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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] reconfigure laptop disk for linux? EFI boot issue.

Thanks. Will try and report back. I found an item on installing LM 18.3 where fellow had same problem and found a weird
workaround (run gparted during install, just to scan disks, then exit. ?? Will see what happens).

Best, JN

On 2018-02-19 01:03 PM, Scott Murphy wrote:
> Well, disabling secure boot won’t break anything, so you can test away with it off. If you want to re-enble it, you have
> a few hoops to jump through in order to tell secure boot you have a signed linux boot to select from.
> 
> There are a lot of HOWTOs on getting secure boot to work with a linux kernel, just not sure if it is worth the trouble.
> I have a Dell XPS developer edition laptop that can with Ubuntu on it direct fro Dell. It has secure boot disabled right
> out of the box.
> 
>> On Feb 19, 2018, at 12:53 PM, J C Nash <profjcnash [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com <mailto:profjcnash [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com>> wrote:
>>
>> Scott pointed out that EFI does not have 4 partition limit.
>>
>> So I went ahead and resized. Win10 still worked.
>>
>> Then tried Linux Mint install (live USB works fine). Made main and swap partitions
>> as sda5 and sda6. But on restart got Secure Boot Violation.
>>
>> Tried again, watching progress, and GRUB install crashed. Win10 still working, but it's disk
>> management tool does NOT show the sda5 or sda6, and Win10 partition still original size.
>>
>> Also gparted gives libparted warning: The driver descriptor says the block size is
>> 2048 bytes, but linux says it is 512 bytes.
>>
>> Wondering if I need to turn off secure boot and allow Linux to install 3rd party drivers,
>> but I rather would like to avoid that.
>>
>> Ideas?
>>
>> JN
>>
>> On 2018-02-19 11:56 AM, Rick Leir wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi John
>>> You would be doing the change to extended for one of the partitions using fdisk or similar? Yes, risky, but the risk
>>> is all in your fingers. Can you practice on some other surplus PC?
>>>
>>> About the backup to removeable disk: I would prefer to use dd for this, just because I know it better.
>>>
>>> One option which might be less risky: install Ubuntu, and let it do the partition changes. It knows how to shrink the
>>> windows filesystem and set up the partitions. Then install Mint on the Ubuntu partition. Maybe you can go directly to
>>> Mint.
>>>
>>> It has been a while since I have monkeyed with partitions, so I hope I said this all correctly.
>>> Cheers --Rick
>>>
>>> On February 19, 2018 10:51:30 AM EST, J C Nash <profjcnash [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com <mailto:profjcnash [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com>> wrote:
>>>> Background (skip to QUERY if you wish):
>>>>
>>>> While in Florida recently, my wife and I spotted a nice 11.6" Dell
>>>> Inspiron
>>>> for $300 US. The design is "old", with 500GB spinning disk, 4 GB Ram,
>>>> quad
>>>> core processor that isn't terribly powerful. However, it is a size Mary
>>>> likes
>>>> for travel, and enough disk for lots of family photos and videos. (Her
>>>> previous
>>>> Asus EEE 1225B was similar, but heavier, and suffered an unfortunate
>>>> collision
>>>> with a tile floor that has made it only partly functional.) We've tried
>>>> Android
>>>> tablet, but the key layout on Android -- and we've looked around at
>>>> several --
>>>> makes doing email and stuff awkward. And they don't store much.
>>>>
>>>> It has Windows 10 and works reasonably well with this. We'd like to
>>>> keep
>>>> the Win10 in dual boot. Sometimes useful to test things.
>>>>
>>>> For safety, using the Windows 10 recovery disk tool
>>>> (Control Panel / System & Security > Security & Maintenance > Recovery)
>>>> created a recovery USB on a 16 GB Lexar flash key.
>>>>
>>>> Also downloaded Clonezilla clonezilla-live-20170905-zesty-amd64.iso and
>>>> used mintstick tool
>>>> to install on a USB key (only uses about 275 MB). This is in the
>>>> alternate
>>>> repository for Clonezilla and allows UEFI booting. The regular "stable"
>>>> choice did not
>>>> boot.
>>>>
>>>> Made a whole disk image using this and put it on an external USB drive
>>>> from the Dell.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> QUERY:
>>>>
>>>> The partition structure is as follows:
>>>>
>>>> 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: 3BBC8E19-46F4-4AB6-B9DA-7B3B4AB0A0DF
>>>>
>>>> Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
>>>> /dev/sda1       2048   1026047   1024000   500M EFI System
>>>> /dev/sda2    1026048   1288191    262144   128M Microsoft reserved
>>>> /dev/sda3    1288192 975849471 974561280 464.7G Microsoft basic data
>>>> /dev/sda4  975849472 976771071    921600   450M Windows recovery
>>>> environment
>>>>
>>>> Unless I'm really mis-reading this, I've got 4 primary partitions, so
>>>> need to
>>>> convert one to Extended/Logical. Some forum comments say this can be
>>>> risky.
>>>> Does anyone have recommendations or experience?
>>>>
>>>> - Some net comments suggest using Windows tool to do this. It appears
>>>> that the
>>>> MiniTool Partition Wizard (https://www.partitionwizard.com) can do
>>>> this.
>>>>
>>>> - In linux there appears to be fixparts from
>>>> https://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/files/gptfdisk/1.0.1/fixparts-binaries/
>>>>
>>>> Other choices?
>>>>
>>>> My current plan is
>>>>
>>>> - to convert the 465G particion with the free version of Partition
>>>> Wizard
>>>> - test Win10 boots
>>>> - use partimg from liveUSB to image that converted partition
>>>> - shrink the Win10 partition
>>>> - test booting again
>>>> - use partimg again to save (replace previous save)
>>>> - install Linux (Mint 18.3 Sylvia is what Mary is used to) to the
>>>> freed-up space.
>>>>
>>>> Comments and suggestions welcome.
>>>>
>>>> Best, JN
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Linux mailing list
>>>> Linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca
>>>> http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/linux
>>>
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> 
> -- 
> Scott Murphy, CISSP
> Principal Consultant  | Arrow-Eye Consulting Inc.
> 112 Springcreek Cres. | Kanata | ON | K2M 2K8 | Canada
> C: 613-769-9363       | GPG: A8DC6128C3A0E110
> 
> email: scott [ dot ] murphy [ at ] arrow-eye [ dot ] com <mailto:scott [ dot ] murphy [ at ] arrow-eye [ dot ] com> | web: http://www.arrow-eye.com <http://www.arrow-eye.com/> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>