[gentoo-user] New system doesn't recognized bootable devise

[gentoo-user] New system doesn't recognized bootable devise

[thelma]

I transferred my old Sata SSD Intel-SSD from my ATOM computer to Iintel i5, Asus H610 motherboard.

Bios recognized both drives:

AHCI: Sata6G_1: Intel SSDSC2BF480A5 (this is the transferred drive bootable)
and
NVME: Samsung SSD 970 (this is new one not formated)

But under Bios Boot Menu my transferred intel ssd is not recognized as bootable drive.
Any solutions?
Is it a Boot Menu Setting?
I can post a picture.

-- 
Thelma

Re: [gentoo-user] New system doesn't recognized bootable devise

[Michael]

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On Monday, 20 November 2023 01:25:09 GMT thelma@sys-concept.com wrote:
> I transferred my old Sata SSD Intel-SSD from my ATOM computer to Iintel i5,
> Asus H610 motherboard.
> 
> Bios recognized both drives:
> 
> AHCI: Sata6G_1: Intel SSDSC2BF480A5 (this is the transferred drive bootable)
> and
> NVME: Samsung SSD 970 (this is new one not formated)
> 
> But under Bios Boot Menu my transferred intel ssd is not recognized as
> bootable drive. Any solutions?
> Is it a Boot Menu Setting?
> I can post a picture.

The EFI boot on the MoBo must be set to Legacy Bios or EFI, depending on the 
partition table type of your SSD (MBR Vs GPT).

To set this you should enable the CSM (Compatibility Support Module) in the 
Boot Menu of the MoBo and then look into the Boot Configuration submenu 
choices.

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Re: [gentoo-user] New system doesn't recognized bootable devise

[thelma]

On 11/20/23 01:28, Michael wrote:
> On Monday, 20 November 2023 01:25:09 GMT thelma@sys-concept.com wrote:
>> I transferred my old Sata SSD Intel-SSD from my ATOM computer to Iintel i5,
>> Asus H610 motherboard.
>>
>> Bios recognized both drives:
>>
>> AHCI: Sata6G_1: Intel SSDSC2BF480A5 (this is the transferred drive bootable)
>> and
>> NVME: Samsung SSD 970 (this is new one not formated)
>>
>> But under Bios Boot Menu my transferred intel ssd is not recognized as
>> bootable drive. Any solutions?
>> Is it a Boot Menu Setting?
>> I can post a picture.
> 
> The EFI boot on the MoBo must be set to Legacy Bios or EFI, depending on the
> partition table type of your SSD (MBR Vs GPT).
> 
> To set this you should enable the CSM (Compatibility Support Module) in the
> Boot Menu of the MoBo and then look into the Boot Configuration submenu
> choices.

The CSM (Compatibility Support Module) in the Boot Menu is greyed out.
It is Asus h610i Motherboard, and according for CSM to be enabled it needs dedicated graphic card;
I don't have one, using Intel i5 CPU graphic.

Is it possible to boot strap and re-partition /boot sector so the motherboard will recognize it without dedicated graphic card?

Re: [gentoo-user] New system doesn't recognized bootable devise

[Michael]

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On Monday, 20 November 2023 17:44:48 GMT thelma@sys-concept.com wrote:
> On 11/20/23 01:28, Michael wrote:
> > On Monday, 20 November 2023 01:25:09 GMT thelma@sys-concept.com wrote:
> >> I transferred my old Sata SSD Intel-SSD from my ATOM computer to Iintel
> >> i5,
> >> Asus H610 motherboard.
> >> 
> >> Bios recognized both drives:
> >> 
> >> AHCI: Sata6G_1: Intel SSDSC2BF480A5 (this is the transferred drive
> >> bootable) and
> >> NVME: Samsung SSD 970 (this is new one not formated)
> >> 
> >> But under Bios Boot Menu my transferred intel ssd is not recognized as
> >> bootable drive. Any solutions?
> >> Is it a Boot Menu Setting?
> >> I can post a picture.
> > 
> > The EFI boot on the MoBo must be set to Legacy Bios or EFI, depending on
> > the partition table type of your SSD (MBR Vs GPT).
> > 
> > To set this you should enable the CSM (Compatibility Support Module) in
> > the
> > Boot Menu of the MoBo and then look into the Boot Configuration submenu
> > choices.
> 
> The CSM (Compatibility Support Module) in the Boot Menu is greyed out.
> It is Asus h610i Motherboard, and according for CSM to be enabled it needs
> dedicated graphic card; I don't have one, using Intel i5 CPU graphic.

This is weird.  What does a dedicated graphics card have to do with the 
partitioning scheme of a storage device?  :-/

I don't have access to your MoBo to know its quirks, so can't help with 
specifics.


> Is it possible to boot strap and re-partition /boot sector so the
> motherboard will recognize it without dedicated graphic card?

The first thing to establish is if your SSD is using MBR partitioning, or GPT:  

fdisk -l /dev/sda | grep 'Disklabel type'

will output "dos" for MBR, or "gpt" for GPT.  I suspect your SSD is using MBR.

You could convert the MBR to GPT, but ... there is a good chance of wiping the 
disk and losing data.  Therefore, first create a full disk backup before you 
attempt anything else.  Then also create a backup of your MBR for good measure 
using dd, or sfdisk:

dd if=/dev/sda of=backup.mbr bs=512 count=1

or 

sfdisk --dump /dev/sda > MBR_backup.txt

You can restore the above to get your existing disk with its existing MBR 
partitions, if things do not work out as anticipated.

