If you are able to get into your 12.3 installation, one way or another, you can (more-or-less) do it from there – together with that gparted disk for repairs.
Before I continue, can you tell me if you are currently able to get into 12.3 (boot it), even if only in MBR mode?
Correct.
The rescue CD can be downloaded for free here openSUSE Leap - Get openSUSE or can be purchased.
The install DVD should have a Rescue option, though. But you can’t create the Rescue CD using the install DVD.
(…well, maybe you can if you are into doing a lot of unnecessary low-level work?) 
Again thanks for the responses!
Fraser_Bell, I’d rather accomplish this uefi boot without the rescue CD, but I need it, I will order it. Yes both the 12.3 and 13.1 install DVDs have rescue options. Back a couple of post I was at the 12.3 root rescue console on the i7 tower when I attempted to ask the “kindred spirits” from the P3 tower for guidance. Then I wanted to reinstall grub2. nrickert later advised to change fstab.
nrickert, I probably can get into my 12.3-64 one way or another, but let me be more precise about the “way” I have. I used the 13.1 install DVD I bought to upgrade the 12.3 rendered unbootable by the gpt conversion. Whether that upgrade fixed fstab or reinstalled grub2, or both, the upgrade emerged as a bootable 13.1.
My virtual machine came thru intact as well as office, thunderbird, and firefox. If I may slip in an off-topic result of the 13.1 upgrade, I don’t expect this would be the result of the gpt conversion, but I’ve never seen this one before:
[32m OK [0m] Found device TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100.
Starting File System Check on /dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS-part5…
[32m OK [0m] Found device TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100.
[32m OK [0m] Found device TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100.
Activating swap /dev/sda7…
Activating swap /dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS-part7…
[32m OK [0m] Activated swap /dev/sda7.
[1;31mFAILED[0m] Failed to activate swap /dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS-part7.
See ‘systemctl status dev-disk-by\x2did-ata\x2dTOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS\x2dpart7.swap’ for details.
[1;33mDEPEND[0m] Dependency failed for Swap.
[32m OK [0m] Found device TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100.
Starting File System Check on /dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS-part11…
systemd-fsck[488]: usr1: clean, 4400/944000 files, 263857/3840000 blocks
Bootlog has this swap boot error.
In dmesg there seems to be a recovery?
frank[5012] dmesg | grep -i swap
8.449892] ALSA patch_realtek.c:426 SKU: swap=0x0
9.606815] Adding 40959996k swap on /dev/sda7. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:40959996k FS
frank[5012]
Again off topic is there a way to know if swap is working?
nrickert, when you say “mbr mode” do you mean non-efi mode? The picture in my head now is that I have a 13.1 gpt system. The mbr is in my rear view mirror!
What I want to do for the next step now is to install the 12.3-64 in uefi mode and have that pick up the 13.1-64 as a dual boot. The uefi 12.3-64 install will overwrite a 12.3-32 installation now loaded into sda8 (/32) and sda9 (/home32). /boot/efi will be on sda2.
As you advised before sda1 will have to have it’s type change to 8300 and sda2 needs to by type EF00. Does this make sense?
I should end up with an efi dual boot between 12.3-64 and 13.1-64. Heboland.
You should be able to find that out with any one of the four following commands:
cat /proc/swaps
swapon -s
free -m
top
Oooops! Forgot to give you a very important step.:shame:
First, before running the live-fat-stick:
Blow away the partitions now on the device.
Create a single vfat partition.
Then follow the steps in previous post.
Okay. So you can boot 13.1. That’s enough to get things going, I think.
Are you booting 13.1 in MBR mode or in UEFI mode?
If you are not sure, then boot your 13.1 system, and run the command (as root)
# efibootmgr -v
Maybe post the output here using code tags.
In any case, if that gives an error message, then you probably booted in MBR mode. If it gives some output (perhaps weird looking), then you are in UEFI mode.
