Bug 223454

Summary:	Installer can't install grub on Intel MAcbook partition table.
Product:	[openSUSE] openSUSE 10.2	Reporter:	Christian Hueller <chuller>
Component:	Installation	Assignee:	Olaf Hering <ohering>
Status:	RESOLVED DUPLICATE	QA Contact:	Jiri Srain <jsrain>
Severity:	Normal
Priority:	P5 - None	CC:	aj
Version:	RC 1
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	Other
OS:	Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	Other	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---
Attachments:	YaST2 logs hwinfo of macbook

Description Christian Hueller 2006-11-23 13:34:09 UTC

Description:

The Partition table of a Intel MAcbook is a Global Partition Table (GPT), and not the kind usually found on x86 hardware. Additionally to the GPT the MAcbook keeps some kind of fake MBR that contains the 4 first Partitions in the GPT to give non OSX operatoin systems a way to boot with bootloaders. 

Unfortunatly this fake partitiontable has to be synced with the GPT after the GPT is changed which is done automatically with OSX tools, but not at all with linux tools that access the GPT like parted. So, if you resize the osx partition with OSX tools and then create partitions in that free space using the YaST2 installer, the partitions only get created in the GPT, but the fake MBR which is later used by grub is not synced with the modified GPT.

This leads to a failing grub install at the end of Stage1 of the Installer. One then has first to start a OSX tool (i used refit) to resync the fake mbr with the GPT, reboot into the rescue system and then can install the grub on the root partition. 

Howto Repeat:

o install SL10.2 on a Intel Macbook
o see the grub install fail

Comment 1 Matej Horvath 2006-11-23 13:50:50 UTC

Please attach your yast logs, to let us see what happened during the partition creation.

http://en.opensuse.org/Bugs/YaST
Thank you.

Comment 2 Christian Hueller 2006-11-24 11:56:02 UTC

Created attachment 106827 [details]
YaST2 logs

sorry could not provide them earlier, was not able to boot into the system, had to fix booting again

Comment 3 Christian Hueller 2006-11-24 11:56:32 UTC

Created attachment 106828 [details]
hwinfo of macbook

Comment 4 Matej Horvath 2006-11-24 16:05:40 UTC

I've considered this as a not implemented feature or bug in the parted, so I'm going to reassign it to it's maintainer. 


At least there should be a note after the partition resizing operation that the admin should do the workaround.

Comment 5 Thomas Fehr 2006-11-24 16:45:00 UTC

Olaf, I planned to reassign to ppc@suse.de but this is dead, if you are not appropriate person, reassign to whoever handles Intel Mac Laptops.

Please have a look where the problem really is.

If newer MacBooks have a GPT partition table, this needs possibly adaptions in 
partitioner and bootloader. Parted should not be the problem since it fully
supports GPT since ages (GPT is main disk label on IA64). 

So far I did not get any informations about needed changes in partitioner, 
please check if the problem is really partitioner or bootloader and decide
what needs to be chnaged.

Comment 6 Olaf Hering 2006-11-24 17:23:25 UTC


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 220839 ***