A year ago I had several uefi install failures with 12.3-64. This time I want to make uefi work. I did read the uefi post by oldcpu. His case seems much more complicated than mine!
I have an i7-3770 on an Asus P8Z77-V LK that I just flashed with 1301 bios. My 13-1-64 install DVD is in the mail and I have my 1TB sata backed up expecting I will loose all the mbr files in the conversion to gpt.
I’ve downloaded gparted live 0.17.0-4-i686 pae in the hope that I can use it to format and partition the gpt version of my hdd before I try to install the 13.1.
From my past failures, I remember there are some bios settings related to uefi. If possible, I could use some advise with them. Things like “Secure Boot”, UEFI only, Legacy and UEFI, etc.
Something else I remember with the 12.3-64 install DVD was after the install finished, there wasn’t a “Boot from hdd” option in the first reboot screen.
Instead, the install just started over. If I quit the second install attempt, the system wouldn’t boot. Was I the only one to experience this?
I would like to partition the hdd so I can add another linux (maybe 12.3-64), so I would like two small ext2 partitions first for boot partitions. Then a pair of / partitions, a swap, a pair of /homes, a linux usr1 and a fat-32 partition to use with my xp-32 virtual machine.
These are similar to the mbr partitions I have now with 12.3 and 12.2. Of course mbr used two primary partitions and the rest on an extended partition.
Last, I remember another warning that came up during the 12.3 uefi install attempt. When I assigned the hdd partitions in the install, I got a warning about the partition table. I couldn’t get rid of that warning and if I ignored it, the fresh install wouldn’t boot. Was I alone in this too?
Let me stop here and see if anyone is willing to give me some guidance to help me make uefi work for me this time! Heboland.
His was a particularly difficult case. It was also interesting. We learned something about the quirks of UEFI implementations.
Sure, we will help you. It is possible that there may be problems. We will try to solve those as we come across them.
I actually converted from MBR to GPT, without losing anything. But I was lucky.
The existing partitions did not extend all the way to the end of the disk. There was enough free space for the backup copy of the GPT partition table that goes near the end.
I had not installed grub2 in the MBR. Otherwise the conversion would have wiped that out.
I used “gdisk” (or “gptfdisk”) for the conversion. I don’t know what is possible with “gparted”.
Can we take it that your disk will only have opensuse. That is, there is no Windows that you have to deal with?
I have no experience with telling “gparted” to use GPT partitioning. However, I can experiment on an external drive, to see what happens.
As for what you need. You will need an EFI partition, to be formatted as FAT. The BIOS should not care whether it is FAT16 or FAT32. “Parted” calls that an ESP (for EFI System Partition). I would start by creating that as the first partition on the disk, probably starting at sector 2048. My EFI partition is 500M, which seems plenty large enough.
If you can get “gparted” to create the EFI partition (or ESP, depending on what “gparted” wants to call it), then I would expect “gparted” to use GPT partitioning. Beyond that, just lay out the other partitions based on your experience.
When in the opensuse installer, you will probably need to go to expert partitioning to tell the partitioner what to use. Make sure that the EFI partition is set to be mounted at “/boot/efi”.
The details will vary from one BIOS version to another. Secure-boot should be fine, but there are more things that can go wrong. So perhaps disable secure-boot in the BIOS. If you have a choice between UEFI only and UEFI+Legacy, I would go with the latter. You will probably need legacy support to boot your “gparted” disk.
It is still going to be true that there is no “boot from hdd”. Looking at the uefi boot menu on the install DVD, I see only:
Installation
Rescue System
Check Installation Media
I guess it depends on how you do this.
On my system, the BIOS is configured to boot from the hard drive. To boot the DVD, I hit F12 during boot and get a menu. But, on the next boot, it will be back to booting the hard drive.