For comparison, here’s the output that I get:
# efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0002
Boot0000* tumbleweed-secureboot HD(1,800,fa000,c0b70134-6c3b-4722-835e-6bc174ade394)File(\EFI umbleweed\shim.efi)
Boot0002* Windows Boot Manager HD(1,800,fa000,a0547a0a-57c0-405d-b6b9-a01ca4839f0f)File(\EFI w\shim.efi)WINDOWS.........x...B.C.D.O.B.J.E.C.T.=.{.9.d.e.a.8.6.2.c.-.5.c.d.d.-.4.e.7.0.-.a.c.c.1.-.f.3.2.b.3.4.4.d.4.7.9.5.}...t................
Your output would be different, but would list bootable systems.
Maybe also provide the output from “df” (again, with code tags).
The “realtek.c” line probably has nothing to do with your swap partition. The other line looks okay. From a similar command, my output is:
% dmesg | grep swap
0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.11.6-4-desktop root=/dev/mapper/suselvm-root ro resume=/dev/suselvm/swap splash=silent quiet showopts
0.000000] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.11.6-4-desktop root=/dev/mapper/suselvm-root ro resume=/dev/suselvm/swap splash=silent quiet showopts
0.389375] PM: Checking hibernation image partition /dev/suselvm/swap
18.619081] Adding 15724540k swap on /dev/mapper/suselvm-swap. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:15724540k FS
You can use the “free” command to see how much swap you have. If it shows 0 in the total column, then it is not working. Otherwise it is probably fine.
Yes. Or legacy mode. It’s called by different names. Technically, a GPT disk still has an MBR, though it is a fake one (called “protective MBR”).
Okay, that is doable. However, you are going to run into problems.
Here’s the difficulty. Your 13.1 system, assuming it is in UEFI mode, is known as “opensuse” or “opensuse-secure” … probably the latter. And its boot loader is in “/boot/efi/EFI/opensuse”. When you install 12.3, it will want to use the same name and the same location for storing the boot loader. And that might make your current system unbootable.
Now there is a way of changing the system name. But it does not work during a 12.3 install. It does work with a 13.1 install.
If you have 13.1 working properly, your best bet is to change the name of the 13.1 system. And then install the 12.3. Note that a reinstall is not required. A bootloader configuration change, via Yast, is sufficient.
That “efibootmgr -v” output that you saw shows my system as having name “tumbleweed-secure” and using boot loader in “/boot/efi/EFI/tumbleweed”. I’m not actually running tumbleweed at present, though I did with 12.3. I used that name to avoid the conflict.
I’ll wait till I see your response. Then I’ll fill in the details for changing the name of the 13.1 system. Well, okay, here’s what you have to do anyway.
Again, this assumes that you are booting in UEFI mode.
And yes, the rest of what you ask does make sense.
Thanks for the responses again!
I don’t have much time, but let me respond with what i can.
Fraser_Bell, this is the swap code results!
