[opensuse 13.2 harlequin] dual boot with windows 8

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Greetings !!

I need more information about the UEFI.
I installed opensuse 13.2 on a computer which was initially sold with Windows 8.
I succeeded to enter the BIOS (now it is no more possible with Fn+F2, don’t know why) and set from EFI to legacy.
I then installed opensuse 13.2 → it worked but Windows 8 refused to boot (I don’t care at all, it’s just a test to explain things to my students).

I returned to the BIOS and then set EFI on.
Rebooted and then Windows 8 was alone to boot.

The way I installed opensuse (legacy) seems to determine that I have to switch to legacy in the BIOS to boot opensuse 13.2 and EFI to boot Windows 8. That sucks.
I then installed opensuse 13.2 with both EFI and secure boot set at the BIOS level. I selected GRUB2-EFI as the bootloader in the install process.

The installation took not so much time… I did the online updates… rebooted and then… it worked

I selected windows to check if it is about to boot it booted but after that grub wasn’t displayed at all :{
No way to boot to on Linux :{

My true question is: why do we must install opensuse 13.2 in EFI mode (at the bios level) to have a chance to make a dual boot with Microsoft’s products ?

#2

On Wed 29 Apr 2015 07:16:02 PM CDT, soundlord wrote:

Greetings !!

I need more information about the UEFI.
I installed opensuse 13.2 on a computer which was initially sold with
Windows 8.
I succeeded to enter the BIOS (now it is no more possible with Fn+F2,
don’t know why) and set from EFI to legacy.
I then installed opensuse 13.2 → it worked but Windows 8 refused to
boot (I don’t care at all, it’s just a test to explain things to my
students).

I returned to the BIOS and then set EFI on.
Rebooted and then Windows 8 was alone to boot.

The way I installed opensuse (legacy) seems to determine that I have to
switch to legacy in the BIOS to boot opensuse 13.2 and EFI to boot
Windows 8. That sucks.
I then installed opensuse 13.2 with both EFI and secure boot set at the
BIOS level. I selected GRUB2-EFI as the bootloader in the install
process.

The installation took not so much time… I did the online updates…
rebooted and then… it worked

I selected windows to check if it is about to boot it booted but after
that grub wasn’t displayed at all :{
No way to boot to on Linux :{

My true question is: why do we must install opensuse 13.2 in EFI mode
(at the bios level) to have a chance to make a dual boot with
Microsoft’s products ?

Hi
It’s a BIOS/EFI issue, if your system hardware (which you don’t
indicate) allows a select boot option and.or you can browse to the
openSUSE efi file it will boot to grub.

If your system allows for a ‘custom’ boot option then you can add the
link to the openSUSE efi file. Now since I boot to windows rarely on
this machine I would use the cli utility efibootmgr to set the bootnext
option so on a reboot it would start automatically back to openSUSE.

On my HP ProBook 4430s I would press the F9 key for boot options and
select openSUSE (or SLED). Both my HP Probook 4440s and 455 G1 allow
for a custom boot option so it’s not an issue.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-default
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#3

At the BIOS, the explanation is simple.

It takes a lot of code to manage a modern computer. So it needs an easy way of starting. The BIOS provides that way. Boot software can make calls into BIOS subroutines to do basic functions such as read the disk.

The BIOS calls in EFI mode are incompatible with the BIOS calls for Legacy mode (compatibility mode). So booting software has to use one or the other.

Practically speaking, it mostly works well. But there are limitations with some UEFI implementations. You may have run into one of them. There are workarounds available for most of these.

If you can tell us what kind of computer you have, maybe we can help you get it all working.

#4

I tried a new installation of opensuse with the same BIOS settings but it failed at the step called “install boot manager”…

I really don’t know why once booted on windows grub disappeared…

I have a lenovo G70… I will buss up this 'crosoft **** but I’m frustrated to have it worked once and can’t really understand what happened after rebooted from Windows 8.
I just wanted to show to my student that it works and it is easy… it was untill I boot to windows… I saw the two OS listed but now no way to install opensuse it fails at the “install boot manager” step…

#5

I have a Lenovo desktop (TS140). If I hit F12 while the logo is still showing, I get a boot menu. See if that works for you.

#6

I formatted the 260 Mo EFI partition and now opensuse is booting.

The partition for Windows is still there… I will try to learn how with efi this is possible to add an entry as the good’o grub menu.lst chainloader style ^^

#7

You don’t need another EFI boot partition one is fine though ore does not seem to hurt. If you boot the Install media in EFI mode (not legacy) it will recognize things and start a EFI install It should mount the EFI boot partition (FAT formatted) as /boot/efi it will want to install grub2-efi not grub2 If secure boot is on in the EFI BIOS then you need to check the box for secure boot. ( it does not hurt to check it even if secure boot is off)

If you install in legacy (mbr) mode then you can not chain OS’s you must use the EFI boot menu to choice which OS to boot (read the instruction for you BIOS hot keys can be different between different versions of EFI)

#8

If you reformatted the existing EFI partition, then you wiped the code that boots Windows. You probably need to get a copy of that. It is probably the same on all Windows 8 UEFI systems, so you could get from a friend.

The partition for Windows is still there… I will try to learn how with efi this is possible to add an entry as the good’o grub menu.lst chainloader style ^^

The grub code for chainloading in an EFI system calls the Windows EFI bootloader, which you might have wiped.

#9

Copied the Microsoft folder found on a partition that seems to be the recovery partition of lenovo.

This file is structured as the one found in /boot/EFI called opensuse.

Try to reboot and see if something has changed for grub…

#10

it wasn’t so simple ^^

I gonna fix this another day.
Thanx for your help and enlightments ^^

#11

That opensuse folder should actually be “/boot/efi/EFI/opensuse”. You need to put the Microsoft stuff at "/boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft. The most important file there seems to be “…/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi”.

Once that is in place, run (in opensuse, as root)

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

and see if that adds a menu entry for Windows.

#12

Hi
Also need to ensure the partition is still set to ef00 via gdisk…

#13

It does. If you ever need to boot into Windows recovery mode to repair bootloader configuration it will ruin it completely instead because Windows does not expect to have two ESP and does not know which one to use (but it finds it out after it already removed existing configuration). This was definitely the case with Windows 7 and I do not expect it to change.

#14

Well Windows is an antiquated OS any way. It gets confused easily that is why I will only run it in a VM :stuck_out_tongue:

#15

Thanks a lot, I took notes… for now windows 8 was completly deleted form computer, only opensuse is working, I didn’t really needed windows 8.
I will try later on another computer and this time I will follow your advices and I will avoid deleting the EFI partition ^^