New install boot problems

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I have just installed Tumbleweed/KDE on my shiny new HP Pavilion. Everything went without a hitch, I wiped windows (never used windows7 on my other laptop) and installed, but after the first reboot it asked for reinstalling windows and gave a few options. I finally could boot into Tumbleweed using the option to use a USB device. THere I checked and saw that I left the 500MB Recovery partition (NTFS) which is sda1. Here is the output of fdisk -l:

fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 3ABADEC5-302C-42FE-8B80-E3F03CD20F44

Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1       2048   1023999   1021952   499M Windows recovery environment
/dev/sda2    1024000   1228799    204800   100M EFI System
/dev/sda3   85114880 110280703  25165824    12G Linux swap
/dev/sda4  110280704 976773134 866492431 413.2G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda5    1228800   3325951   2097152     1G EFI System
/dev/sda6    3325952  85114879  81788928    39G Linux filesystem

Partition table entries are not in disk order.

What is the best way to have the computer booting into Tumbleweed?
Cheers
Uli

2

I tried to play around and I deleted the sda1 partition and now I get the error messager “Your PC needs to be repaired”. I still can go into the bios and boot from USB but it is still not satisfactory. I would like to boot normally into Tumbleweed - there is no other OS on. Any ideas are really appreciated.
Cheers
Uli

3

I am guessing. You will have to check whether my guess is right.

Most likely, the partitions were renumbered. So what was “/dev/sda2” is now “/dev/sda1”

If that’s right, then you to fix “/etc/fstab”. And you probably need to fix the grub menu and the “initrd”.

Since this is a new install, you might find it easier to just reinstall. You should be able to reuse existing partitions (might require expert partitioner). The reinstall should fix all other problems.

4

Thank you nrickert.
The partitions were not renumbered and fstab file is a long way off - I just want it to boot without problems. What I want is that the grub menu is visible - there is somewhere and it cannot be in the recovery partition any more - a boot instruction from Windows telling me that there is an error. Can that not simply remover or overwritten by grub?

5

I would reinstall using the wipe disk option. A single OS installation using the whole disk doesn’t need two EFI system partitions or a Windows recovery partition.

It might pay to first do another USB boot and capture the output of of

efibootmgr -v

to show here. A fix might be a simple matter of BIOS selection of the other EFI partition as priority, and give an idea what happened to cause this.

6

after reinstall I have exactly the same problems - here is fdisk - now

fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 3ABADEC5-302C-42FE-8B80-E3F03CD20F44

Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1  110280704 194166783  83886080    40G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda2    1024000   1228799    204800   100M EFI System
/dev/sda3   85114880 110280703  25165824    12G Linux swap
/dev/sda4  194166784 976773134 782606351 373.2G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda5    1228800   3325951   2097152     1G EFI System
/dev/sda6    3325952  85114879  81788928    39G Linux filesystem

Partition table entries are not in disk order

I really appreciate any help!

7

… try reinstall again. Boot with the installer, and when you get to the disk proposal, choose Expert Partitioner (or Advanced Partitioner, I forget its exact name).

Before going ahead, though, with the following instructions, wait for nrickert to check and correct it, as I do not have any UEFI installs, nor do I use BTRFS, so there may be some changes to my instructions.

Start fresh, instead of from the proposal.

In there, you should see your drive.

Choose the drive, and you see the partitions.

Select a partition, choose to delete it. (Going by memory, but you may need to choose to Edit first, then delete, you will have to read the dialogues and buttons and understand.)

Then, select another partition and do the same.

Keep doing this until all partitions are deleted, except do not delete the first of those two EFI partitions, if you are installing in UEFI mode (and it looks like you are).

After that, you can use the partitioner to create 3 new partitions, create one for the system and decide your size, and when you click on the Edit button, choose to format and to mount as “/”

Create another for home, and in edit, choose to format and to mount as “/home”.

Create a small one for Swap (about double your installed memory, for hibernating) and, of course, choose to format and mount as “swap”.

Then, off you go with the rest of the install.

Since it is only one system, choose to install Grub to the MBR & to the /boot partition.

When done, fdisk should only list 4 partitions.

At any rate, there should only be one EFI partition.