root[503] cat /proc/swaps
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/sda7 partition 40959996 0 -1
root[504] swapon -s
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/sda7 partition 40959996 0
top - 10:25:01 up 1:19, 2 users, load average: 0.08, 0.05, 0.07
Tasks: 239 total, 1 running, 238 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 0.1 us, 0.1 sy, 0.0 ni, 99.8 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
KiB Mem: 16144732 total, 1949028 used, 14195704 free, 115300 buffers
KiB Swap: 40959996 total, 0 used, 40959996 free, 1221792 cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
878 root 20 0 460904 57760 46472 S 0.665 0.358 0:32.12 X
1095 frank 20 0 965616 24052 14200 S 0.665 0.149 0:22.53 netactview
12222 frank 20 0 472108 16872 11116 S 0.665 0.105 0:00.68 lxterminal
115 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.333 0.000 0:00.15 kworker/0:1
1 root 20 0 48352 4180 2292 S 0.000 0.026 0:00.62 systemd
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.01 ksoftirqd/0
5 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 kworker/0:0H
6 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.30 kworker/u16:0
7 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 migration/0
8 root -2 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuc/0
9 root -2 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcub/0
10 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:02.14 rcu_preempt
11 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.79 rcuop/0
12 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.59 rcuop/1
13 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.50 rcuop/2
14 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.55 rcuop/3
15 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.16 rcuop/4
16 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.17 rcuop/5
17 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.13 rcuop/6
18 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.25 rcuop/7
19 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcu_bh
20 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuob/0
21 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuob/1
22 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuob/2
23 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuob/3
24 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuob/4
25 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuob/5
26 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuob/6
27 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuob/7
28 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcu_sched
29 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuos/0
30 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuos/1
31 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuos/2
32 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuos/3
33 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuos/4
34 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuos/5
35 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuos/6
36 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuos/7
37 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.01 watchdog/0
38 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.01 watchdog/1
39 root -2 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuc/1
40 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 migration/1
41 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/1
43 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 kworker/1:0H
44 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.01 watchdog/2
45 root -2 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 rcuc/2
46 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 migration/2
47 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/2
49 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.00 kworker/2:0H
50 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.000 0.000 0:00.01 watchdog/3
root[507] free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 15766 1924 13842 74 112 1204
-/+ buffers/cache: 606 15159
Swap: 39999 0 39999
root[508]
nrickert, I’m sure my 13.1 upgrade is not booted as uefi, so altho sda used a gpt structure, I’m still booting mbr.
root[508] efibootmgr -v
Fatal: Couldn't open either sysfs or procfs directories for accessing EFI variables.
Try 'modprobe efivars' as root.
root[509]
root[509] df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda10 352644204 8013912 343538708 3% /
devtmpfs 8059248 12 8059236 1% /dev
tmpfs 8072364 0 8072364 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 8072364 6232 8066132 1% /run
tmpfs 8072364 0 8072364 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 8072364 6232 8066132 1% /var/lock
tmpfs 8072364 6232 8066132 1% /var/run
/dev/sda3 20479996 66612 20413384 1% /ntfs
/dev/sda5 14991904 687332 13520188 5% /usr1
/dev/sda2 2015824 216516 1680524 12% /boot32
/dev/sda11 29462500 14651880 13772004 52% /home
/dev/sda6 30704960 6274736 24430224 21% /share
/dev/sda1 2015824 92100 1804940 5% /boot
/dev/sda9 25066604 9666244 14334380 41% /home32
/dev/sda8 443358384 6531232 435909648 2% /slash32
root[510]
Just a quick look at the swap stuff seems to indicate it’s not working. The i7 tower has 32GB or better of DRAM so maybe the 13.1 doesn’t need the swap. I’m going to post this and run. You know better now the status of the 13.1 on the i7 tower. Heboland.
Yes, that is clear. You are not booting UEFI.
We will need to try plan B.
Before we try to convert to UEFI booting, can you see whether you are able to boot something (such as the install DVD) in UEFI mode? If we cannot boot anything in UEFI mode, that might be a BIOS limitation. If you are able to boot the install DVD (either the 12.3 DVD or the 13.1 DVD) in UEFI mode, then we can proceed to try switching your installed system to using UEFI.
This indicates that you have a huge 40-Gig Swap, several times larger than it ought to be, and that it is running. It also indicates, with your 32-Gig of RAM, you probably don’t really need a Swap, as it is not being used and looks unlikely it will ever be needed. But, I would keep a 4-Gig (not 40-Gig) Swap, anyway.
Hi all !
On my ASUS P8H67-V motherboard (with core i5-2500)
the boot menu of the BIOS can be entered at startup by F8.
