openSUSE and new hardware ? ( uefi, secure boot, gpt, ssd)

English Hardware
#1

Hello ;=)

First of all i’d like to send you my best whishes for the new year beginning today , specially to all the people helping the community all around :slight_smile:

I have a few questions about openSUSE and brand new hardware management.
I guess that most part of new motherboards are using a UEFI bios so my question is to understand how the uefi, gpt, and secureboot are managed by openSUSE : are they a problem or why not ?
In a nutshell i need to be sure to know what to do before buying a brand new pc :
1- anything different and important to be careful of vs the old generation ‘Bios MBs’ ?
2- Is secureboot a problem during the install process and how can i fix this ?
3- Is GPT usefull and how can i use it ? Which option is default for partition management (mbr or gpt ) ?
4- How is SSD managed by the OS ?

Thanks for your help :wink:

#2

On Wed 01 Jan 2014 12:26:01 AM CST, manchette fr wrote:

Hello ;=)

First of all i’d like to send you my best whishes for the new year
beginning today , specially to all the people helping the community all
around :slight_smile:

I have a few questions about openSUSE and brand new hardware management.

I guess that most part of new motherboards are using a UEFI bios so my
question is to understand how the uefi, gpt, and secureboot are managed
by openSUSE : are they a problem or why not ?
In a nutshell i need to be sure to know what to do before buying a brand
new pc :
1- anything different and important to be careful of vs the old
generation ‘Bios MBs’ ?
2- Is secureboot a problem during the install process and how can i fix
this ?
3- Is GPT usefull and how can i use it ? Which option is default for
partition management (mbr or gpt ) ?
4- How is SSD managed by the OS ?

Thanks for your help :wink:

Hi
And a Happy New Year to you too :slight_smile:

  1. Not an issue
  2. Nope, not an issue, you may need to check the ‘bootloader’ before
    continuing to install to ensure ‘secure boot’ is checked.
  3. Yes, very useful, since it protects the mdr region on the disk, no
    nasties :wink: I fully recommend GPT disk, plus no need for an extended
    partion as well…
  4. For ext4 or btrfs you need to add some fstab options, maybe tweak
    the i/o scheduler and if you have lots of ram, set the swapiness sysctl
    option.

You may have some fun with booting if the Motherboard expects a windows
system present, but after the install, you can manually boot the efi
file and then set via the efibootmgr the nextboot option. But I have no
major issues on my HP 2000 Notebook with secure boot.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SLED 11 SP3 (x86_64) GNOME 2.28.0 Kernel 3.0.101-0.8-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

#3

On 2014-01-01 01:26, manchette fr wrote:

> I guess that most part of new motherboards are using a UEFI bios so my
> question is to understand how the uefi, gpt, and secureboot are managed
> by openSUSE : are they a problem or why not ?

Not a problem, except if the motherboard implementation is faulty. Those things are new,
manufacturers are starting to implement them, and those are sometimes very different and even faulty
sometimes.

Then there is the snag that few people understand them (I don’t), because they are new, so if you
hit a problem it takes longer for somebody that understands it comes by and helps you.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Elessar))

#4

Hello :wink:

Speaking of fun , is there a way to know before the boot if the motherboard will expect a windows os ?
Can you please unfold this part ? “you can manually boot the efi
file and then set via the efibootmgr the nextboot option.”

Robin : When you say ‘faulty’ : is there some faultiness that’s already described ? Like implementation, components, brands or features to avoid may be ? Or did you mean the product being faulty by itself in which case the after sell process could suffice ?
About knowledge this is exactly my concern : it needs time to settle down :slight_smile:

fyi : the motherboard could be this one, not decided for sure yet as i’m still gathering more informations http://www.hardware.fr/prix/fiche-789275/cartes-meres/msi-b85-g43.html

Thanks :wink:

#5

On 2014-01-01 10:56, manchette fr wrote:
>
> Hello :wink:
>
> Speaking of -fun- , is there a way to know before the boot if the
> motherboard will expect a windows os ?

ALL motherboards expect Windows. Linux is an intruder, even twenty years after.

> Robin : When you say ‘faulty’ : is there some faultiness that’s already
> described ? Like implementation, components, brands or features to avoid
> may be ? Or did you mean the product being faulty by itself in which
> case the after sell process could suffice ?

You find them reading the forum here, people having problems and how they solve them. I don’t have a
list of faulty implementations. Hopefully a bios update (uefi update, actually) should solve the
issue, but the manufacturer may not be aware of the problem or not care enough.

Some people had to do strange things to bypass their issues. I believe all succeed, sooner or later.

> About knowledge this is exactly my concern : it needs time to settle
> down :slight_smile:

Yes, it does. But if you need a computer now, you have to hope. Just google your model and Linux,
see what people comment about that. Don’t be the first to try a new road. Be the penguin behind :wink:

(meaning: I try not to buy newly released models)

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Elessar))

#6

Only thing I see that’s not clear: graphics. All other stuff should work AFAICS. The rest: @malcolmlewis said it all. Personally I don’t see UEFI/Secure boot as “fairly new”; IMHO it’s there and it’s not going to go away, manufacturers are not going to produce new NON-UEFI motherboards. I’ve had absolutely no issues installing 13.1 on new machines. Not as a single OS, not alongside Win7, Win8.

