linux (hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz-3
tabbed and the line extended to vmlinuz-3.xxxx-desktop
return
Message returned: error 27 unrecognised command.
I have figured one thing out. Windows 7 has nothing to do with this problem. I reinstalled the o/s. It worked fine. But, I then put in the other drive (containing windows) but I did not let it boot. Instead, I entered the bios. It showed one icon with the UEFI label on it, and another without (as the photo, above, shows). So I then shut down the system, swapped back the Suse disk, and the UEFI drive icon was gone and it booted to Grub. So, something is happening in the bios that prevents it from seeing the Grub2-EFI area on the drive.
Also, when I could boot into linux, I hit the escape key at the login screen. It took me to the grub prompt.
It would seem that a boot list is created in the bios. But that list gets over-written either by restoring default settings or by exposing the bios to another disk.
It would seem an Asus P9X79 problem. I’m going to download Suse live and boot it and see if it helps.
On Sun 17 Mar 2013 11:56:04 PM CDT, heseltine wrote:
Thanks, Dale,
I entered:
linux (hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz-3
tabbed and the line extended to vmlinuz-3.xxxx-desktop
return
Message returned: error 27 unrecognised command.
I have figured one thing out. Windows 7 has nothing to do with this
problem. I reinstalled the o/s. It worked fine. But, I then put in the
other drive (containing windows) but I did not let it boot. Instead, I
entered the bios. It showed one icon with the UEFI label on it, and
another without (as the photo, above, shows). So I then shut down the
system, swapped back the Suse disk, and the UEFI drive icon was gone and
it booted to Grub. So, something is happening in the bios that prevents
it from seeing the Grub2-EFI area on the drive.
Also, when I could boot into linux, I hit the escape key at the login
screen. It took me to the grub prompt.
Any thoughts?
Many thanks,
Mark
Hi
It’s probably the UEFI NVRAM, it stores the info on the devices, drives
etc.
It should be looking for a particular drive UUID, but you would need to
look at this from either an efi shell or via the efibootmgr -v command.
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.3 (x86_64) Kernel 3.7.10-1.1-desktop
up 3:33, 3 users, load average: 0.06, 0.05, 0.05
CPU Intel® i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | GPU Intel® Ironlake Mobile
My experience is rather practical, less theoretical.
When parted tells me I have a partition table of type ‘msdos’ than I have an MBR.
When parted tells me I have a partition table of type ‘gpt’ than I have a GPT.
When parted tells me I have a partition table of type ‘gpt_sync_mbr’ - well, what would you think ?
Under the link that I gave, you find output of parted showing that partition table type ‘gpt_sync_mbr’.
The thread of this old posting illustrates well several attempts, guided by please_try_again, to set up from scratch an UEFI dual boot of openSUSE 12.1 and windows 7 on a then new PC with ASUS EFI BIOS that I assembled myself.
And the partition table of type ‘gpt_sync_mbr’ for me resulted from installing windows 7 following a special procedure known by please_try_again.
I started the re-install process, but instead of installing I updated. The installation process detected the need to reinstall the boot loader. That’s it. I was back in.
However, I then went to Yast to try to change the boot loader to Grub2 instead of Grub2-efi. It wouldn’t accept it and reported "unsupported combination of hardware platform x86_64 and bootloader grub2. So I ensured secure boot was off. Restarted. Could still boot. Then I swapped the drive for the windows drive, but going only to bios and I did not boot the drive. I reinserted the suse drive, but it failed.
So I reinstalled completely in case there was some sort of corruption with the boot configuration. I have not swapped in the Windows drive. I do know it will corrupt the bios. I am not sure what more I can do. I’ve ensured that the Bios is set to accept both UEFI and traditional drives. So, where to, now? Any thoughts?
If these two entries are really the only entries in your BIOS boot menu (the one you get by F8 at startup),
then this looks like you’re not booting in UEFI mode.
Do you then still see the hard disk icon with the UEFI logo prior to the hard disk icon without UEFI logo?
Do you then see a hard disk icon with a UEFI logo at all?
Further, you could do a 2nd check:
Install openSUSE 12.3 in UEFI mode on the other hard disk, like you did before
(but keep secure boot turned off like you seem to do lastly).
Thereafter DON’T physically swap hard disks !
Leave the disk where it is.
Just reboot with the disk with the freshly installed openSUSE 12.3 on it still plugged.