Inserting the openSUSE 13.1-64 installer DVD at power on and
then getting into the BIOS boot menu by F8,
among other entries (like for the internal hard disk),
I get two entries for the DVD drive/disk in that BIOS boot menu
(just tried it out again):
SATA: Optiarc DVD RW AD-7280S
and
UEFI: SATA: Optiarc DVD RW AD-7280S
Choosing the second entry would boot the installer DVD in UEFI mode,
choosing the first entry, on the other hand, would boot it in legacy/MBR mode.
The BIOS setup on my ASUS P8H67-V can be accessed by the DEL key.
There, even a graphical representation of the bootable drives is given,
which in principle represents the same information as the BIOS boot menu,
however with less precision, as no explicit device names like
‘Optiarc DVD RW AD-7280S’ are included.
There (i.e. in the BIOS setup menu) the DVD drive with the openSUSE 13.1-64
installer DVD in it as well is displayed two times - the second time with an ‘UEFI’
sticker on it.
That would here be the one to choose, if the 13.1 installer DVD should be booted
in UEFI mode.
Good luck
Mike
Again thanks responders!
ratzi, those bios details are just what I need. Last year I used my bios gui similar to what you wrote. I do want to try this first with the 12.3-64 DVD in hopes of having an efi bootable 12.3 system with the 13.1 as a dual boot. I may be able to try your examples tomorrow.
nrickert, the bios version I was running last year seemed to work similar what ratzi just described.To me it seems unlikely that the bios upgrade to 1301 would have wrecked that functionality. I can test that with the examples ratzi showed that closely match my Asus bios.
Fraser_Bell, glad to know the swap is working. Wonder why I’m getting to boot log error? So back in the days of smaller memory the rule of thumb used to be to make swap size from memory size to twice memory size. I’ve noticed that rule of thumb seems to be shrinking.
This swap problem is weakly linked to the uefi thread, first whether the gpt conversion caused the boot log error. Now it would be nice to make use of the unused swap space before the uefi install.
For a target as a talking prop (already shown elsewhere), let me redisplay this:
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
├─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 28.7G 0 part /home
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom
root[502]
With swap being “above” the 13.1 root and home (sda10 and 11) I think making two partitions out of sda7 would wreck the 13.1. Easy gets for reducing swap to 4GB would be to add the remaining 35GB to the bottom of /share or to the top of slash32.
In the /share case, the beginning sector location of swap changes. Do you think the 13.1 could figure out what happened to swap or do fstab and or grub2 have to be manually changed to compensate for that change? Heboland.
Actually, for your amount of RAM, I should have suggested about 8-GB, not 4-GB. Brain is getting old. As to the rule of thumb, that applied to the very small memory on earlier models (ie: 16-Megs, 32-Megs) and even that requirement adjusted downward as the megabytes of RAM increased in more modern units.
With swap being “above” the 13.1 root and home (sda10 and 11) I think making two partitions out of sda7 would wreck the 13.1. Easy gets for reducing swap to 4GB would be to add the remaining 35GB to the bottom of /share or to the top of slash32.
In the /share case, the beginning sector location of swap changes. Do you think the 13.1 could figure out what happened to swap or do fstab and or grub2 have to be manually changed to compensate for that change? Heboland.
I’m not necessarily suggesting at this point that you need to change the Swap size. Being too large doesn’t actually hurt anything, except tie up some disk space.
If you feel you would like to have that extra space, though, I would add the space to the /share partition (If I read that output correctly, that is the first logical partition in an extended partition, am I correct?).
First, turn the swap off. Once it is off, delete it. Expand your /share partition by an extra 30-GB, leaving 10-GB for your Swap. Recreate your Swap, mount it & turn it back on.
Best bet is to do all this within the Yast partitioner, and everything will be handled by openSUSE.
Fraser_Bell, thanks for the response!
According to post #13 on this thread, sda4 was the former extended partition. usr1 would be the first actual partition on the extended partition. share would be the second. OK, if I change swap, I’ll size it at 8GB.
