The old faithful Lenovo machine just rolled over so I’m staring at a brand
new HP Envy machine (12Gb ram, 2 tb drive, i7-3770 processor, Nvidia GT630
graphics). It has W8 installed and I want to install openSUSE 12.3 from the
git-go. Given what little I know about EFI, I could really use some basic
advice and help before I muck things up so please bear with me.
Other than potential interaction with HP, I forsee little use for W8 once I
get openSUSE running but I’d like to shrink it down to minimal resources and
keep it available. I have a couple of 250Gb SATA drives which I could fit
into the box if it would simplify things or is it possible to shrink W8 and
use the remaining portion of the 2tb drive for Linux?
As configured by default, the only boot options w/o disabling the EFI boot
are USB connected floppy/CD/hard drive or network, so I can’t even get the
12.3 live dvd to be recognized so I’m stuck at the windows-only poiny right
now. Is there a “for dummies” tutorial availble somewhere or can someone
guide me thru this goat-rope?
What a beast:O The openSUSE 12.3 DVD has an install option for efi boot which works very well, so I would think you would have no problems. Oh wait, you want to keep Win8?
In that case I would clone Win8 onto one of those extra 250GB drives you have before I did anything else. I would also make sure you can put that drive in the case and boot up win8 as normal, only then would I start the install of openSUSE.
Assuming Win8 is booting from cloned 250GB drive I would then yank it out and instlall openSUSE to the 2TB drive.
Hey, are you that other person from that other thread that had this exact same problem/guestion??? There are so many dual booter’s sometimes I get mixed up.
The Disk Management tools in Win8 should be able to shrink the Windows main partition. On my Dell box, I have a 1T drive. Shrinking with Windows gave me around 500G of free space. I actually installed opensuse on a second hard drive (also 1T) before I did the shrinking. I suggest you give the shrinking a try.
If you copy the 12.3 DVD image to a USB (I used “dd_rescue” for that), then you should be able to boot it. For me, it booted in UEFI mode with secure-boot enabled.
For installing:
The partitioner will probably want to mount the EFI partition as “/boot/efi”. Just make sure that it does not try to reformat that.
In the Boot section of install, it should have selected “grub2-efi”. Make sure that you check the box for configuring secure-boot. You might have to get into boot options to see that box.
Beyond that, it will be much like any other install.
You might find that everything works fine until you boot Windows. And, after that, you cannot get back into opensuse. If that happens, post back here asking for help. Or take a look at Notes on UEFI, Windows and linux
>
> Will Honea;2560954 Wrote:
>> I have a couple of 250Gb SATA drives which I could fit
>> into the box if it would simplify things or is it possible to shrink W8
>> and
>> use the remaining portion of the 2tb drive for Linux?
>
> The Disk Management tools in Win8 should be able to shrink the Windows
> main partition. On my Dell box, I have a 1T drive. Shrinking with
> Windows gave me around 500G of free space. I actually installed
> opensuse on a second hard drive (also 1T) before I did the shrinking. I
> suggest you give the shrinking a try.
>
> If you copy the 12.3 DVD image to a USB (I used “dd_rescue” for that),
> then you should be able to boot it. For me, it booted in UEFI mode with
> secure-boot enabled.
>
> For installing:
>
> The partitioner will probably want to mount the EFI partition as
> “/boot/efi”. Just make sure that it does not try to reformat that.
Does this leave you with the problem of Win erasing the extra entry in the
table?
> In the Boot section of install, it should have selected “grub2-efi”.
> Make sure that you check the box for configuring secure-boot. You might
> have to get into boot options to see that box.
>
> Beyond that, it will be much like any other install.
>
> You might find that everything works fine until you boot Windows. And,
> after that, you cannot get back into opensuse. If that happens, post
> back here asking for help. Or take a look at ‘Notes on UEFI, Windows
> and linux’ (http://tinyurl.com/potwn3o)
Ok, so i do the initial bot to W8, go through the registration, etc. then
use Win to shrink itself. Assuming I use “dd_rescue” to get a usable image
on the flash drive, I alter the BIOS setup boot order to boot from the USB
then proceed as normal - being careful with the boot options as mentioned
above.
Your writeup was excellent, BTW. Even this old dog learned a lot.
