Two boot flags showing on clean install

There are several posts here about not being able to boot without the install disk, which is also my case. I imagine the solution for me should be easy, because I only have a single installed OS on this machine, which is a MacBook Pro 2.1. Here’s the result of fdisk -l:

WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.


Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1         262     2103295+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2   *         262        2873    20972543+  83  Linux
/dev/sda3            2873       19458   133213183+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4   *           1           1           0+  ee  GPT

Partition table entries are not in disk order

sda4 is a partition that did not appear in the partition overview when I installed the operating system. I thought I’d look for help here while I continue to research the problem myself. Thanks.

That’s interesting. The BIOS/MBR is just an emulation on Mac. While dual booting with OS X you would use something like rEFIt which creates a hybrid GPT/MBR table. I guess the solution would be easier if you were dual booting. As far as I know - correct me if I’m wrong - legacy Grub is not able to read the GPT and so could not boot on EFI-based computers. But Grub2 should do it. Under openSUSE you might try elilo.

zypper info elilo
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

Information for package elilo:

Repository: openSUSE:Base:Factory
Name: elilo
Version: 3.8-63.5
Arch: x86_64
Vendor: obs://build.opensuse.org/Base
Installed: No
Status: not installed
Installed Size: 324.0 KiB
Summary: EFI Linux Loader
Description: 
The EFI Linux boot loader.

Please report if it works. I dualboot with OS X, so I use rEFIT.

I have (unfortunately) had a lot of trouble with the openSUSE 11.3 installation, aside from boot problems. Sometime I may experiment more with the OS, but for now I’ve reverted to Ubuntu 10.10, which works very well. For your reference, with regard to the issue outlined above, here is the result of fdisk -l on my new Ubuntu installation. Like the openSUSE installation, I accepted default values suggested by the installer. Notice the differences in partitions and boot volumes.

WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.


Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1           1        2047+  ee  GPT
/dev/sda2   *           1       18712   150294528   83  Linux
/dev/sda3           18712       19458     5993472   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Well Suse defaults to a separate partition for home where as Ubuntu does not. And Mac’s are difficult hardware to deal with.

I’m glad to hear that it worked. Actually I wanted to suggest to try Ubuntu, as it uses Grub2. I read that Grub2 can handle GPT partitions but never tried myself. I have a similar fdisk output on my iMac with openSUSE, but I dualboot with Mac OSX and use rEFIT.