Bug 932033

Summary:	pmbr_boot disk flag should be off for UEFI boot
Product:	[openSUSE] openSUSE Distribution	Reporter:	Tristan Miller <psychonaut>
Component:	Installation	Assignee:	Josef Reidinger <jreidinger>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:	Jiri Srain <jsrain>
Severity:	Critical
Priority:	P5 - None	CC:	jreidinger, nwr10cst-oslnx, psychonaut, snwint
Version:	13.2	Flags:	mvidner: needinfo? (psychonaut)
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	x86-64
OS:	openSUSE 13.2
Whiteboard:
Found By:	---	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Tristan Miller 2015-05-22 13:13:10 UTC

I'm trying to install openSUSE 13.2 on an Acer TravelMate B115-M-41RQ with UEFI and SecureBoot enabled, and with a completely blank hard drive (no partitions at all).  I used all the default options from the installer.

The installer finishes successfully, but when the computer restarts, it says there are no bootable devices.  (Not even GRUB comes up.)  I can force my computer's boot device chooser to come up by pressing F12, but the hard drive on which I installed openSUSE isn't listed as a bootable device.

I can boot into the openSUSE rescue system from the installation medium on USB.  Here parted confirms there are four partitions as created by the installer (a bootable FAT partition, followed by a swap partition, then a BTRFS partition, and then an XFS partition).

If I mount the boot partition I can see the EFI files in EFI/boot and EFI/opensuse.  However, efibootmgr -v doesn't list any of these.

I tried to add an entry as follows:

efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sda -p -1 -l \\EFI\\opensuse\\grubx64.efi

This seemed to work in that efibootmgr -v displayed the entry.  However, when I restarted the computer I was still told that there were no bootable devices.  When I rebooted the rescue system, the entry I added to efibootmgr was gone.

Possibly this is a manifestation of a kernel bug which has also been reported for Ubuntu: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1167622

Comment 1 Neil Rickert 2015-05-22 17:46:53 UTC

It is probably not that kernel bug, which I remember in early pre-release versions of opensuse 13.1.  That bug has long since been fixed.

Here's something you can try.

With a rescue boot, mount the EFI partition.  Look for the directory \EFI\opensuse on that partition.  Copy the content of that "opensuse" directory to "\EFI\Boot\" (you may need to create the "Boot" directory).

Then change directories to that Boot directory.

If there is a "shim.efi" there, then rename that as "bootx64.efi".
Otherwise rename "grubx64.efi" to "bootx64.efi".

Then see if the disk is recognized as bootable (when you use F12 during boot).

Comment 2 Tristan Miller 2015-05-26 07:21:48 UTC

Thanks for the suggestion, Neil.  I tried that but I'm afraid it didn't work.  The computer still claims there are no bootable devices.

I went to the BIOS menu and noticed that there's a command "Select an UEFI file as trusted for executing".  If I run it allows me to select a file from the installation media (on a USB drive) but it doesn't show anything on the computer's internal hard drive.

Here's the output of fdisk -l and parted showing the partitions on the internal drive (/dev/sda) and the external USB drive (/dev/sdb):


# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 21292F87-09BD-4B93-81B6-52C66A7657D6

Device        Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1      2048    321535    319488   156M EFI System
/dev/sda2    321536   4530175   4208640     2G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda3   4530176  88422399  83892224    40G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda4  88422400 976773119 888350720 423.6G Microsoft basic data

Disk /dev/loop0: 35 MiB, 36634624 bytes, 71552 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/loop1: 9 MiB, 9437184 bytes, 18432 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/loop2: 47.9 MiB, 50200576 bytes, 98048 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/loop3: 13.7 MiB, 14352384 bytes, 28032 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/loop4: 4.1 MiB, 4325376 bytes, 8448 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/sdb: 15 GiB, 16055795712 bytes, 31358976 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x10ce3e4f

Device     Boot Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1        3584   11647    8064    4M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
/dev/sdb2  *    11648 9138175 9126528  4.4G 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS


# parted /dev/sda
GNU Parted 3.1
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.

                                                                          
(parted) print
Model: ATA WDC WD5000LPVX-2 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: pmbr_boot

Number  Start   End     Size    File system     Name     Flags
 1      1049kB  165MB   164MB   fat32           primary  boot
 2      165MB   2319MB  2155MB  linux-swap(v1)  primary
 3      2319MB  45.3GB  43.0GB  btrfs           primary
 4      45.3GB  500GB   455GB   xfs             primary


(parted) quit


# parted /dev/sdb
GNU Parted 3.1
Using /dev/sdb
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.

                                                                          
(parted) print
Model: Kingston DataTraveler 410 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 16.1GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1835kB  5964kB  4129kB  primary               type=ef
 2      5964kB  4679MB  4673MB  primary               boot, hidden, type=17


(parted) quit

Comment 3 Tristan Miller 2015-05-26 08:32:46 UTC

Greetings.

(In reply to Tristan Miller from comment #2)
> # parted /dev/sda
> GNU Parted 3.1
> Using /dev/sda
> Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
> 
>                                                                           
> (parted) print
> Model: ATA WDC WD5000LPVX-2 (scsi)
> Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
> Partition Table: gpt
> Disk Flags: pmbr_boot

It turns out this "pmbr_boot" disk flag was the problem.  I have no idea whether the flag was already there when I got the machine, or whether it's something the openSUSE installer added, but in any case it shouldn't be there for a successful UEFI boot.  To fix the issue I did the following from a rescue system:

# parted /dev/sda
(parted) disk_set pmbr_boot off
(parted) quit

After some more searching it seems this problem has also been reported for other GNU/Linux distributions, including Red Hat and Mageia:

https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12822
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=844551

So I would suggest that when YaST partitions a disk for use on a UEFI system, it should make sure not to set the pmbr_boot disk flag; if pmbr_boot is already set, YaST should unset it, or at the very least warn the user about it and offer to unset it.

Comment 4 Martin Vidner 2015-05-29 09:00:53 UTC

Thanks for the report.
Please attach the YaST logs: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Report_a_YaST_bug

Comment 5 Steffen Winterfeldt 2015-06-03 12:56:50 UTC

Sounds like bug 872054 to me, Josef?

Comment 6 Josef Reidinger 2015-06-03 13:05:10 UTC

Yes, it should be already fixed in TW. For 13.2 it do not make sense to release update as it need respin of DVD.

Can you please try the latest TumbleWeed DVD?
Thanks

Comment 7 Tristan Miller 2015-06-03 14:04:02 UTC

I'm afraid I can't try the Tumbleweed DVD as I no longer have a USB drive big enough to copy the installation media onto.  (The computer in question doesn't have a DVD drive.)

Do you still want the old YaST logs?  (I don't know if the ones currently in /var/log/YaST2 even have any record of the original installation.  If I needed to switch to a text console immediately after the installation and copy the logs somewhere, I'm afraid it's too late.)

Comment 8 Josef Reidinger 2015-06-03 14:06:29 UTC

I think it is not needed, as 13.2 do not use pmbr disk flag which is implemented later. So Let me mark it as fixed and if you can try TW and it still do not work, then reopen it. Thanks