During that reboot, enter BIOS setup again hitting DEL key.
What do you see now?
Then, while still on that BIOS setup main page, hit F8 to enter the BIOS boot menu again.
Do you see more entries in that BIOS boot menu now ?
I reinstalled Suse 12.3. I had initially tried to install grub2 but as my earlier email stated that effort failed. So I installed grub2-efi. I did not select secure boot.
Initially, the machine boots in UEFI mode. The f8 option produces:
The BIOS screen shows the hard drive with the UEFI splash across it as in the earlier photo.
Now, if I remove that drive and swap in the Windows drive, but I only take it to the BIOS screen, the BIOS screen shows the hard drive as UEFI bootable (i.e., the drive has a UEFI splash across it).
If I then shut down, and if I swap back the Suse drive in place of the Windows 7 disk, and I take it to F8, it shows
p4: Plextor DVDR;
p3: WDC xxxx (hard drive)
Enter Setup
Going to the BIOS screen shows only one hard drive, and it is without a UEFI splash.
This has been the problem all along.
The relevant BIOS settings are:
CSM launch enabled
Boot device control: UEFI and Legacy OpRom
Secure boot: Other OS (i.e., not Windows UEFI mode.
I am unable to actually switch off secure boot inside the BIOS, as far as I can see.
SATA mode AHCI mode
S.M.A.R.T. Check enabled
Boot option
1. opensuse
2. P4 DVDR
3. P3 WDC
At the end of the day, I think the BIOS actually probes the HD and that probing retrieves information that is stored in some sort of ROM. But oddly, the only drive that is ever effected is the Suse disk, not the windows disk. That’s the only conclusion I can make at this stage. I’m flying blind.
Secure boot seems to become necessary on pre-installed windows 8 systems (not windows 7),
and is an ‘add-on’ to UEFI booting.
That’s what I thought: these 3 entries really look like UEFI mode, because the BIOS shows you an additional 3rd entry,
which even is named ‘opensuse’.
The data based on which this entry is shown is strored in the memory of your motherboard !
What still doesn’t get clear here: after doing what did you get this F8 boot menu ?
After a new installation of openSUSE 12.3 or after a mere reboot ?
I’m not really fussy asking this. And this is not even linked to openSUSE as such.
This is in very well agreement to the F8 boot menu above.
The BIOS hasn’t ‘seen’ the mode of the boot loader yet that afterwards gets loaded from that hard disk.
and the entry ‘opensuse’, which is typical for UEFI booting is gone !
I say that this is a clear indication that your windows 7 (NOT windows 8 !)
boots in non-UEFI mode.
If your windows 7 would have been installed in UEFI mode,
you would have additionally seen an entry like ‘windows’ or ‘windows 7’ in your F8 boot menu,
similar to the ‘opensuse’ boot entry there.
This however wasn’t the case, right ?
Which confirms what’s said above.
… but you didn’t report in that detail - perhaps you didn’t even notice.
CSM = Compatibility Support Modul, means non-UEFI booting !
??? However, as long as you can successfully install openSUSE …
fine
SMART is ‘Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology’ of your hard disk,
telling sth. about its age and reliability and has nothing to do with UEFI booting.
Not ROM (Read Only Memory), but some kind of flash RAM, like on USB sticks. The data is neither deleted by power off,
nor deleted if you take the CMOS battery out of its place on the motherboard !!
But the BIOS doesn’t probe the HD in advance - it isn’t capable of / sophisiticated enough to do that !
Partly true: the SUSE disk is only affected when used after the windows disk, not if just rebooted (i.e. when disks aren’t exchanged), right ?
Not really.
OK.
I’ll try to summarize.
(1) Your hardware configuration is quite special, as you physically exchange the hard disk, which is unusual.
(2) You think that your windows 7 from your windows-HD boots in UEFI mode. But it’s just not windows 8 (which would mean UEFI boot PLUS secure boot).
And after what you report here I’m more than before convinced that your windows 7 is booting in non-UEFI mode.
(3) So probably, every time you boot in non-UEFI mode (i.e. from the windows7-HD) the BIOS seems to clear the EFI boot entry ‘opensuse’ from the memory on your motherboard.
This explanation of the behaviour is rather simple.
You have one OS booting in non-UEFI mode, and one OS booting in UEFI mode,
on two different hard disks.
And when you physically exchange the hard disks the BIOS just isn’t capable of handling this correctly.
