On Mon, May 27, 2019 at 3:55 PM stan <upaitag@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > It seems that the above won't be necessary, as I must have originally > formatted the drive as GPT, and forgotten I'd done so. > > I was able to switch the firmware to strictly BIOS from UEFI/BIOS > hybrid, with UEFI preferred. That allowed the installer to proceed. > Unfortunately, it hung while trying to write an mbr, though everything > else worked; it installed software, I was able to set users and > passwords. I suspect that is because the disk I was installing to is > actually formatted with GPT, since it is larger than 2 TiB. The installer will not convert GPT disk to MBR disk, or MBR to GPT. It also won't write an MBR to a 2+TiB drive. > It ran for > over 20 minutes at almost 100% CPU and didn't complete. So, I killed > it. But it had somehow altered something so that when I tried to boot > to the other Fedora installed on that disk, it immediately dropped to a > grub prompt. It was trying to validate partitions with os-prober at the > time I killed it, according to the log, and had hung on the existing > Fedora root partition. When I booted in rescue and looked at the disk > with fdisk, it declared that all the other partitions on the disk > except the ones I had tried to install to were Microsoft data format. > That gave me a scare, until I noticed that there was no logical > partition. Fortunately I had an older Fedora on another disk that is > actually BIOS, and when I booted that from the firmware, I was able to > boot and run it. I then ran a mkconfig there, and the os-prober found > the original Fedora on the other disk, and created boot stanzas for > it. So I was able to get back to my Fedora, the version I am writing > this from, in a roundabout way. The installation failure needs a bug report with all the installer logs attached, and a description of reproduce steps, and the before and after state. > > The issue seems to be that hybrid installs are not allowed. If I > install as BIOS, then I have to use BIOS partitioning, not gpt. Not correct. The installer does support GPT when booted with BIOS firmware. It just doesn't support MBR with UEFI firmware. > And, if > I install as UEFI, for some reason it doesn't accept the existing ext4 > partitions on the gpt formatted drive. That's a separate bug report, also needs installer logs attached. > Is must be possible to boot a > GPT drive from a BIOS mbr because it appears that I was doing that. I can't parse this. > Or, did the hybrid UEFI/BIOS firmware setting allow both? Running 'efibootmgr' will tell you what firmware is being presented to the kernel. > > Here's the partition table for the disk from gdisk -l. > > Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name > 1 2097152 4194303 1024.0 MiB 8300 > 2 4194304 6291455 1024.0 MiB 0700 > 3 6291456 48234495 20.0 GiB 8200 > 4 48234496 572522495 250.0 GiB 8300 > 5 572522496 1096810495 250.0 GiB 0700 > 6 1096810496 5860532223 2.2 TiB 0700 > 7 2048 6143 2.0 MiB EF02 > > The first two partitions are boot, then swap, then two root partitions, > then data. The code for the partitions I was trying to install from > the iso to are now 8300, the existing Fedora is 0700. That's all suspicious because 0700 for a boot volume isn't correct, and suggests an old version of parted created that partition. Also partition 3 cannot be a root partition, the type code is for swap. > Can I actually somehow do a UEFI install to this disk, preserving the > existing Fedora and being able to boot to it directly? Dual Fedora's isn't officially supported. The installer almost always steps on the previous Fedora's bootloader making it unbootable, in favor of a new bootloader for the new Fedora installation. Sometimes grub2-mkconfig finds the old Fedora and will add entries for it in the grub.cfg, sometimes not. If root is a plain partition, it'll be discovered probably, and if it's LVM, the installer doesn't activate LVM for other installations so os-prober won't see them and won't create menu entries. So you'll have to jerry-rig it yourself after the new installation. -- Chris Murphy _______________________________________________ test mailing list -- test@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to test-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/test@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
