Re: lenovo s205 installation problems
On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 8:05 AM, Russell L. Harris
<rlharris@broadcaster.org> wrote:
> * Tom H <tomh0665@gmail.com> [120207 12:12]:
>> On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 6:12 AM, Russell L. Harris
>> <rlharris@broadcaster.org> wrote:
>> Some GPT labelled disks need to have the boot flag set on the
>> "bios_grub" partition (in violation of the EFI spec) for a box to be
>> bootable. And some Lenovo models are affected.
>
> The latest installation attempt (using the 6.0.4 Netinstall image
> burned to DVD) now is hung (5 minutes or longer) at the partition
> disks step. The tail end of the log displayed by Alt-F4 consists of
> the following messages:
>
> partman: No matching physical volumes found.
> partman: No volume groups found.
> partman: Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while...
> partman-lvm : No volume groups found.
You might want to file a bug report but it may just be that your MBR's
a mess and that you just need to create a new label to correct this
problem.
> So I plan to reboot the GParted-Live flash USB (now upgraded to
> 0.11.0) and experiment.
>>
>> "bios_grub"/"bios_boot" is a type/flag like "boot", "lvm", "raid". In
>> fdisk/gdisk, you use "t" to set them and in parted you use "set".
>
> Using GParted to partition the drive just prior to this installation
> attempt, I created a separate /boot partition as the first partition.
> I then used the "manage flags" menu of GParted to set the boot flag.
> In addition to the "boot" flag, the menu offered also the "bios-grub"
> flag. Should I have set both the "boot" and the "bios-grub" flag for
> the partition "/boot"?
I wouldn't worry about the "boot" flag; I don't have it set on any
partition on my netbook and it boots fine. If you do want to use it,
set it to "/boot" or to "/" if you don't have a separate "/boot".
The "bios_grub" flag shouldn't be applied to "/boot" or any other
partition with a filesystem.
if you want to install grub to the MBR, create a 1MB partition as the
first partition of your GPT disk and flag it as "bios_grub" and then
create "/boot', etc.
If you want to install grub to a PBR, you don't need a "bios_grub"
partition but I'm not sure how well d-i'll handle that (I've never
tried it).
I haven't installed grub to a partition for two years. At the time,
running "grub-install /dev/sdaX" would throw up a "this is a bad
thing" message. I can't remember whether it would go through with the
installation or not. You have to add "--force" to avoid the message.
>> The boot loader code's on "/boot" but the PBR'll have pointers to it.
>
> The term "PBR" is new to me; what does it mean?
It's the partition boot record and it's the first sector of a
partition in the same way that the MBR's the first sector of a disk.
>> You can use a GPT label with a BIOS box. AFAIK, you need to do so
>> above a certain disk size.
>
> One or two of the articles which I found gave me the impression that
> old-style BIOS would not boot a drive with a GPT.
My netbook's not an EFI box but its disk has a GPT label...
>> I don't use GParted but it must be like parted; you must have to
>> create a GPT label and create an initial partition with a bios_grub
>> flag manually.
>
> I naively assumed that the "G" stood for "GNU", but I was mistaken.
> The GNU version is "parted", and "Gparted" is the Gnome version. But
> at the moment I haven't the foggiest notion of which is the better.
AFAIK, Gparted just provides a GUI to parted. (Hopefully someone'll
correct me if I'm wrong!)
> Thanks for the corrections.
You're welcome.
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