From there you are leading me into new territory. I see I have a root command “swapoff”. So your suggestion is sudo swapoff, then yast > > partitioner. Then delete the swap partition, grow share, then create a new swap partition in the remaining unformatted space. Exit yast then sudo swapon.
To me using yast >> partitioner (which I’ve never used) makes me wonder if yast >> partitioner would automatically track changing the start location of a partition. Any comments on that?
Another partition question (probably a no-brainer) is about the handful of small (1MB) unpartitioned spaces between the original partitions since converting to gpt. I see there was an option for gdisk that would avoid the creation of all those little spaces. My question regarding the little unpartitioned spaces would be if I can include the adjacent ones into the new share and swap, or do they have to be left for gpt spacers?
Tomorrow I should have the time to get back on topic and try to do a successful uefi boot. Heboland.
Sorry, brain hiccup … That is correct, and thanks for correcting me. Looking back, I am puzzled how I missed that. I was looking at the missing sda4 in your “prop” list, which tells me it was the extended partition, then somehow skipped the usr1 partition, when I knew that the missing sda4 extended indicates the first logical would have been sda5!
OK, if I change swap, I’ll size it at 8GB.
From there you are leading me into new territory. I see I have a root command “swapoff”. So your suggestion is sudo swapoff, then yast > > partitioner. Then delete the swap partition, grow share, then create a new swap partition in the remaining unformatted space. Exit yast then sudo swapon.
To me using yast >> partitioner (which I’ve never used) makes me wonder if yast >> partitioner would automatically track changing the start location of a partition. Any comments on that?
The answer is pretty much a yes, but: I think, for now, that the Swap situation probably is best left alone, since this really is about you getting 13.1 up and galloping. Perhaps you should continue with that topic, for now, as it is a much more important subject and doesn’t really need any additional distractions.
Once that is done, if there is still a desire to tweak the Swap, you could start a new thread with the above questions.
With the help of nrickert, ratzi, oldcpu, and many other knowledgeable openSUSErs, we should be able to get this all worked out to your satisfaction. In the course of that, it will probably solve your following questions:
Another partition question (probably a no-brainer) is about the handful of small (1MB) unpartitioned spaces between the original partitions since converting to gpt. I see there was an option for gdisk that would avoid the creation of all those little spaces. My question regarding the little unpartitioned spaces would be if I can include the adjacent ones into the new share and swap, or do they have to be left for gpt spacers?
Tomorrow I should have the time to get back on topic and try to do a successful uefi boot. Heboland.
I have a uefi boot! It went smooth as grease, but there is good and bad.
Let me start with the good, (uefi boot) which is what this thread is about. Thanks to all the advice, and coaching from the resonders to this thread.
ratzi, the F8 displayed a menu I hadn’t seen before, but very similar to what you described after I loaded the 12-64 install DVD in the drive.
From there I selected the uefi option and began the install. When I got to the disk partitioning, I chose custom for experts. I mounted all the sda partitions. sda2 I selected to format to FAT and to be mounted at /boot/efi. Also I selected to format sda8 to ext4 and mount as /. sda9 I formated to ext4 and mounted as /home. No warning message came up (I think because of the gpt conversion). The install proceeded flawlessly including the first reboot.
I linked the 12.3 efi apps like firefox, libre office, etc back to the mounted 13.1 home .mozilla, etc.
Probe foreign OSs was the grub2 install default, so I left that stand. grub2 found the 13.1 on sda10 and sda11 and added access to them in the boot screen. (BTW the 12.3-64 doesn’t have a problem activating swap in the /var/log/boot.log like 13.1 did!)
