My motherboard and processor and AMD GPU are reasonably up to date, and have been running Tumbleweed for a couple of years now. I accept the manageable flow of occasional regressions and bugs - it’s Tumbleweed. As a UXer, I do get frustrated about the lack of or hidden communication about UI design decisions often merely unwitting UI manifestations of deeper technical decisions. I’m getting off topic though. After some troubles - can’t even recall what they were, I decided it had been long enough and I ought to run a new install, stick to the core repos only and rationalise and harden my storage.
I downloaded the .iso and ddd it to a thumb drive. The checksum matched and the install proceeds successfully - to a point, depending on the BIOS settings.
I have a Z790 Aorus Elite AX
I upgraded the BIOS successfully from F1 to F15 (12/01/2025 8ARPT005) and reset the BIOS to factory defaults and changed the motherboard battery.
Processor: 13th Gen Intel Core i9 13900K
Security Option: System
Boot Option: UEFI:Kingston... thumb drive with install image
Fast Boot: Disable Link ← I thought this was the problem but seems not entirely
Windows 10 Features: Other OS
CSM Support: Disabled ← understand that if enabled, is legacy UEFI (ie MBR / max 2TB / max 4 partitions)
Secure Boot: Enabled - Active but also tried Disabled - Not Active
Secure Boot Mode: Standard
With Fast Boot enabled, the install almost immediately returns ../../grub-core/kern/mm.c:584/out of memory searching here there was a thread speculating that there had been a change, meaning more ‘something’ needed to be pre loaded and that fast boot only prepares insufficient storage, ‘somewhere’ - I didn’t really understand but I disabled Fast Boot and it worked a bit better, getting beyond to start the Yast install screens.
After using the ‘expert’ partitioner to reuse most of the existing partitions, I proceeded to the install button. I have a Sandisk M2A 500GiB SSD - I had set it up to format 256MiB FAT for /boot/efi and 465GiB for /. The package install seemed to proceed until it got to the bootloader and a dialogue popped up with a message along the lines of Couldn't find EFI system partition. It is recommended to mount it to /boot or /efi.
Switching to a tty console and running bootctl status returned the same message, plus
System:
Firmware n/a (n/a)
Firmware Arch x64
Secure Boot: disabled
TPM2 support: no
Measured UKI: no
Boot into FW: supported
Random Seed:
System Token: not set
No boot loaders listed in EFI variables
tty2: install:/usr/bin #
Now, when I try the install, I’m going round in circles enabling and disablingSecure Boot and still getting the memory issue - can’t even find a config that gets me past that and onto the /boot/efi disk not found!
You want to change your procedure and terminate the loop. Software engineers tend to break their products. Thus I checked current openSUSE-Tumbleweed-NET-x86_64-Current.iso. II (Innate Intelligence, formerly known as Common Sense) tells me to rely on KISS.
Settings used:
Secure boot: disabled
Expert partitioner: use existing Efi System Partition /dev/sda1, create System Partition /dev/sda4
i4130:~ # fdl
Disk /dev/sda: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 850
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: BEEDF98F-DA82-4488-A275-F581FA13B9F8
Device Size Type
/dev/sda1 100M EFI System
/dev/sda2 368G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3 48.8G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda4 48.8G Linux filesystem
Partition table entries are not in disk order.
i4130:~ #
System readily installs:
erlangen:~ # ssh karl@tw2026
(karl@tw2026) Password:
Last login: Tue Jan 6 06:13:00 CET 2026 from :0 on tty2
Have a lot of fun...
karl@tw2026:~>
tw2026:~ # journalctl --list-boots
IDX BOOT ID FIRST ENTRY LAST ENTRY
0 23c262b7074f4d2aa7c3320ac63534ee Tue 2026-01-06 06:12:29 CET Tue 2026-01-06 06:21:48 CET
tw2026:~ #
Disable FastBoot which, as far as I understand, is mostly for Windows and can prevent the Linux kernel from fully probbe and manage hardware
As written above, allocate more space to ESP Efi System Partition as there is a move towards installations compliant with Boot Loader Specification (BLS)
Unless it really prevents you from installing, I wouldn’t disable SecureBoot
Thanks All (@malcolmlewis@opsusemaco@marel@karlmistelberger )
I think I better understand what I need to do but I can no longer get beyond the ../../grub-core/kern/mm.c:584/out of memory message. If I do get beyond that, I’d be able to allocate 2-3GiB to /boot/efi and I think I’d have it fixed. Unfortunately Fast Boot is Disabled and I’ve tried Secure Boot both Enabled & Disabled but I still get the out of memory message.
There’s a Secure Boot Mode set to standard. If I change it to Custom there are some dangerous looking options that become available:
Restore Factory Keys
Reset To Setup Mode
Enter Audit Mode
Enter Deployed Mode <-- as distinct from the User mode currently
Key Management
Not keen on playing with those unless One of you knows it to be a problem or a solution
Also, in Settings → Miscellaneous → Trusted Computing → TPM 2.0 Device Found
and Security Device Support Enabled
To the O.P. You can probably use an older snapshot to install tumbleweed. Then do a zypper dup after install.
I tend to agree with you, I think there’s something off with the latest snapshot from mid December 2025. I had an issue after the mid December snapshot like selinux blocking tumbler and flickering panel in Xfce 4.20. Get a snapshot from maybe late November to early December and see if there will be a difference.
I’ve given up and plumped for Leap 16
Seems to install fine so far.
At a guess, I’d say Tumbleweed’s broken somehow. If not, It shouldn’t be this difficult and it’s a UX fail.
I think I’m OK with Leap 16 for a bit but having tried to use the storage configurator.
OMFG - I need a long word about user experience with whoever designed that. What a disaster!!!
I know what I want to achieve and this just refuses to let me do it. The YAST expert version is/was SO much better.