On Wed, 29 May 2013 02:16:02 +0000, Will Honea wrote:
> I have a couple of 250Gb SATA drives which I could
> fit into the box if it would simplify things or is it possible to shrink
> W8 and use the remaining portion of the 2tb drive for Linux?
Yes, you can do that - I was playing with that in a VM, and what I found
is that it’s better to use W8’s disk management to shrink the Windows
partition, then let the installer do its thing.
I managed to get openSUSE to shrink it once, but on subsequent tries
(restoring a snapshot I took pre-install), the installer claimed that
Win8 didn’t shut down cleanly, but repeated disk checks and whatnot said
it was fine. I even went as far as to make sure the “fast boot” feature
was entirely disabled, and it still refused to shut down clean so openSUSE
could resize it during the installation.
> I managed to get openSUSE to shrink it once, but on subsequent tries
> (restoring a snapshot I took pre-install), the installer claimed that
> Win8 didn’t shut down cleanly, but repeated disk checks and whatnot said
> it was fine. I even went as far as to make sure the “fast boot” feature
> was entirely disabled, and it still refused to shut down clean so openSUSE
> could resize it during the installation.
W8 is so intuitive, I thought I was going to have beat the machine to death
with a stick to get it to shut down any way short of pulling the plug!
Still looking for the disk manager - but the wife says that at least it’s
keeping me busy and not spending more money.
This is like sitting in a new Corvette - stuck in a traffic jam. Never
thought I’d say this: W8 makes Vista look actually user friendly.
OK, rant finished (for now). Back to the hunt.
Jim, your comments confirm my experience so far. I’m taking notes for a
“How to” post once I’m satisfied to pull all this into a 1,2,3 process for
the future since I’ll likely have to repeat it for the wife’s machine and at
least 3 new laptops shortly. I can’t wait for the church to upgrade all the
boxes there!
On Wed, 29 May 2013 16:55:44 +0000, Will Honea wrote:
> W8 is so intuitive, I thought I was going to have beat the machine to
> death with a stick to get it to shut down any way short of pulling the
> plug! Still looking for the disk manager - but the wife says that at
> least it’s keeping me busy and not spending more money.
Go to the desktop, right-click in the lower left-hand corner, and you
should see “Disk Management” in the pop-up. That’s where I found it in
Win8.
I’m going through the process for a book I’m writing; I’d like to cover
secure boot as well, but I can’t find a VM environment that it actually
works in, unfortunately.
Right-click on the bottom left corner. That will give you a menu for 95% of what you ever want to do.
And if you right click on the bottom right corner, you will get the remaining 5% (namely, how to power off the machine).
The rest of the screen is filled with stuff you will probably never use. And, if you accidently click on something there, it will probably take you to the Windows store where Microsoft would like you to spend money.
I don’t doubt that there are people who would disagree with my assessment. But those are not unix/linux people.
> Go to the desktop, right-click in the lower left-hand corner, and you
> should see “Disk Management” in the pop-up. That’s where I found it in
> Win8.
>
> I’m going through the process for a book I’m writing; I’d like to cover
> secure boot as well, but I can’t find a VM environment that it actually
> works in, unfortunately.
I took the cowards path: open HELP, searched on disk partitioning, then
followed the hot links
I tried to check the USB image I created and the media check passed but
couldn’t get VBox to boot from the USB so I can’t help you any there. The
USB boots on the new box but the system hangs right after loading the kernel
and initializing the ramdisk so I’m back to the beginning.
I’ll be near the head of the line when you get that book done, BTW.
> Right-click on the bottom left corner. That will give you a menu for
> 95% of what you ever want to do.
>
> And if you right click on the bottom right corner, you will get the
> remaining 5% (namely, how to power off the machine).
>
> The rest of the screen is filled with stuff you will probably never
> use. And, if you accidently click on something there, it will probably
> take you to the Windows store where Microsoft would like you to spend
> money.
>
> I don’t doubt that there are people who would disagree with my
> assessment. But those are not unix/linux people.
I’m right with you. I’m looking forward to getting Linux back running so
that I can actually get something useful done soI’ll beback here frequently
> What a beast:O The openSUSE 12.3 DVD has an install option for efi boot
> which works very well, so I would think you would have no problems. Oh
> wait, you want to keep Win8?