Solutions:
(1) you could try to install windows 7 (7, not 8 !!) in UEFI mode, by which you may loose the data on that disk
and which would require that you’re able to do so (i.e. that you have a windows installer DVD/CD).
(2) probably easier: you could install openSUSE in non-UEFI mode.
Well … this really sounds like your firmware is so smart that it cleans up boot menu entries which point to no more available disks. I am not sure what can be done from openSUSE side. I see two possibilities:
Your screenshot shows Advanced button. Does it provide possibility to edit boot menu, boot directly from file or entering UEFI shell? Any of these would allow you to load openSUSE grub2.
May be firmware has an option to turn off this behavior.
In both cases you have probably better luck asking on ASUS forums dedicated to your motherboard.
(1)
From my ASUS EFI motherboard I know that there is the possibility to backup the BIOS / firmware before updating it,
and that in the few pages of the short manual one was even recommended to do such a backup.
So if that didn’t change, and if you have a backup of your original BIOS / firmware you may try to reload that,
because you may have the chance that the old version doesn’t show the same behaviour.
(2)
Purchase an additional internal hard disk that isn’t physically swapped,
in order to install openSUSE in UEFI mode on it.
This in addition would greatly ease exchange of data between the two pluggable hard disks that you have
and would offer more choices for easy backups.
If on the other hand you still shouldn’t believe that your windows 7 boots in non-UEFI mode, there is a last check:
Plug the windows7-drive. But boot from a Linux live CD (even e.g. Partition Magic etc. should do).
Open a terminal, become root by ‘su -’, and say ‘parted -l’.
I think that in the output of parted that you then get among other things you will then see
@LouBryan, many thanks for the reply and the research! I think, but I am not sure, that the wiki entry concerned the building of the kernel. I’ve taken the kernel as it comes with opensuse and I suspect they have done that to their kernel (I say that because opensuse works well straight out of the package on a UEFI m/b). I will, however, investigate.
@ arvidjaar, I tried the UEFI shell, but it came back with the message that it was not found. The m/b is an Asus P9X79 with up to date bios. You’d think if there was such a problem they would have found it. I’ll send them a note on the weekend. Thanks for the idea.
@Mike, I have tears in my eyes, as you will shortly understand.
Running F8 on POST on the newly installed Suse boot disk brought up the following:
Entering BIOS revealed two hard drive icons, one with the UEFI splash, the other without.
I then swapped out the Suse disk and installed the Windows 7 disk. Pressing F8 on POST brought up the following
P4: Plextor DVDR PX-etc
windows bootmanager (P3: ST2000DM001-etc)
P3: ST2000DM001-etc
enter set up
Entering BIOS revealed two hard drive icons, one with the UEFI splash, the other without.
I then (sniff, sniff) swapped out the Windows 7 disk and re-installed the Suse 12.3 disk. Pressing F8 on POST brought up the following:
P4: Plextor DVDR (etc)
P3: WDC WD100FALS - etc
Enter set up
Entering BIOS revealed only one hard drive and one DVD drive but no UEFI splash.
In none of these three instances did I carry past POST and boot the o/s.
So, it would seem that both Suse 12.3 and Windows 7 were installed in UEFI mode, but that the UEFI mode gets busted on POST. The question is why and how can it be prevented?
I think I need to do some quite basic trouble shooting here. Mike, can you or anyone suggest some steps to take? I’m wondering whether tweaking BIOS settings would be the solution? The options I see that may be relevant are:
CSM launch enabled (left at default)
Boot device control: UEFI and Legacy OpRom (left at default)
Secure boot: Other OS (i.e., not Windows UEFI mode. (Changed from Windows UEFI mode to Other OS)
There are the PK keys options but I have insufficient knowledge to know how they work.
Anyway, thanks Mike and all for your kind and patient help.
What I find to be a bit strange from what you, heseltine, report
is that windows seems to be handled differently by the BIOS compared to openSUSE.
What I deem suspicious is the BIOS setting
Secure boot was introduced with windows 8, not 7.
And all OSs in the end should be treated the same when “just” UEFI booting.
That windows 7 (again, not 8) is not booted in secure boot mode, while openSUSE may in fact be,
is the only reason that I can see for that windows is recognized by the BIOS even if hard disks are physically exchanged,
while openSUSE 12.3 isn’t recognized under the very same conditions.
