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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] trying to install centos 6.5 on USB drive on UEFI-enabled laptop

  • Subject: Re: [OCLUG-Tech] trying to install centos 6.5 on USB drive on UEFI-enabled laptop
  • From: Mike Rosberg <mrosberg [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com>
  • Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2013 04:29:15 +0000
Hi Robert,

I have no experience booting Linux under UEFI but am interested in your
experience as I await the arrival of a new Zenbook which I plan to
dual-boot Win8 and likely Fedora 20.

One thought that occurs to me after reading through your install process is
that the installed USB drive will be unbootable following the OS install as
it will be lacking a EFI System Partition. I suspect you could continue to
use the UEFI-compatible bootable USB drive for that purpose, but would
require the use of two USB drives for every boot. I expect it should be
possible to add an EFI System Partition to the installed USB drive to avoid
the requirement for the UEFI-compatible, bootable USB drive.

eg.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#EFI_System_Partition

MikeR.


On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday [ at ] crashcourse [ dot ] ca>wrote:

>
>   looking for advice on how i can make the following easier. i have a
> class coming up in late january that involves me teaching RHEL 6.5
> (actually, centos 6.5) admin stuff, and i have in front of me a sample
> laptop that each student will have on which to install and mess with
> centos 6.5 for the week, and herein lies the problem.
>
>   it's an asus ultrabook, UEFI-enabled, running windows 8, and i've
> first been told to try very very hard to not install centos over top
> of the windows installation. no problem ... what i was thinking of
> doing was installing centos onto 16G USB drives so that students can
> mess with their install as much as they want, and take the drive with
> them after the course is over to keep playing. so that part seems
> easy.
>
>   oh, and the ultrabook has no DVD drive, so i'm limited to 3 USB
> ports (and the SD slot which i have no intention of using. onward.)
>
>   first issue is that centos 6.5 is not UEFI-compatible, as explained
> here:
>
>
> http://linux.web.cern.ch/linux/scientific6/docs/rhel/Installation_Guide/#Making_Minimal_Boot_Media-UEFI
>
> so i started with following that recipe, and creating a minimal,
> UEFI-compatible, bootable USB drive. boot from that, drop into the
> BIOS, select that USB drive as the boot device and ... yup, it boots,
> so far, so good.
>
>   however, that's a minimal USB drive, so it would be nice to install
> full centos over the network, and early in the install process, i'm
> given a choice of where the install image is, so i select "NFS
> directory", at which point i see simply "Waiting for NetworkManager to
> configure wlan0" ... and ... "There was an error configuring your
> network interface."
>
>   ok, fine, i'll fight with the network later. for now, i'll create a
> *second* (8G) USB drive with the full centos 6.5 DVD ISO image "dd"ed
> onto it, pop them *both* in the ultrabook, and reboot. oh, and i'll
> put the final 16G USB drive in the superspeed USB port -- that will be
> the installation target.
>
>   reboot with all three USB drives. in the BIOS, i've disabled Secure
> Boot Control (was that necessary?), and in the last BIOS menu, i can
> see two USB devices, one of which i recognize as the minimal UEFI
> drive so pick that as my boot device, linux starts to book, i get to
> the point where i select where the installation image, and i select
> "/dev/sde1" which corresponds to the USB drive with the full DVD ISO,
> get to partitioning menu and select *only* the 16G USB drive as the
> target install device and let it go, and it's installing as we speak.
> *sigh*.
>
>   how difficult have i made this for myself? the obstacles are:
>
> * ultrabook has no DVD drive
> * ultrabook is UEFI boot so i can't boot a regular ISO image off of
> USB drive
> * if i make the required minimal UEFI boot USB device, i need to get
> the full install image from elsewhere and, for now, the network
> doesn't seem to activate (but i'll fight with that later)
>
>   finally, once the install is finished (just starting right now),
> will i even be able to boot that USB drive? or will UEFI once again
> get in the way?
>
>   thoughts?
>
> rday
>
> --
>
> ========================================================================
> Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
>                         http://crashcourse.ca
>
> Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
> LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
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