I managed to get Leap42.1 installed on my computer and am now trying to convince a friend to try it. His computer has been running fine with a dual boot between Windows10(64bit) and Linux Mint 17.3. I made some room on this disk and tried to install OpenSuseLeap42.1. When I try to create the disk partitions, the install stops with a popup window saying “Warning - your system states that it requires an EFI boot setup. Since selected disk does not contain a GPT disk label, YAST will create a GPT label on this disk. You need to mark all partitions on this disk for removal.” I stopped at this point because it seems to me that it wants to delete everything - Windows10 and Linux Mint which isn’t going to happen. My friend was not at all impressed! How do you get around this and why is Leap complaining when Windows10 AND LinuxMint are perfectly happy with the disk? For interest, I tried installing Ubuntu and I went down all the steps until it was ready go ahead - no problems(aborted at this point). Looked through the bios settings and all I see is the disk is AHCI, Legacy boot is enabled, Fast boot is disabled - but no mention of EFI anywhere. System is an HP Prodesk600. What is making Leap want to delete everything?
The install media is capable of being booted in either EFI mode or legacy mode.
It seems that you booted it in EFI mode. You will need to boot in legacy mode for what you want to do.
Thank you for the answer. It leads me to another question. Looking at some documentation for my friends computer, I see that it allows 2 sets of boot options. The first group is EFI and includes all devices -CD/USB/harddrive and the second group is Legacy and includes the same set of devices. You can move a device(i.e. USB) up or down in its group but you can’t move it ahead or behind of the other group. Apparently pressing F5 disables either the entire EFI or Legacy groups. So, if we just booted up the computer in the usual manner last night, and if EFI is the first group, it probably came up in EFI mode. If tonight I disable EFI and boot in Legacy(or even just select a specific device from the Legacy group to boot from), I am guessing that the OpenSuse Leap install will go ahead. However, if it installs Leap in that mode, when it reboots will Windows 10 and LinuxMint still boot okay or will they complain about being booted in Legacy mode instead of EFI? If I restore the normal boot sequence, will Suse work if the boot is EFI instead of Legacy? In other words, will all 3 - Windows10, Mint and Leap work regardless of what the boot setting was during the install process or was at the current startup?
Both OS must boot in the same mode if you are going to chain them ie use grub to control boot. It is far better to use the same boot mode mixing modes just is confusing.
You can know if you booted the installer in legacy mode because it will have options at the bottom of the first menu. EFI mode will not.
It is hard to guess, without seeing the computer.
However, if Windows is using EFI mode, then the disk should already be using GPT partitioning. Your opening post indicated legacy partitioning.
But I should have asked if there is more than one disk. It could be that Windows uses EFI on one disk, and you are trying to install opensuse on a different disk with legacy partitioning.
If there is only the one disk and it uses legacy partitioning, then Windows should be using legacy partitioning.
Maybe post the output of:
# fdisk -l
You can run that from booting the install media to rescue mode, and login as root (no password required).
Thanks to both of you who replied. As you said, without seeing the actual pc its hard to tell. I saw the pc tonight and tried changing the boot order group from efi to legacy by using F5 disable on the EFI. I then rebooted to check on both Windows and LinuxMint. Both came up fine so I then went ahead with the Leap install. It went like clockwork - no hitches and much quicker than on my pc. Only glitches came after bootup when 2 message boxes appeared about updater - something isn’t being updated. Never seen this on my PC and I couldn’t see what it was that was not updating. However, that may be a subject for another thread. Once again “much appreciated” to those who replied. Your info was very helpful.
Use Yast Online Repositories.
Find the repo which is your install media. It probably has name “openSUSE-42.1-0”, but you will also see the disk/dvd reference somewhere, rather than an “http:” or similar.
Uncheck the enabled box for that repo. The updater is probably just complaining that it cannot find the install media.
Thank you for the reply. Yes, I found the install repo - my usb drive sd… and then unchecked it. Problem went away.