Dualboot Gentoo from 2nd disk (UEFI)

Olis

Hello,

I'm setting up a new system. It uses an X470 chipset. Windows 10 is installed on the 1st disk (SATA SSD), I want to install Gentoo on the 2nd disk (NVMe SSD).

All dualboot installation instructions I found describe how to install everything on one disk. Can I use the same instructions to install Gentoo on the 2nd disk? What partitions do I need for UEFI?

Regards,
Oliver

aidanjt · Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2019 1:01 am Post subject:

You only *need* one ESP (type ef00) partition on any disk to install the EFI chainloader for your OS's boot loader, to get the firmware to handle the filesystem that your bootloader lives on, just enough to read the bootloader programme and run it. You can set the default UEFI entry with efibootmgr, if, say, Windows bumps off grub at some point. That said, your UEFI firmware should be able to manage multiple disks with their own ESP partitions, though, if you need your Linux system to be more portable, for e.g..
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alamahant · Advocate Joined: 23 Mar 2019 Posts: 3879

Have you read all this literature about windows 10,secure boot,dual booting with Linux?
Maybe you need to disable secure boot from your efi menus--if it is indeed enabled...
Or even better just ditch the windows....

No one is going to mourn its loss unless maybe you need to play games.
Now your EFI partition should be vfat(mkfs.vfat) maybe 200M.A Boot partition of around 1 Gig would also be nice.
If you like the flexibility of lvm maybe you could consider this also in advance.
I dont know what kind of ESP windows uses but if I were you--as they already advised you I would create a new ESP on disk2.
And when you later install grub it will take over also your win10 installation.
If you need to manually create efi entries use something like

tuggbuss · Apprentice Joined: 20 Mar 2017 Posts: 222

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Tony0945

OldTango · l33t Joined: 21 Feb 2004 Posts: 718

Tony0945 · Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2019 12:19 am Post subject:

I didn't even look when I pasted. My bad. That quote was supposed to be pasted into an e-mail to webhostinghub.com support. It's the error message I get when I try to update my SPF (?) records as they request. I'll have to check and see if your post went to webhostinghub support!

To each his own. I don't like stub kernel because I run multiple kernels and update often (Is kernel.org still running to "stable release of the week" contest?)
With reFind I just build the kernel and it boots next time. If I have a problem just "touch" and older kernel and reboot. I used to hate building a kernel and then forgetting to edit grub.conf.

As you can see my short list of Windows programs spend most of their time waiting for keyboard input or are not time-critical like a game. The only games I play are the old card games that came with old Windows, but those run on WINE as well.

That's what makes Gentoo great! No one size fits all answers! At least until profile 17.1

Olis · Posted: Fri Jun 28, 2019 9:27 pm Post subject:

tuggbuss · Apprentice Joined: 20 Mar 2017 Posts: 222

Tony0945 · Posted: Fri Jun 28, 2019 11:12 pm Post subject:

Olis · Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2019 9:16 am Post subject:

I'm making progess...

I'm using reFind and at least reFind starts upon boot and offers to start Gentoo Linux. Only problem now is that I get an

Tony0945 · Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2019 5:50 pm Post subject:

I don't use an initramfs so I don't know.

Try adding something to /boot/refind_linux.conf or /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/refind.conf

Instead of symlinks, let reFind find your kernels.
Here are the non-commented out lines in my refind.conf:

Olis · Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2019 5:25 pm Post subject:

Tony0945 · Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2019 6:12 pm Post subject:

No! I don't put the kernels in the ESP!

Olis · Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2019 7:50 pm Post subject:

Olis · Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2019 5:37 am Post subject:

Success! I booted from disk for the first time using reFind!

I copied my kernel (kernel-genkernel-x86_64-4.19.52-gentoo) from /boot to /boot/efi/EFI/gentoo/. Using the minimal refind.conf from my previous post reFind finds the kernel and successfully starts it!

Still no idea why it doesn't find it on /boot.

I also get an error message when Gentoo is mounting local filesystems saying that it doesn't find /dev/sda1 (my ESP with vfat filesystem). However, after boot completes I can issue a "mount -a" and /dev/sda1 is successfully mounted to /boot/efi.

Tony0945 · Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2019 1:36 pm Post subject:

I wonder if reFind has a problem reading the NVMe SSD?
I'd like to continue pursuing this as I plan to build an NVMe system in the near future.

Tony0945 · Posted: Thu Jul 04, 2019 2:47 am Post subject:

This looks promising:
Btrfs—Samuel Liao contributed this driver, which is based on the rEFIt/rEFInd driver framework and algorithms from the GRUB 2.0 Btrfs driver. I've tested this driver with simple one-partition filesystems on several installations, and with a filesystem that spans two physical devices on one (although I've made no attempt to ensure that the driver can actually read files that span both devices). Samuel Liao has used the driver with a compressed Btrfs volume. The driver will handle subvolumes, but you may need to add kernel options if you're booting a Linux kernel directly from a filesystem that uses subvolumes. For instance, when booting Ubuntu from Btrfs, also_scan_dirs + @/boot must be set in refind.conf and rootflags=subvol=@ must be added to the kernel options in refind_linux.conf. Without the first of these options, rEFInd can not locate the kernel; and without the second, the boot fails with a message to the effect that the initial RAM disk could not find /sbin/init. rEFInd 0.10.0 adds @/boot as a standard option to also_scan_dirs, and its refind-install and mkrlconf scripts should pick up the root flags, assuming the system is booted into the regular installation. These additions make it easier to set up rEFInd to work with Btrfs.