This is what the efi test response looks like now:
root[501] efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0001,0002
Boot0000* opensuse HD(2,3e8800,3e8000,690e58a7-7970-4959-ab28-e3033080a1a4)File(\EFI\opensuse\grubx64.efi)
Boot0001* CD/DVD Drive BIOS(3,0,00)AMGOAMNO........o.H.L.-.D.T.-.S.T. .D.V.D.R.A.M. .G.H.2.4.N.S.9.5....................A...........................>..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L.N.K.C.T.E.B.4.7.4.2. .7. . . . . . . . ......AMBO
Boot0002* Hard Drive BIOS(2,0,00)AMGOAMNO........o.T.O.S.H.I.B.A. .D.T.0.1.A.C.A.1.0.0....................A...........................>..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L. . . . . . . . . . .1. .9.3.V.A.S.Y.S.R......AMBO
root[502]
Now for the bad news!
The 13.1 on sda10 doesn’t boot. Instead a boot attempt prints out an indexed column of identical messages containing approximately “sda2 Can’t findl ext4 file system”. The listing never quits - I had to reset the system with the tower power button.
I thought the bootup F8 menu would let me boot 13.1 from the sda1 partition, but that’s not a choice. There are two choices, but they are essentially the same choices I get from the 12.3 grub2 bootup menu. One choice leads to 12.3, the other the endless columns.
So where from here? This is already a long thread and pretty much the topic of this tread has been solved thanks to all the help I got.
For myself I would like to get my 13.1 to boot again ideally as a dual boot, but individually would be OK.
May I ask the responders for some feedback as whether it’s best to continue this thread on to the subject of dual boot with uefi, or to start another thread on that subject? Heboland.
Excellent.
Wasn’t “sda2” the device that you were going to convert to an EFI partition? In that case, you needed to modify your 13.1 to not need it as an ext4 partition.
I’m looking for more information at this point.
Thanks for sticking with me nrickert!
Yes, sda2 is the FAT /boot/efi partition. sda1 is the ext2 /boot for non-efi 13.1.
I did forget to follow one piece of your advice: I didn’t change sda2 to EF00 prior to the install. Guess I expected the uefi install would take care of that, but none of the partition types were changed.
root[501] gdisk -l /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.5
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 223221759 68.4 GiB 0700 Microsoft basic data
7 223223808 223240191 8.0 MiB 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[502]
Note that I did shrink the swap to 8GB and grew share with the difference. That’s another story, but I’ll tell that later if anyone wants to hear it!
Another aside, but I think it’s related to this thead. I put in the live gparted CD to check the partition types and it wouldn’t boot. I went into the i7 bios and changed the DVD drive boot status to legacy. It booted then, but the 12.3 uefi wouldn’t. Instead the 13.1 attempted to boot. To get the 12.3 back up I had to change the bios to boot from uefi only.
I’m not yet real fluent with the i7 uefi bios settings. There may be a combination of them that allow a uefi hdd boot or a legacy DVD drive boot.
My gparted doesn’t show partition types and I don’t think I can use it to change them. gparted shows sda1 as efi1 with flags boot and legacy. That live CD does have gdisk in case I need to use gdisk to change partition types.
One other comment is the 13.1 failure to activate swap. That comment is a red line when splash=off, which is the way both 13.1 and 12.3 are set. Still when the 13.1 attempts to boot, that red comment line scrolls across the screen like a tracer bullet. Only the 13.1 boot has that behavior. Heboland.
If it is really FAT, that would explain why your attempt to boot 13.1 could not find ext4 on sda2.
If you want to proceed with getting UEFI working, then you are going to need an EFI partition (flagged type “efoo” and formatted to FAT).
We at least do have evidence that you can use UEFI with your BIOS.
I’m not sure where to go from here. I need more information on what you are wanting to try.
Hi heboland !
If you would install in UEFI mode on a blank (or completely empty/or wiped) hard disk,
then the openSUSE installer would created the partitions with the right filesystems for your.
But not in the case of your hard disk.
The installer just can’t do that, without risking to destroy data or to render your hard disk unreadable.
And even if you install on an empty hard disk it may be wise to increase the size of the EFI boot partition,
at least if you intend to go for a multiboot with other Linuxes or windows.
Hmmm, what I see from this is that you did in fact shrink your swap to 8 MB instead of 8 GB
(which means a factor of 1000) !!