>
> In that case I would clone Win8 onto one of those extra 250GB drives
> you have before I did anything else. I would also make sure you can put
> that drive in the case and boot up win8 as normal, only then would I
> start the install of openSUSE.
>
> Assuming Win8 is booting from cloned 250GB drive I would then yank it
> out and instlall openSUSE to the 2TB drive.
>
> Hey, are you that other person from that other thread that had this
> exact same problem/guestion??? There are so many dual booter’s sometimes
> I get mixed up.
No, that thread popped up after I wrote the original post.
I’ve managed to shrink W8 and get an initial boot but I’m hanging up after
the kernel loads so it’s back to the drawing board on image creation. This
looks like an issue I’ve seen in other places - just glad I have several
computers to look for help!
On Wed, 29 May 2013 19:35:24 +0000, Will Honea wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>
>> Go to the desktop, right-click in the lower left-hand corner, and you
>> should see “Disk Management” in the pop-up. That’s where I found it in
>> Win8.
>>
>> I’m going through the process for a book I’m writing; I’d like to cover
>> secure boot as well, but I can’t find a VM environment that it actually
>> works in, unfortunately.
>
> I took the cowards path: open HELP, searched on disk partitioning, then
> followed the hot links
I had a coworker years ago who cited something he picked up in the Army:
“If it’s stupid but it works, it ain’t stupid.”
> I tried to check the USB image I created and the media check passed but
> couldn’t get VBox to boot from the USB so I can’t help you any there.
> The USB boots on the new box but the system hangs right after loading
> the kernel and initializing the ramdisk so I’m back to the beginning.
>
> I’ll be near the head of the line when you get that book done, BTW.
I’m hoping to have it done within the next month or so, depending on
other projects. It’s taking me a while to fit it into my other work-
related projects (challenge of being a contractor/consultant is that you
take the work when it comes, which makes it difficult to plan stuff).
There’s no such option on a UEFI boot. There’s only “Installation”, “Rescue Mode” and “Check Media”.
Is there a way to get to a text-mode install from a rescue boot with the install DVD? That might be the best workaround for video problem.
The other choice would be to disable secure-boot, switch the BIOS to legacy MBR mode if needed, and install the old fashioned. Make sure that the EFI partition is mounted as “/boot/efi” (so that gets into “fstab”). And tell the installer to not install booting. Then use the rescue boot in text mode to fix booting.
>
> Have you tried the no KMS option, Should be in the video option menu at
> bottom of the screen.
I’m beginning to have doubts about the thumb drive. It will continue into
the installation about half the time. I got 3-4 “successful?” installs then
started to run into errors installing grub2-efi:
That sounds like it is trying to write to the EFI partition on the hard
drive since that’s the mount point for the Windows-created EFI partition.
I’ve also run into the issue of W8 wiping out the openSUSE entries in the
boot table so maybe that will be a fix for the current issue.
The cause for all the re-installations is a complete failure of both the
wireless and the Ethernet adapters - but that’s a problem for later. Right
now, I’m building another thumb drive. At least, this thing goes through an
installation like a scalded dog but it’s time for a break anyway. Maybe a
quick brew will help…
Well, that’s odd. It should be trying to create “/boot/efi/EFI/opensuse”.
But perhaps you miscopied the error message.
The EFI partition should be mounted on “/boot/efi”.
If the EFI partition happens to have “/efi” rather than “/EFI” inside, that might confuse opensuse but work fine for Windows. I guess you could take a look.
>
> Will Honea;2561209 Wrote:
>> “mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/boot/EFI/opensuse’: input/output
>> error”
>
> Well, that’s odd. It should be trying to create
> “/boot/efi/EFI/opensuse”.
>
> But perhaps you miscopied the error message.
>
> The EFI partition should be mounted on “/boot/efi”.
Well, the new image/device blows up at the same point with the same error.
That directory actually exists on the EFI partition. I did, in fact, mistype
the full name; it should have read /boot/efi/EFI/opensuse. I can access
and view it from Windows. Using alt-ctrl F1 I can review part of the
installation log but not much so I’m going to have to get a bootable live CD
onto another flash drive and see if I can get to the disk version of the log
to see what crapped out. HP has some EFI utilities that may also offer some
help.
What’s irritating is that I got through half a dozen or so installs before
this started and, had the network come up, I’d be on my way. I post back if
I can find what went wrong and any fixes I find.