8

It doesn’t look like the 2nd installation wiped the disk first. The second isn’t using the space that the first allocated to the Windows recovery partition. I wouldn’t be surprised if the EFI is still pointing to sectors there even though there is no partition assigned there. Also, both are using exactly the same sectors for the first EFI system partition of only 100MB, and you still haven’t shown us efibootmgr -v. :frowning:

I think if it was here I’d wipe the disk’s start and end, then reboot, then install. That ought to prevent having more than one EFI system partition, and prevent displaying a message about reinstalling Windows.

9

FWIW, this is what my only EFI/GPT disk looks like:

|ID |ux|Dr|Type, description|Format  |Related |VolumeLabel|Description             |  Size MiB |
+--</dev/sda     GPT disk  1>--------+--------+-----------<Phys D1   298.1 GiB>----+-----------+
|01 |  |  |Fsp + GPT hdr/pta|-- -- --|-- -- --|- - - - - -|Size 0x7de sectors      |        1.0|
|01 | 1|  |EFI System  (ESP)|FAT32   |mkfs.fat|GB3201ESP  |gb32 EFI System (ESP)   |      320.0|
|02 | 2|  |Linux Swap       |SWAP    |LinuxV1 |SWAPSPACE2 |gb32 P02 Swapper        |     2304.0|
|03 | 3|  |Linux Data       |EXT3    |Linux   |gb3203usrlc|gb32 P03 /usr/local     |     2296.0|
|04 | 4|  |Linux Data       |EXT3    |Linux   |gb3204home |gb32 P04 /home          |     6400.0|
|05 | 5|  |Linux Data       |EXT3    |Linux   |gb3205pub  |gb32 P05 /pub           |    16000.0|
|06 | 6|  |Linux Data       |EXT4    |Linux   |gb3206stw  |gb32 osTW P06           |     7200.0|
|07 | 7|  |Linux Data       |EXT4    |Linux   |gb3209s150 |gb32 os150 P07          |     7200.0|
|08 | 8|  |Linux Data       |EXT4    |Linux   |gb3208deb9 |gb32 Debian Linux 9 P08 |     7200.0|
|09 | 9|  |Linux Data       |EXT4    |Linux   |gb3209s423 |gb32 os423 P09          |     7200.0|
|10 |  |  |Fsp + GPT pta/hdr|-- -- --|-- -- --|- - - - - -|Size 0x1e69228f sectors |   249124.3|

|ID |ux|Dr|Type, description|Begin Sect|End sector|   Cylinder range  |  Sectors |  Size MiB |
+--</dev/sda     GPT disk  1>----------+----------+-------------------<Phys D1   298.1 GiB>--+
|01 |  |  |Fsp + GPT hdr/pta|        22|       7ff|       0 -        0|       7de|        1.0|
|01 | 1|  |EFI System  (ESP)|       800|     a07ff|       1 -      320|     a0000|      320.0|
|02 | 2|  |Linux Swap       |     a0800|    5207ff|     321 -     2624|    480000|     2304.0|
|03 | 3|  |Linux Data       |    520800|    99c7ff|    2625 -     4920|    47c000|     2296.0|
|04 | 4|  |Linux Data       |    99c800|   161c7ff|    4921 -    11320|    c80000|     6400.0|
|05 | 5|  |Linux Data       |   161c800|   355c7ff|   11321 -    27320|   1f40000|    16000.0|
|06 | 6|  |Linux Data       |   355c800|   436c7ff|   27321 -    34520|    e10000|     7200.0|
|07 | 7|  |Linux Data       |   436c800|   517c7ff|   34521 -    41720|    e10000|     7200.0|
|08 | 8|  |Linux Data       |   517c800|   5f8c7ff|   41721 -    48920|    e10000|     7200.0|
|09 | 9|  |Linux Data       |   5f8c800|   6d9c7ff|   48921 -    56120|    e10000|     7200.0|
|10 |  |  |Fsp + GPT pta/hdr|   6d9c800|  2542ea8e|   56121 -   305245|  1e69228f|   249124.3|

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048          657407   320.0 MiB   EF00  gb32 EFI System (ESP)
   2          657408         5375999   2.3 GiB     8200  gb32 P02 Swapper
   3         5376000        10078207   2.2 GiB     8300  gb32 P03 /usr/local
   4        10078208        23185407   6.3 GiB     8300  gb32 P04 /home
   5        23185408        55953407   15.6 GiB    8300  gb32 P05 /pub
   6        55953408        70699007   7.0 GiB     8300  gb32 osTW P06
   7        70699008        85444607   7.0 GiB     8300  gb32 os150 P07
   8        85444608       100190207   7.0 GiB     8300  gb32 Debian Linux 9...
   9       100190208       114935807   7.0 GiB     8300  gb32 os423 P09

I fully partitioned in advance of booting any installation media, and chose the EFI partition size based on quite some reading, including on microsoft.com. ATM, this one is waiting on a RAM RMA due here Monday. Once it’s here, I do it all over with the the M.2 that arrived shortly before the RAM croaked.