On a computer at work (non-UEFI), I have the BIOS set to boot the USB. If I install opensuse with a USB, then on reboot, it wants to boot again from the USB). If I select the menu item to boot the hard drive, it boots again from the USB. So timing is everything. As soon as it has completely shutdown the installer and started to reboot, I have to unplug the USB. And then I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL, in case the BIOS is confused by unplugging the USB while booting. That allows boot from the hard drive. I reinsert the USB when the final stage of install complains that it is missing and gives me a “retry” option.
Your best bet is something like F12 to get a BIOS boot menu. Failing that, ejecting the install DVD to force a hard drive boot may be the way to go.
It’s possible that your BIOS will have a similar problem to the one experienced by oldcpu. That is to say, it might not be able to boot from NVRAM entries. If you run into boot problems, then do the same. That is, do a rescue boot, mount the EFI partition. And then, relative to the EFI partition:
copy everything in “/EFI/opensuse” to “/EFI/Boot”. You might need to create “/EFI/Boot”.
in “/EFI/Boot”, rename “shim.efi” as “bootx64.efi”
and then see if the hard drive will boot.
This should not be a problem. I am presuming that you know what kind of partitioning you need.
You will need only a single EFI partition. Your easiest booting solution will be to use the grub2-efi menu from one install to boot all systems that you have installed.
I have not come across that problem. Perhaps it is from converting MBR partitioning to GPT partitioning. If you are able to GPT partition in advance, that should avoid the problem.
If you run into problems, post in this thread with as much detail as possible, and I’ll try to help. I’m hoping that you have another computer available for posting, in case you do have problems.
Not certain if this is what happened, but perhaps…???
You may have stopped the install too soon. It seems to me that when I installed 12.3, the first reboot went back to the DVD install process and started setting up the final stages. At first, I, too, thought that it had gone the wrong way and was starting the install all over, but then I realized it wasn’t and let it continue. When it was done, it did not reboot, instead, it performed a switch and went up to the Desktop.
I was at that point running 12.3 on the PC. After looking it over, I shut down normally and removed the DVD from the drive, and all was as it should be.
It would be nice, though, if there was some kind of information message at that first reboot to let you know it is supposed to go back to the DVD install to continue, because it can be confusing!
That looks pretty simple except for the loss of all data!
None of my Microsoft stuff will run on this tower except as a virtual machine, so there aren’t any foreign OSs to install.
I remember the part about the efi partition now. IIRC, in some of my posts here from last year I think I had some help to achieve that. I’ll look them up!
PiElle thanks for the link. I bookmarked and will get back to it. Once I’m ready to wipe my hdd, I can practice with reloading the 12.3-64 before the 13.1 DVD gets here.
Fraser_Bell you might be right about not waiting long enough, but this tower doesn’t wait for much. When I get to that point again I’ll pay attention to your point.
nrickert, thanks for all the details! The install warning may well have been because my hdd was still mbr. I have a Pentium tower on 12.3-32 here to stay connected during the wipeout. I’ll keep in touch! Heboland.
One fortunate thing I had going in my favour was I had no desire to retain any data that was already on the PC, so I could carve the hard drive/SSD drive as I wished. But the most important / fortunate item I had going for me, was this forum, and the superb support from some very nice and helpful people we have on this forum.
I’m looking forward to learning from your experiences on this.
Best wishes, and thank you for posting/participating in our forum.
UEFI implementations can sometimes vary between manufacturers, so it’s important to note that each install might be different. The only thing I would do configuration-wise is disable Secure Boot.
From my laptop (which is an Asus K55A), all I needed was a vfat partition partition set as type EFI (ef00). This has to be mounted as /boot/EFI. Make sure that /boot/EFI isn’t an ext partition because otherwise the UEFI system won’t pick it up. I can’t remember the details of what the installer put out, but this method has been successful for openSuSE 13.1, Fedora, Debian, and Slackware.