#7

I’ll answer those in order. I see that Malcolm has already answered, but you might be interested in multiple responses.

  1. Well, sure UEFI is different. It seems to that some manufacturers don’t quite have it right yet, so how UEFI works is a bit variable. It is usually possible to work around any problems.
  2. No, secure-boot has not been a problem for most people. The install media for both 12.3 and 13.1 should boot in a secure-boot environment. With 12.3, it did not install secure-boot support by default – you had to check a box on the boot loader settings screen. With 13.1, that is corrected.
  3. GPT is a better partitioning scheme than the older MBR system. And UEFI is a better way to boot.
  4. sorry, no experience with SSD, other than to notice that people seem to be doing well with it.
#8

On 2014-01-01 14:46, Knurpht wrote:

> Only thing I see that’s not clear: graphics. All other stuff should work
> AFAICS. The rest: @malcolmlewis said it all. Personally I don’t see
> UEFI/Secure boot as “fairly new”; IMHO it’s there and it’s not going to
> go away, manufacturers are not going to produce new NON-UEFI
> motherboards.

That’s true, of course.

> I’ve had absolutely no issues installing 13.1 on new
> machines. Not as a single OS, not alongside Win7, Win8.

Well, you can read the reports here of people with incorrect uefi implementations.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Elessar))

#9

On Wed 01 Jan 2014 09:56:02 AM CST, manchette fr wrote:

Hello :wink:

Speaking of -fun- , is there a way to know before the boot if the
motherboard will expect a windows os ?
Can you please unfold this part ? “you can manually boot the efi
file and then set via the efibootmgr the nextboot option.”

Hi
As others have indicated, there are forum threads on peoples issues,
and some manufacturers have it right for UEFI. Personally I like UEFI
booting, no need to worry about some machine code on a part of the
disk, just a file to pick and boot…

The best way if you don’t have the motherboard, is to go to the
Manaufactures website and download the manual and browse that to see
what UEFI options are available.

Most motherboards should have a ‘Boot from EFI file’ option when
selecting the boot device at system start up, eg on this HP it’s F9
some systems F12 etc. Once booted into the system you can switch to
root user and use the following commands to check out and change if
required.


efibootmgr -v

BootCurrent: 0003
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0003,3003,0000,0001,2001,2002,2003
Boot0000* opensuse HD(1,800,82000,e3536bbf-8c9c-4786-b1ad-7ac1225156fa)File(\EFI\opensuse\grubx64.efi)
Boot0001* opensuse-secureboot HD(1,800,82000,e3536bbf-8c9c-4786-b1ad-7ac1225156fa)File(\EFI\opensuse\shim.efi)
Boot0003* SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 SP3 HD(1,800,82000,e3536bbf-8c9c-4786-b1ad-7ac1225156fa)File(\efi\SuSE\shim.efi)


efibootmgr -n 0001

BootNext: 0001
BootCurrent: 0003
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,3003,0003,0001,2001,2002,2003
Boot0000* opensuse
Boot0001* opensuse-secureboot
Boot0003* SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 SP3

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SLED 11 SP3 (x86_64) GNOME 2.28.0 Kernel 3.0.101-0.8-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

#10

This is how I have set up SSD, and it works fine. I note though that openSUSE 13.1 is different in some respect than when I first started using this drive on OS 12.2, I can’t for instance manually set my scheduler in /sys/block/sdX/queue/scheduler as it now gets overwritten by a system reboot. Back then I just changed the scheduler for the SSD to noop and used the default cfq for the HDD, using this method.

I select my preferred scheduler here instead: YaST Boot Loader Options > Optional Kernel Command Line Parameter, I chose deadline as I have both an SSD and an HDD installed.

I mount the SSD partitions with the discard and noatime parameters.

To avoid frequent SWAP usage I have lowered swappiness in /etc/sysctl.conf, from default value 60 to 10. If you have an HDD also you may put the SWAP partition on that one instead, low swappiness value, however, is supposed to increase performance in any event.

It is also recommended to mount /tmp/ to RAM, some also suggest to mount /var/spool, /var/tmp and even /var/log to RAM.

How to maximise SSD performance with Linux
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:SSD_performance

Happy New Year everyone!

Olav:)

#11

On 2014-01-02 03:56, F Sauce wrote:
> It is also recommended to mount/tmp/ to RAM, some also suggest to mount
> /var/spool, /var/tmp and even /var/log to RAM.

If you do, in case of problems and crash you have no clue to read. No logs.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Elessar))

#12

The priority for those who advocate putting /var/log to RAM is, I suppose, to limit disk write and thus increase the lifespan of the drive.
I don’t do this myself though.

#13

On 2014-01-02 07:16, F Sauce wrote:

>> If you do, in case of problems and crash you have no clue to read. No
>> logs.

> The priority for those who advocate putting /var/log to RAM is, I
> suppose, to limit disk write and thus increase the lifespan of the
> drive.
> I don’t do this myself though.

I know, but I think it is misplaced, with current hardware. Better would be adjusting kernel to
delay and group writes (the customizations in laptop mode tools do it).

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Elessar))