Hi
I just made a fresh install of Harlequin in a new laptop along w8.1 that came with the machine. This is my partition table:
fdisk -l
Disklabel type: gpt
Device…Size…Type
/dev/sda1…400M…Windows recovery environment
/dev/sda2…260M…EFI System
/dev/sda3…240M…Microsoft reserved
/dev/sda4…68,4G…Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda5…20,9G…Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda6…68,4G…EFI System
/dev/sda7…12,3G…Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda8…295G…Microsoft basic data
I put opensuse 13.2 in /dev/sda6 with Btrfs format
swap partition is /dev/sda7
/home (for all of my data) in /dev/sda8 with xfs format
If I start the machine and do nothing, w8.1 loads. I need to interrupt the startup with the button ESC and then** F09**. In this place I obtain 3 options:
OS boot Manager (UEFI) - Windows Boot Manager (ST500L T012 - 1DG142)
Booting from EFI file
Laptop hardisk - ST500L T012 - 1DG142
Choosing this third option loads opensuse and i see the booting menu:
openSUSE
Advanced options for openSUSE
openSUSE Memtest
Windows Recovery Environment (loader) (in /dev/sda5)
I must add that the installer made the partition table and chose the files format ‘automatically’ and I accepted it. But, you can see that /sda5 is not the booting partition of windows and I’m afraid that I can no longer access w8. (/sda5 partition is Recovery partition of windows)
Can you help me so I get this menu from the very start?
I have another machine dual booting opensuse 13.1 and w8 that gives me this menu at startup which, by the way, is much more appealing than the one i see in the new distro
Well it is a beta you know and comments should go to the beta forum.
Ok that said did you boot the install media in EFI mode or did it boot in legacy. The defualts are different and may not work as you expect if you did not boot to EFI mode.
It should install grub2-efi if it installed just grub then you are mixing MBR and EFI and it cna be a chalange to get it to work right.
Go to Yast- bootloader and see what is installed.
You apperently had 2 efi boot partitions. that can work but is not normal and you say that you installed a btrfs partition to the sda6. confusing is that what was there or is there now
You have already said that if you don’t hit those keys during boot, then you get Windows. So Windows is intact.
I’ll agree with gogalthorp. It looks as if you booted the install media in legacy MBR mode instead of UEFI mode.
I presume that the WIndows entry in the grub menu doesn’t work, and that’s why you are concerned about Windows. But the reason that it doesn’t work, is that Windows was installed to use UEFI booting, and cannot run when booted in legacy mode.
Your best approach is to boot the install media in UEFI mode, and reinstall. Use the same partition “/dev/sda6”. But you will also need to have “/dev/sda2” mounted as “/boot/efi”. And you will need to choose “grub2-efi” to handle the booting.
When booting the install media, try that same ESC, F9 trick and see if you are given an optionn to boot the install media as UEFI.
This seems to be about openSUSE 13.2 and thus should go to the Pre-release/beta forum.
It will be moved and is CLOSED for the moment.
Also to the OP, please use CODE tags and not QUOTE tags around your copied/pasted terminal texts. It is the # button in the tool bar of the post editor.
Thanks for your reply
I followed your suggestions and tried to re-install the distro. Now, i’m having hard time because the boot was well asigned to the same partition as w8 (/sda2) and this time only the root partition (/sda6) was formatted and seemingly the installation was made in this partition.
But, when i boot it boots to w8 without even showing the expected menu for iniciallizing opensuse or w8. I need to do the routine: ESC → F09 and choose to launch opensuse. It launches but i see that the 2nd installation didnot erase completely the first one because i find the image that i put in the desktop. and suddenly, the screen turns black.
Can you please tell me how to configure my bios (F.22) and what to do?
Eager to hear your kind reply
Thanks lol!
Ok in the installer you will be given a list of thing that is planed ( ie the partitioning scheme) this is the suggested partitioning. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO ACCEPT IT. If it does not look right you can fix it by editing the scheme. So if you accepted a scheme that over wrote the Windows partition, Windows is gone. Note it might do that if you gave it no free space to work with. If there is already an installation you want to do an upgrade to reinstall (note the LIVE DVDs don’t do upgrades)
All right there should not be any need to change the BIOS. You just select the modes at boot. If it were me I’d erase everything and start from scratch.
Use a partitioning tool to erase all partitions. I’d also zero out the first track to clear any partition tables that you may have created
Install Windows in EFI mode adjust size to allow space for Linux
Install openSUSE boot in EFI mode. The installer should want to install grub2-efi it should want to create 3 partitions root,swap, home and mount the EFI boot partition as /boot/efi ( the format should be FAT) In addition you need to check the box for secure boot (even if not on in the BIOS) In addition it may or may not want to mount the Windows partition but NOT format. You can do that if you desire But if you don’t understand what mount means wait it can be done after the install.
