OpenSUSE 11.2 released

[Detosx]

My problem in the past was that Windows Vista 32 bit didn't like GPT labelled GUID partitioned drives, so said I would never get it working. Through a lot of trial and error I found I had to make an image of my Vista drive, put that image on the GPT with GUID partitioned drive and then repair the boot with a handful of command prompts and terminal commands. So, this time around, to save time, I had set the disk label to msdos and GUID partitioned. For whatever OpenSUSE wasn't happy with the partition table, so I groaned, fired up gparted and set the hard drive's disk label to GPT and in Disk Utility partitioned to GUID. This time I had no trouble at all installing GRUB from the OpenSUSE installer. What thrilled me even more was getting Windows 7 to work within GPT + GUID without imaging. Happily tri-booting Win 7 / Snow / OpenSUSE.

 

Thank you for your suggestions cparm.

 

I am very impressed with OpenSUSE, so far.

[srs5694]

My problem in the past was that Windows Vista 32 bit didn't like GPT labelled GUID partitioned drives, so said I would never get it working. Through a lot of trial and error I found I had to make an image of my Vista drive, put that image on the GPT with GUID partitioned drive and then repair the boot with a handful of command prompts and terminal commands. So, this time around, to save time, I had set the disk label to msdos and GUID partitioned. For whatever OpenSUSE wasn't happy with the partition table, so I groaned, fired up gparted and set the hard drive's disk label to GPT and in Disk Utility partitioned to GUID. This time I had no trouble at all installing GRUB from the OpenSUSE installer. What thrilled me even more was getting Windows 7 to work within GPT + GUID without imaging. Happily tri-booting Win 7 / Snow / OpenSUSE.

 

Some comments and questions:

 

First, in the context of disk partitioning, "GPT" and "GUID" are often used to refer to the same thing, since "GPT" stands for "GUID Partition Table." Thus, "GPT + GUID" is redundant at best, unless you mean something other than the usual.

 

You also mentioned an "msdos and GUID partitioned" configuration. I presume you mean a hybrid MBR configuration, in which the GPT system is extended in a non-standard way by adding MBR partition definitions for up to three partitions. This configuration is useful in getting GPT-aware and GPT-unaware OSes to share a disk, but as I describe in detail on the page to which I've just linked, it also creates a lot of dangers and problems.

 

Third, some Linux tools -- particularly GNU Parted and at least some of its relatives -- tend to wipe out boot loaders on GPT-based disks. They also tend to convert hybrid MBR disks to plain GPT disks (that is, they eliminate the MBR partition definitions). This could be the cause of some of the problems you mention.

 

Finally, as far as I know Windows (even Windows 7) will boot from a pure GPT disk only on a computer with an Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) rather than a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) for firmware. Windows can boot from a hybrid MBR configuration, or from GPT with EFI, but not from pure GPT on a BIOS-based computer. Most computers today are BIOS-based, although a few have EFIs. If you really have a working pure-GPT configuration and Windows boots from it, I'd be very interested in learning more, like what commands you used to get this to work. I strongly suspect, though, that you've either got a hybrid MBR configuration and don't realize it or you've got an EFI-based system. You can learn about the former using any number of disk utilities, including my own GPT fdisk. If you start it and it reports "MBR: hybrid," then it's a hybrid disk; if it reports "MBR: protective," then it's a standard GPT disk. Checking for an EFI BIOS is harder, since you'll need to reboot and use the system's BIOS/firmware setup screens, which aren't standardized. If you can find an EFI or UEFI option, or see those strings anywhere in a version string or the like, then it's probably an EFI-based system. Knowing what model motherboard you've got might enable tracking down this information online.

[Detosx]

Hi Rod, I am on the Mac Mini for the next few days but over the Christmas period will start from scratch on the PC and detail every stage. If you can translate from that what is going on at a macro level, it would be good to read. Meantime, have you any idea what Gparted (v 0.4.6, though worked with an older build) is doing that Disk Utility's GUID option alone, on a msdos labelled hard drive, is unable to in both of my computers?

 

Which is to say: if using Gparted I leave the SATA hard drive's disk label at the default msdos setting and then in Disk Utility set up my partitions, click on Options and set to GUID and Apply, OpenSUSE's installer always fails at the point where you have specified that you want to install Grub to OpenSUSE's root partition. If in Gparted I instead change from the default msdos label to GPT from the Disk Label menu, Disk Utility identifies the unpartitioned drive as GUID and OpenSUSe's installer recognizes the partition table and installs to OpenSUSE's root partition as asked. In both scenarios the partition table displays identically in Gparted.

 

The final set up - achieved with the help during set up of a Leopard preboot CD and Leopard on a USB drive - is, all on one hard drive: Chameleon V2 rev4 installed to EFI HFS+/Windows 7 64 /Snow Leopard / Swap/Root/Home / Media

 

The motherboard is an old Asrock Conroe 945G DVI but the same steps applied to the laptop in my sig.

[Detosx]

I'm not sure how interested anyone is in this - chirp up if you are - but I have written a paper outline of running Win 7 /Snow/Linux from GUID partitioned drive but need to type it up.

 

Meantime, something worries me. I was using Windows 7 RC some months ago in tri boot GPT. I dragged and dropped, by accident, all the files on the desktop onto vlc player. The screen flashed white. I thought Finder had simply crashed. I waited it out and waited. Somehow, all my desktop files and folders, some six gigs worth, was deleted. I have never seen anything like that. Confident, I ran a raft of retrieval software but, very oddly, very little of that six gigs of documents and files was retrievable. To this day no one has been able to tell me why Windows 7 crashed like that or, more to the point, why I was able to rescue so little where, in years past, I have been able to rescue most things. Could that have anything to do with running Windows 7 on GPT? Though everything works fine, I am now storing all documents on a USB hard drive.

 

Sorry, this thread has gone a little off topic.

 

I had problems with my Geforce 7300GS - OpenSUSE doesn't detect it. I had to install a driver from nvidia and then transparency and other effects worked. Either that or trying to get my USB RT2500 wireless card to work brought up an endless stream of irq error messages. OpenSUSE wanted me to upgrade the firmware of the wireless card but none such exists; it works fine in OS X and Windows. I need to do my homework.