I have a 128GB SSD for root/swap/efi, and a 500GB disk for home.
Yast is trying to put everything on the 500GB disk…
No problem, that’s why we have the expert partitioner!
So I delete partions, recreate them where they need to be, click accept and…
“Warning: With your current setup, your installation will encounter problems when booting, because the disk you have your /boot partition on does not contain a GPT disk label.”
The message goes on to say something about being able to fix this in the expert partitioner, but doesn’t say how and there is nothing i can see that looks like what its talking about.
Reading this there is obviously an expectation that something technical should be done:
First thing to check is of course: is it true that that disk does not contain a GPT partition. In other words, is it MBR partitioned at the moment.
Also, for further discussion, it would be nice to know the names the system gave to the disks. I guess sda and sdb, but which is which and thus, which one is the one to boot from.
Yes and no. MBR boot can happen on GPT or DOS partitioned drives but you can only use EFI boot on a GPT partitioned drive. Note DOS here is the name of the old way disks where partitioned GPT is the new way. If you plan on EFI boot the partitioning method needs to change to GPT. If you can boot any Live Linux check fdisk -l it will tell the partitioning type
Just as an update - I ignored the warning (that if I proceeded with the install it would probably never boot properly) and installed anyway.
It completed the install. It did the first boot into the desktop. It restarted and got back to the desktop. It did a full online update, and got back to desktop from a restart. In short it seems fine!
It seems like a bug where the installer is reporting a problem that the installer has already corrected as a response to my rebuilding of the default partitions in the expert installer.
I’ll address the specific questions above once I get back to the machine.
Q - is it true that that disk does not contain a GPT partition.
A - I had deleted all partitions on those two drives
Q - it would be nice to know the names the system gave to the disks.
A - The 500GB drive was shown above the 128GB SSD so I think it was sda and the ssd listed as sdb.
Q - Are you using legacy BIOS or EFI boot?
A - Not sure, accepted the defaults. Never asked which. Does that suggest EUFI was disabled in the BIOS?
Q - If you plan on EFI boot the partitioning method needs to change to GPT.
A - See above - Not sure if this is for me, but ignoring the warning seems to have worked regardless.
As it seems your system is running OK now, it is a bit superfluous, but nevertheless.
Deleting the partitions only results in an “empty” partition table. And that table will then be used when you create new partitions. As long as you do not create a new partition table, it will not change it’s type.
That may be an intelligent guess, but the partitioner shows the names, as tools like fdisk, gdisk, lsblk do. We rather like to see your copied /pasted computer text then your guess, because we trust computers more then people
And, btw, when ignoring the message gives you a functioning installation, a bug report may be something useful. The problem here is that it is only a warning (the installer seems not to be very sure about it and well, you can always warn to be on the save side). When you decide to file a report: https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/index.cgi
And please post the link to your report here so we can all trace what happnes with it.
No partitions does not change the type of partition table that determines the type of partitioning used. You would need to also wipe the first meg or so of the drive.
The expert partitioner should show you the order. The order is determined buy how they are plugged in and or the BIOS/UEFI
UEFI is the new BIOS. In the olden days (6 or 7 years ago) the default program that starts a computer was called the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) This is been replaced by a new standard way to start a computer UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) UEFI can emulate BIS function ie Legacy booting