I found one of my year-old efi posts. Don’t know if this link will work for this list:
486511-12-3-64-UEFI-install-warnings!-Please-Help!?highlight=EF00
I’m not sure if I can reboot now, but here is what I did without realizing gdisk has real teeth! I thought I was just looking when I did this! I picked this command out of that year-old post.
root[503] gdisk -l /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.5
Partition table scan:
MBR: MBR only
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: not present
***************************************************************
Found invalid GPT and valid MBR; converting MBR to GPT format.
***************************************************************
Disk /dev/sda: 1953525168 sectors, 931.5 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 648F5EB2-3BE3-4A65-9298-F1A4113E3426
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 17773 sectors (8.7 MiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 4098047 2.0 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
2 4098048 8194047 2.0 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
3 8194048 49154047 19.5 GiB 0700 Microsoft basic data
5 49156096 79876095 14.6 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
6 79878144 141318143 29.3 GiB 0700 Microsoft basic data
7 141320192 223240191 39.1 GiB 8200 Linux swap
8 223242240 1124362239 429.7 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
9 1124364288 1175564287 24.4 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
10 1175566336 1892366335 341.8 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
11 1892368384 1953523711 29.2 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
This seems to be telling me I have gpt now instead of mbr!
I’m going to try to reboot now and see what happens. Maybe the die is cast! Heboland.
I’m back! My previous post was a false alarm. The gdisk -l option is only a list option. It’s man page shows the -w option saves the changes the list command describes.
Since I have gdisk installed, can I actually change the partition table from mbr to gpt with 12.3 while it’s running?
To me changing hdd partition tables is a serious matter that a running OS couldn’t handle. Maybe the gdisk -w option requires and attempted reboot.
How could I use gdisk to change my hdd from mbr to gpt even if I loose all the current data and maybe partitions? Heboland.
I would not advise it, though it would probably work.
In this case, all of your assigned partitions appear to be within the range of GPT usable partitions.
If you change to GPT, then that will possibly erase anything written in the unassigned space following the MBR. If you have grub2 installed in the MBR, that will be damaged. However, if you are using traditional generic boot code in the MBR, with grub installed in a partition, then changing to GPT should not damage anything.
I had a disk in a similar situation – the last partition did not extend all the way to the end, and there was nothing in the unassigned space following the MBR. So I converted it to GPT by using “gdisk” and saving the result. However, I was not booted to a system on that disk at the time. I would hesitate to make such a change for the running system. Use a live CD/DVD/USB for that. The 13.1 rescue live CD boots to XFCE, does have “gdisk” and fits on a CD.
That’s why I don’t advise doing it. But if you did, here is what would probably happen:
gdisk would warn you that the change might destroy data;
if you say go ahead, gdisk would save the changes, and then tell you that it is asking the operating system to reread the partition table;
there would be an error message that rereading the partition table failed. The system would continue running on cached information about partitions. It won’t see the new partition table until reboot.
you would probably reboot at that stage, only to find that your system is unbootable.
If you want to change to GPT, yet keep the system bootable, then you would need to make sure that there is generic boot code in the updated MBR (usually called a protective MBR). And you would need to setup hybrid partititioning, so that your boot partition is listed as both an MBR partition and a GPT partition. I think the “h” command within “gdisk” will do that, with probably some warnings that it’s a bad idea.
In your case, you want to start over and create an EFI partition. So best to backup what’s needed, and then either boot a live rescue CD to use “gdisk”, or boot the live “gparted” CD as you originally suggested.
I’m getting more interested in gdisk as this thread progresses. This earlier comment of yours on this thread
I actually converted from MBR to GPT, without losing anything. But I was lucky.
The existing partitions did not extend all the way to the end of the disk. There was enough free space for the backup copy of the GPT partition table that goes near the end.
I had not installed grub2 in the MBR. Otherwise the conversion would have wiped that out.
I used “gdisk” (or “gptfdisk”) for the conversion. I don’t know what is possible with “gparted”.
now raises two questions if I may:
1. How did you use gdisk here - from a live, bootable cd?
2. I have some unused, but now formatted space on my hdd. Also my 12.3-64 boots grub2 from a boot partition. What if I used gparted to open up a unpartitioned region at the bottom of my hdd for the gpt table? Could I make myself "lucky" like you?