I am not aware of any scripts or automatic tools to do the MBR to GPT 
conversion, but the approach you can use is to boot with a LiveUSB, convert 
the partition table with gdisk[1] from MBR to GPT, recreate the partitions 
with *exactly* the same start and finish sectors, make sure there is a FAT32 
partition to be used as the UEFI boot partition and marked as partition type 
EF00, before you install GRUB (or your bootloader) in this partition.

For a more detailed approach check the steps described by the developer of 
gptfdisk[2].

[1] sys-apps/gptfdisk
[2] https://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/mbr2gpt.html

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Re: [gentoo-user] New system doesn't recognized bootable devise

[thelma]

On 11/20/23 11:26, Michael wrote:
> On Monday, 20 November 2023 17:44:48 GMT thelma@sys-concept.com wrote:
>> On 11/20/23 01:28, Michael wrote:
>>> On Monday, 20 November 2023 01:25:09 GMT thelma@sys-concept.com wrote:
>>>> I transferred my old Sata SSD Intel-SSD from my ATOM computer to Iintel
>>>> i5,
>>>> Asus H610 motherboard.
>>>>
>>>> Bios recognized both drives:
>>>>
>>>> AHCI: Sata6G_1: Intel SSDSC2BF480A5 (this is the transferred drive
>>>> bootable) and
>>>> NVME: Samsung SSD 970 (this is new one not formated)
>>>>
>>>> But under Bios Boot Menu my transferred intel ssd is not recognized as
>>>> bootable drive. Any solutions?
>>>> Is it a Boot Menu Setting?
>>>> I can post a picture.
>>>
>>> The EFI boot on the MoBo must be set to Legacy Bios or EFI, depending on
>>> the partition table type of your SSD (MBR Vs GPT).
>>>
>>> To set this you should enable the CSM (Compatibility Support Module) in
>>> the
>>> Boot Menu of the MoBo and then look into the Boot Configuration submenu
>>> choices.
>>
>> The CSM (Compatibility Support Module) in the Boot Menu is greyed out.
>> It is Asus h610i Motherboard, and according for CSM to be enabled it needs
>> dedicated graphic card; I don't have one, using Intel i5 CPU graphic.
> 
> This is weird.  What does a dedicated graphics card have to do with the
> partitioning scheme of a storage device?  :-/
> 
> I don't have access to your MoBo to know its quirks, so can't help with
> specifics.
> 
> 
>> Is it possible to boot strap and re-partition /boot sector so the
>> motherboard will recognize it without dedicated graphic card?
> 
> The first thing to establish is if your SSD is using MBR partitioning, or GPT:
> 
> fdisk -l /dev/sda | grep 'Disklabel type'
> 
> will output "dos" for MBR, or "gpt" for GPT.  I suspect your SSD is using MBR.
> 
> You could convert the MBR to GPT, but ... there is a good chance of wiping the
> disk and losing data.  Therefore, first create a full disk backup before you
> attempt anything else.  Then also create a backup of your MBR for good measure
> using dd, or sfdisk:
> 
> dd if=/dev/sda of=backup.mbr bs=512 count=1
> 
> or
> 
> sfdisk --dump /dev/sda > MBR_backup.txt
> 
> You can restore the above to get your existing disk with its existing MBR
> partitions, if things do not work out as anticipated.
> 
> I am not aware of any scripts or automatic tools to do the MBR to GPT
> conversion, but the approach you can use is to boot with a LiveUSB, convert
> the partition table with gdisk[1] from MBR to GPT, recreate the partitions
> with *exactly* the same start and finish sectors, make sure there is a FAT32
> partition to be used as the UEFI boot partition and marked as partition type
> EF00, before you install GRUB (or your bootloader) in this partition.
> 
> For a more detailed approach check the steps described by the developer of
> gptfdisk[2].
> 
> [1] sys-apps/gptfdisk
> [2] https://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/mbr2gpt.html

Thanks for the fints, I'll try it this weekend, and post a feedback.

Re: [gentoo-user] New system doesn't recognized bootable devise

[thelma]

On 11/20/23 11:26, Michael wrote:
[snip]
> 
> The first thing to establish is if your SSD is using MBR partitioning, or GPT:
> 
> fdisk -l /dev/sda | grep 'Disklabel type'
> 
> will output "dos" for MBR, or "gpt" for GPT.  I suspect your SSD is using MBR.

  fdisk -l /dev/sda | grep 'Disklabel type'

is showing "DOS" not MBR, does it change anything.

Booting from Gparted is showing:
Boot partition is - ext2
swap
and root/  - ext4

I was thinking to boot strap the disk /dev/sda/ and partition it to GPT/UEFI if I have gdisk installed on this computer.

Re: [gentoo-user] New system doesn't recognized bootable devise

[Michael]

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On Monday, 20 November 2023 23:49:14 GMT thelma@sys-concept.com wrote:
> On 11/20/23 11:26, Michael wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> > The first thing to establish is if your SSD is using MBR partitioning, or
> > GPT:
> > 
> > fdisk -l /dev/sda | grep 'Disklabel type'
> > 
> > will output "dos" for MBR, or "gpt" for GPT.  I suspect your SSD is using
> > MBR.
>   fdisk -l /dev/sda | grep 'Disklabel type'
> 
> is showing "DOS" not MBR, does it change anything.

Please read again what I wrote above, if the partition table is of the MBR 
type then the fdisk output is indeed "dos".


> Booting from Gparted is showing:
> Boot partition is - ext2
> swap
> and root/  - ext4
> 
> I was thinking to boot strap the disk /dev/sda/ and partition it to GPT/UEFI
> if I have gdisk installed on this computer.

The UEFI MoBo firmware will not boot any .efi image from an ext2 partition.  
It requires a FAT32 partition in which GRUB must be installed:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/EFI_System_Partition
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Installation/Bootloader

Don't forget to create a backup of your data, before you embark on this 
exercise.

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