Trouble is that it appears you installed in MBR mode on a GPT EFI boot drive this made a mixed mode ie both EFI and MBR that confuses things and some softtware sees EFI and some sees MBR and that is not good. In addition it looks like you allowed the installer to install over Windows. You need to pay attention when installing any OS and not just blindly push accept. This is double important when you have muti-booting.
sda4 contains w8.1
sda5 is recovery partition of w8.1
As far as I can understand, openSUSE is booting from sda6. I must say that to get into the distro i have to go the “ESC → F9” routine, but I am able to “get in” and can work with no problems.
Can you help me fix things? I’ll very much appreciate it
That output lists the boot order as “0001,3001,0002,2001,2002,2004”.
That’s Windows, the hard drive (also Windows), opensuse, etc. The numbers refer to the left column of that output.
You can change the order. In your case, use the command:
# efibootmgr -o 0002,0001
That should set opensuse to be first and Windows to be second.
This might not work. Your UEFI firmware might change the order back on the next boot. But it is worth trying.
If that doesn’t work, there are some other possibilities that we can try.
Hi, again
After your suggestion I applied the ‘efibootmgr -0 0002 0001’ and restarted. It booted to w8.1 and when i tried to restart, the screen of ‘rebooting’ “freezed”. I pressured the i/o button forcing the shutdown. Then I turned on the machine and there was problem to initiate even windows. I forced once more the shutdown and followed the “ESC—>F9” route and tried to enter w8.1 through the openSUSE menu. I succeded and seemingly, windows was able to “repair” itself…
Now, in openSUSE I typed again ‘efibootmgr’ to obtain:
# efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0002
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,3001,0002,2001,2002,2004
Boot0000* Notebook Hard Drive - ST500LT012-1DG142
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0002* opensuse-secureboot
Boot2001* EFI USB Device
Boot2002* EFI DVD/CDROM
Boot3001* Internal Hard Disk or Solid State Disk
So, if you please suggest me the next step. Thank you lol!
Now I’m not sure if you got that right. It should be:
# efibootmgr -o 0002,0001
You can copy and paste.
The “-o” part is — minus little oh
The rest is 2,1 separated by a comma, not a space. You don’t actually need the leading zeros. But you do need the comma.
Maybe you should try that again.
So, if you please suggest me the next step. Thank you lol!
In case it still does not work, try the following command in Windows: You will first need an administrator command prompt. In that administrator command prompt, use:
What this does, is tell WIndows to use grub2-efi as its boot manager. This usually works. But first retry the previous method using copy-paste, because that’s the better way to solve the problem if it works.
Hi, good evening!
I tried once more efibootmgr -o 0002,0001 rebooted but got directly into w8. In windows I did what you told me. Opened ‘command prompt’
and typed the instruction you gave me (copy-paste). But, still no success: the laptop boots windows…
I booted opensuse (ESC—F9—opensuse) and obtain this:
# efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0002
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0003,3003,0002,2001,2002,2004
Boot0000* Notebook Hard Drive - ST500LT012-1DG142
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0002* opensuse-secureboot
Boot0003* Windows Boot Manager
Boot2001* EFI USB Device
Boot2002* EFI DVD/CDROM
Boot3003* Internal Hard Disk or Solid State Disk
It looks a bit worse, I think. What can I do?
Anyhow, I really appreciate your advice. Thank you and eager for your answer lol!
And, again, that’s to be done from an Administrative command prompt in Windows.
The previous change is relatively harmless to Windows, but still best to undo it if it didn’t work.
I have two more possibilities. I’ll just outline them for now, and get your reaction.
First possibility: Put the boot files in “/efi/EFI/Boot”. This is the only method that works on some Toshibas, but it does not seem to work on HPs. This, too, is relatively harmless to Windows. I’ll give full details if you want to try.
Second possibility: Rename the Windows boot file from “bootmgfw.efi” to something else. Then put the opensuse boot files in the Microsoft directory and rename “shim.efi” to the Windows name “bootmgfw.efi”.
This (the second possibility) will probably work. But it breaks normal Windows booting. In order to boot Windows, you will have to add a new item to the grub2 menu to boot Windows using the renamed file. If it were my computer, I think I would prefer to continue use the ESC … F9 method of booting opensuse, in preference to trying this.
I’ll await your response. Don’t actually try either of those until I fill in the details (if you want to try them).
Thank you for your reply
Yes, it is an hp notebook pc. what I see is too many windows partitions. Does it have to do with this issue? I began to think to use the recovery discs to format the whole hard disc; reinstall windows; and then reinstall opensuse. Would you suggest that?
And again, I really appreciate all of your advicelol!
No, it doesn’t. That’s just the way Windows 8 wants to install (or is installed by vendors).
Windows itself seems to behave reasonably well in UEFI systems. But your firmware (the UEFI) does not fully follow the specifications. It is giving some sort of preference to Windows over other operating systems, and ignoring some of the settings made (such as when you specify the boot preference order with “efibootmgr”).