10

Thank you mrmazda and Fraser_Bell, I will do a new install tomorrow. But I want to explain one thing and may be I will get some more responses until then. I have 2 EFI partitions as I get the error message that the first (existing) one with 100Mb is too small and I should create another one. Of course I should have increased the other one to avoid having two of those partitions. But after creating the second one it was accepted by the installer and I thought it will be OK.
I wondered about something else. When I go into BIOS I can set it to boot into opensuse. I tried that and saved it but it resets after every shutdown and I wondered if this is a BIOS problem. I will try around this tomorrow as well and report back.
Thank you for your help.
Cheers
Uli

11

Not all BIOS behave the same. Plus, the BIOS has two controls. One is the one one expects in BIOS setup. The other is the boot device selection menu, typically F12 at POST time. One or the other may not stick, depending on the particular BIOS. It might be worth checking to see if a BIOS update is available.

The 100MiB is too small message is neither fatal nor a true error. It can be ignored. In the long run, it’s probably better to delete it and make a bigger one, 250MiB or 320MiB or even 500MiB should work without producing any error messages. 1GiB is serious overkill. In most cases, even the little 100MiB will only be fractionally utilized, but its FAT filesystem space utilization is quite inefficient, and gets poorer as size is increased.

12

You made that too hard.

Once in the expert partitioner, select “/dev/sda” in the left column.

Near the bottom right, there should now be a button labeled “Expert”. Click that, and you can select to create a new partition table. Make it a GPT partition table. Doing that will delete all existing partitions.

Then, with “/dev/sda” still selected in the left column, use the “Add” button near the bottom to add partitions.

When you add a partition, you specify the size (or allow it to be everything). Next, you specify what the partition is for. The choices, as best I recall, are:

  • operating system
  • data partition
  • EFI partition
  • swap partition

and then there may be additional options on the next screen (such as “btrfs”, “ext4”, etc).

I would start with the EFI partition first. With a large disk, might as well make that 500M. That’s probably bigger than needed, but that leaves space for future changes. The installer should suggest mounting that at “/boot/efi”.

Leave the “/home” partition until last. Set that as a data partition, and allow it to use all remaining space on the disk. The 12G for swap and the 50G for root partition (I think that’s what was being used) are probably good sizes).

You should finish up with 4 partitions: an EFI partition at “/boot/efi”, a swap partition, mounted as swap, the root partition mounted at “/” – the installer suggests “btrfs” for that, though personally I choose “ext4”. And the remaining partition at “/home” – the installer suggests “xfs” for that, though I personally choose “ext4”.

My reason for “ext4” is that it has worked well for me. I have tried “btrfs” and don’t much like it. I have tried “xfs” and that seemed to be fine. If you want to do rollbacks to earlier snapshots, you need “btrfs” for the root partition. But I would never that. If I totally mess up my system, I would prefer to reinstall, but keeping current partitions and preserving contents of all but root partition.

13

Yes, exactly! Funny thing, that is exactly how I do it.rotfl!

However, when I was trying to go by memory, for some reason I did not remember that!!!

… which, of course, is why I said to wait for you to make corrections.:wink:

14

BTW: I, too, use ext4 for / and /home, as well as any additional data partitions. Same reasons as nrickert.

15

Thank you, all of you, I rearranged the partitions with a larger efi partition (500MB) as as Fraser_Bell, mrmazda and nrickert suggested and now the computer is booting OK. Here the fdisk -l command:

fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 3ABADEC5-302C-42FE-8B80-E3F03CD20F44

Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1       2048   1050623   1048576   512M EFI System
/dev/sda2    1050624  84936703  83886080    40G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3   84936704 110102527  25165824    12G Linux swap
/dev/sda4  110102528 976773134 866670607 413.3G Linux filesystem

So now it is a matter of getting Multimedia, etc working. Thanks again
Uli

16

That new partitioning looks a lot better.

17

Indeed! Congratulations!

18

Great!!! :slight_smile:

That output looks a lot better, as well. Glad you have things sorted out.

… and, thanks for reporting back.:good: