Leap 15.0 installation on a new (second) hard drive

I have a Lenovo H50 Desktop. On the main Hard Drive (sda) I have openSUSE 42.3 running happily. I have installed an additional new SSD and am trying to install Leap 15.0 on it with the existing /home mounted still on sda. Using the expert partitioner I can format and mount the relevant partitions on both drives. Whether or not I mount sda1 (the 200MB FAT partition) as /boot/efi the installation fails. The boot screen does not show Leap 15.0 and the existing 42.3 boots as normal. Please has anyone any suggestions?

The directory “/home” keeps a lot of configuration data from applications (e.g. KDE-desktop, XFCE-desktop, Thunderbird, Libre-Office, VLC, etc.).

openSUSE 42.3 and openSUSE 15.0 probably provide different versions of those applications which might require different configuration. To avoid problems it might be better to use different “/home” for 42.3 and 15.0 and to keep data which needs to be shared between the two openSUSE systems in a separate (additional) directory/partition.

Well, if the installation fails then openSUSE 15.0 obviously can’t be started. What are the error messages produced when the installation fails and at what stage does the installation fail?

Looks like you are using UEFI boot.

Could you please post the results of the following commands (using your working openSUSE 42.3; issued as “root” in a console):

# parted -l
# efibootmgr -v

Regards

susejunky

In 42.3 YaST > System > Boot Loader > Bootloader Options
Have you selected “Probe Foreign OS”?

I am assuming that you are installing using a DVD or NET(CD) image, from optical media or an USB/SD memory device. If not that is what I would recommend.

During the installation choose expert partitioning. On the new SSD drive (/dev/sdb ?):
Create a small empty partition (400MB) in case you later want to boot from this drive.
Create a root partition format e.g. Btrfs, choose whether or not you want snapshots, sub-volumes, etc. Mount as “/”
Decide whether or not to create an additional swap partition on /dev/sdb.
Do not create a separate /home partition.
Do not attempt to modify any /dev/sda partitions.

You will probably be asked whether you want to use the existing /home partition. If not allow the installation to complete, then copy the /home mount line from /etc/fstab in Leap-42.3 to /etc/fstab in Leap-15.0. Do this from 42,3 by mounting /dev/sdb2 in /mnt.

If sharing home then use a different user name so not to mix configuration file versions.

I’ve been keeping /home maybe since 11.x with little problem, I doubt that this might be the cause of a failure to install. From time to time I had to delete the config folder for selected applications after an upgrade though.

You have not indicated what error message you are getting.

Based on my experience with Leap 15.0 installs:

I would expect the install to complain that there is no EFI partition of at least 256M. And it might be saying that your system might not boot.

However, my own experience is that, assuming you tell it to mount “/dev/sda1” as “/boot/efi”, then the install should work anyway. You just have to ignore the complaints.

Since your system still boots to 42.3, it is clear that your install failed. But I am not sure where it failed. More information on that would be helpful.

Hmm, an afterthought. It is possible that allowed the installer to create a larger EFI partition on your external drive. And if I did that with my Lenovo system, I’m pretty sure that it would continue to boot 42.3 from the previous EFI partition, and ignore the new boot order that the installer tried to setup. That’s what my Lenovo ThinkServer does. It’s possible that your system is doing the same thing.

In any case, we could use more information on where things failed.

I agree the re-use of an already existing “/home” will almost certainly NOT cause the installation to fail.

However i doubt that it is a good idea to make e.g. the KDE PIM suite from 42.3 and 15.0 to share the same configuration data (“/home/USER/.config”, “/home/USER/.local”, …). It might work (no risk, no fun) but i would never advice one to do it.

Regards

susejunky

Agree, if the two systems have to live side by side it’s better to have different users and not share configs.

Hi
You need a separate esp as both Leap 42.3 and Leap 15.0 will use the same directory name /boot/efi/EFI/opensuse (or did it change to leap?)

On your second drive create a /boot/efi vfat and type ef00 260MB should be fine.

Really?

If we assume that the installation of openSUSE 15.0 actually did succeed (although OP said it did not) shouldn’t it be enough to start openSUSE 42.3 and run

# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grubs/grub.cfg

to enter openSUSE 15.0 in the GRUB2 boot menu? Or will os-prober fail to find openSUSE 15.0 because it is on a separate disk (SSD)?

Regards

susejunky

Hi
That’s not how UEFI works… if both use the same directory name (user nrickert changes the folder name), so easier to create another esp on the second drive…

Else you using the existing install rename the opensuse folder to say leap423 and then update the efi location from opensuse via;


efibootmgr -c -L "openSUSE Leap 42.3" -l "\\EFI\\leap423\\grubx64.efi"

You would need to delete old entries via efibootmgr -b N -B N (where N is the ref number), also probably set the default boot order as well… then you are stuck with manual maintenance…

os-prober will find across any disks installed…

Running grub may/will overwrite the existing info…

I had a quad boot setup running and two esp’s sda booted windows and Leap, other disk booted Tumbleweed and SLED (SLE uses a sled and sles for directory names) but Leap and Tumbleweed use opensuse…hence the two esp’s :wink:

Just out of curiosity:

What is the advantage of having several versions of GRUB2 (in separate ESPs and/or in separate directories in one ESP)? Each version of GRUB2 can start all installed OSs and updating GRUB2 will need special care anyway.

(I use a separate ESP for MS Windows bootloader to stop MS Windows to mess up my boot configuration).

Regards

susejunky

Hi
You don’t have to if you don’t want… there is no real maintenance overhead grub exists on the host os, not the esp, all the efi file does is tell it which one to use first… then it will boot from that one, when the other operating systems update grub and the like it should run the mok manager if required to update keys.

I always used the Tumbleweed installed version of grub without issues.

Or, you can just select the efi one from the system boot up menu… so I had efi 7 entries if I pressed the F12 key on the Dell system… secure/non-secure and winX.

Not had any issues with MS lately, that’s more of the host hardware (or older efi implementations) and it’s setup as in only boot windows first.

SUCCESS
Thank you for all your help. I tried to install Leap 15.0 again from the downloaded DVD (the same disc that I used before). Using expert partitioner,
I did not change anything on the original drive (sda). I created new partitions on the new SSD (sdb)

0.5GB FAT for /boot/efi but did NOT mount it.
5GB Linux Swap mounting as swap
50GB ext4 mounting as /

The original partition on sda that was used as /home was mounted as /home.
The original partition on sda (sda1) thathat had been mounted as /boot/efi on the 42.3 installation was mounted as /boot/efi

This time the installation completed with no error messages. When I rebooted without the install DVD in both the old (42.3) and new 15.0 options appeared in the display and 15.0 could be loaded.

Many thanks again for your help.:slight_smile: