
> bootloader. Can I simply recover it by backing up the /boot partition?
If I understand it correctly, some/all(?) of that information is not
stored on disk, but on a small flash memory managed by the bios.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
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