Sorry to say that, but that’s just the numbers above.
Further I don’t see that you would have any EFI boot partition.
Forget about gdisk for a moment.
Please open a terminal,
become root using the command ‘su’,
and then say ‘parted -l’.
Please post the output of that here.
Further, it would be good to hear if you have backups of the data on your hard disk.
Good luck
Mike
Thanks again for the replies!
ratzi, you have a sharp eye to catch that 8MB. Let me tell my swap shrinking story - I’ll try to be breif!
swapoff doesn’t do anything but invoke the it’s help display, so I used swapoff-a. Then I used the yast > System > partitioner. It gave me max and minimum sizes for swap. I took the minimum size which was 8. When I went to the Continue button, I got some errors, so I quit the tool and ran swapon. I went to the live gparted and found that swap had been shrunk to 8 and the unpartitioned space was underneath it.
With the live gparted, I moved swap to the bottom of the unpartitioned space resulting from the yast partitioner, while preserving the 1MB guard bands gdisk created. Then I grew the share partiton down to the new swap. The 13.1 booted fine, but until your comment, I didn’t realize I had swap at 8MB rather than 8GB. I wouldn’t expect any problem growing swap back to 8GB. I don’t think the swap size has any bearing on the problem.
So for your command:
root[506] parted -l
Model: ATA TOSHIBA DT01ACA1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 2098MB 2097MB ext2 Linux filesystem boot, legacy_boot
2 2098MB 4195MB 2097MB fat32 Linux filesystem
3 4195MB 25.2GB 21.0GB ntfs Microsoft basic data
5 25.2GB 40.9GB 15.7GB ext4 Linux filesystem
6 40.9GB 114GB 73.4GB fat32 Microsoft basic data
7 114GB 114GB 8389kB linux-swap(v1) Linux swap
8 114GB 576GB 461GB ext4 Linux filesystem
9 576GB 602GB 26.2GB ext4 Linux filesystem
10 602GB 969GB 367GB ext4 Linux filesystem
11 969GB 1000GB 30.8GB ext4 Linux filesystem
root[507]
I see this is the same thing I see with the live gparted. Thanks for showing me that command!
Since you have a bios similar to mine, can you set that up so it will boot your uefi OS and also boot a non-uefi CD without changing your bios setting? It seems to me it would be an extreme requirement that a uefi install can only happen on a blank hdd!
nrickert, I copied my /etc/fstab to show you I have /boot/efi on a FAT partition.
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS-part8 / ext4 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS-part9 /home ext4 acl,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS-part7 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS-part2 /boot/efi vfat umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS-part1 /boot13.1 ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS-part11 /home13.1 ext4 defaults 1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS-part3 /ntfs ntfs-3g users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS-part6 /share vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS-part10 /slash13.1 ext4 defaults 1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA100_139AVYSRS-part5 /usr1 ext4 defaults 1 2
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
/etc/fstab lines 1-15/15 (END)
I think I followed the guidance I got here except for changing the partition types. Is there still doubt that my 12.3 install is uefi?
To me the issue now is how to get the 13.1 installation. Nothing has changed in the 13.1 legacy install. The sda1 boot partiton 13.1/ and 13.1 home are still intact. Does the generic boot code on the mbr equivalent for gpt get changed with a uefi install?
From my comment about the “tracer bullet” the attempt to boot the 13.1 install gets far enough to fail to activate swap. That has happened with the 13.1 when swap was 40GB too. The 12.3 boot doesn’t have a booting problem with 8MB swap or with the 40GB swap before I upgraded it to 13.1
Since I have the 13.1 / mounted, I looked at it’s /var/log to see if any of the indexed column errors showed up there, but didn’t find anything.
Altho it’s probably not possible, what would it take to roll back the 12.3 uefi uninstall? The 13.1 is still there just like I left it. Isn’t that the realm of grub2? Heboland.