Use a live CD/DVD/USB for that. The 13.1 rescue live CD boots to XFCE, does have “gdisk” and fits on a CD.
Is this also true for 12.3-64 which I have on hand now?
I’ve never created a live, rescue CD. Is that something the DVD installer creates? I remember seeing a “rescue” option on the install DVD, but not a choice to created a rescue CD.
Before I go, let me add this perspective of my hdd FWIW:
root[501] lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 2G 0 part /boot
├─sda2 8:2 0 2G 0 part /boot32
├─sda3 8:3 0 19.5G 0 part /ntfs
├─sda4 8:4 0 1K 0 part
├─sda5 8:5 0 14.7G 0 part /usr1
├─sda6 8:6 0 29.3G 0 part /share
├─sda7 8:7 0 39.1G 0 part [SWAP]
├─sda8 8:8 0 429.7G 0 part /slash32
├─sda9 8:9 0 24.4G 0 part /home32
├─sda10 8:10 0 341.8G 0 part /
└─sda11 8:11 0 29.2G 0 part /home
sdb 8:16 1 7.6G 0 disk
└─sdb1 8:17 1 7.6G 0 part /run/media/frank/SONY8GB
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom
root[502]
Back again with a little more to add to this thread.
I booted to the gparted live CD mentioned in the original post. At the third prompt, option 2 gets a root console. This gparted has gdisk. It also has a man page for it, but I’m not able to scroll beyond the part that’s displayed. Piping the man gdisk to more or less doesn’t change that. I don’t really need this man page!
Also with the same gparted, I contracted the 12.3-64 /home partition (bottom partition) by 500MB which should be more than adequate for the gpt table. This 12.3 didn’t have a problem with the smaller /home.
My plan now is to use the gdisk on the live gparted CD to write the gpt conversion to my hdd. Before I start, I’ll wait to see if I get any encouragement or discouragement from this list. Heboland.
I took the plunge with the debian gdisk on my gparted. After the gpt conversion a reboot gets “Operating System not found”.
Looking at the hdd now with gdisk shows a gpt disk. gparted shows the partitions to be “identical”, but there is a small unpartitioned segment where the extended partition use to be.
I would first like to rescue the 12.3-64.
To me I seem close to accomplishing this. Maybe I need to create a partition in the unpartitioned space to make the partition numbers match what they were before.
Otherwise it should take a grub2 tweak made from the 12.3 install DVD rescue.
If there are any kindred spirits there that would care to contribute suggestions, I’m watching?
I seem to recall saying that would probably happen – see comment #12 above.
If you are doing MBR booting, then the boot code is going to look for partitions in the MBR, rather than in the GPT partition table. And it’s likely that the only partition there is the protective partition that maps all space.
To get around this, you would have to setup hybrid partitioning, where your boot partition (the one where grub is installed) is defined in both the MBR and the GPT partition table (with the same extents), and marked active in the MBR.
The alternative would be to do UEFI booting. But that requires the right stuff being present in the EFI partition.
At this stage, it might be worth trying to setup hybrid partitioning, with the “h” command of “gdisk”. I think you need to first use the “x” command to get to expert options, and then the “h” command. I have never tried to do that, so I don’t know how well it works.
I was wondering if my reference to “kindred spirits” my be a slur in other communities. I meant it in the highest regard!
A dead system is rather like a corpse that needs to be dealt with. BTW the hdd boot response after the gpt conversion was “Missing Operating System” rather than what I wrote previously.
It didn’t surprise me that the gpt conversion caused a no boot, and yes you warned me. So with “slim pickens” on the dead tower, I went back to the debian gparted. It has a root lxterminal feature that I’ve never used before. That shell has a robust UI where I could scroll thru the gdisk man page line by line.
At least in that debian version, the man page recommended reloading grub2 in case of a boot failure. When my wait for kindred spirits timed out, I stuffed in my 13.1-34 DVD that just arrived today. I thought if I told it to do a 12.3-34 upgrade it should reload grub2. Of course there was a chance the upgrade might not realize the new env was gpt.
It may be premature to praise the 13.1 team, but the 13.1 upgrade boots after upgrading a 12.3 that was missing OS! Good job guys!
Of course this thread is UEFI and non-uefi upgrade is off topic, but now I have a gpt hdd and a bootable 13.1. To me that’s big progress.
Now what I want to do is reinstall the 12.3-64 as a UEFI dual boot on my new gpt hdd. To me this is on topic. Would you agree?
For the record, I decided the 13.1/12.3 restore DVD mentioned previously in this thread is a 600MB iso file that has to be bought or downloaded rather than created by the install DVD. Let me know if this decision is wrong!
Moving on to uefi, the upgraded 13.1 boot partition is sda1.
root[501] gdisk -l /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.7
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 1953525168 sectors, 931.5 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 9166AB63-4FC2-433D-AA61-B1958F7CEACD
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 1041773 sectors (508.7 MiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 4098047 2.0 GiB EF00 Linux filesystem
2 4098048 8194047 2.0 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
3 8194048 49154047 19.5 GiB 0700 Microsoft basic data
5 49156096 79876095 14.6 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
6 79878144 141318143 29.3 GiB 0700 Microsoft basic data
7 141320192 223240191 39.1 GiB 8200 Linux swap
8 223242240 1124362239 429.7 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
9 1124364288 1175564287 24.4 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
10 1175566336 1892366335 341.8 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
11 1892368384 1952499711 28.7 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
root[501]
Will I have to sacrafice partition #1 for a uefi install, or could I use #2 for /boot/efi for a 12.3 dual boot install?
Heboland.
You could use either. But if you plan to use #2, then change its type code to EF00, and change the code for #1 to 8300. The reformat it as FAT (either FAT16 or FAT32 should work). You can use “gdisk” to change the type code.
Whichever partition you plan to use, you will need to have mounted as “/boot/efi”. If you plan to rescue an existing system, you will have to fix “/etc/fstab” with that mount.
If you have a 600MB iso file, that is probably the live rescue system. It should boot to XFCE.
You can use a rescue CD to convert an existing system to using UEFI boot. If you need help doing that, I can give the details.
renatov let me start with you. nrickert can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think gpt is a requirement for a uefi boot.
I bought this state of the art tower that I hope will stay current with technology for a few years. As I understand the upward movement of technology mbr is being replaced by gpt. I’ve accomplished that now.
Uefi was one of the features of the HW I bought and I want to learn how to use it and at the same time stay abreast of the tech movement. Already I’ve learned a bundle about gpt and uefi from this list.
nrickert, I don’t have that 600MB iso file. I’m on the end of DSL here with fencewire BW. The gparted iso is about 170MB and it took all night to get that. Had I known, I could have ordered the live 13.1 CD when I bought the DVD. Right now I think the live gparted CD can do most of what the bigger disk can. I’m impressed with it!
Do the uefi creation details you have describe how to use gdisk or is there another utility that I will need?
The reason I wanted to use sda2 for the /boot/efi partition was to keep the now /boot partition on sda1 as is for a possible recovery in case the uefi boot fails.
If I swap the type codes between sda1 and sda2, I’m expecting the data on those partitions doesn’t get changed as a result. I see that code as being similar to setting an mbr boot partiton active. Am I close with that view?
I’ll keep fstab in mind if I have another system to rescue!
Just for grins, is there an easy way to reinstall grub2? I felt lucky to have had a DVD of a newer OS than the one installed so I could upgrade the system, thus installing a new grub2. Without a newer install DVD, flash, network, how could I have reinstalled grub2?
I’m expecting I can do the mounting of sda2 as /boot/efi during the uefi install if I swap the 1&2 partition type codes previously. Heboland.