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Old 12-29-2013, 03:11 PM   #1
wigglytoes
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Feb 2009
Posts: 17

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UEIF Dual Boot Win7 & CentOS only boots Win7


I have almost exactly the same problem as the 'Coug'.
I spent about 10 hours on this yesterday, including looking through the redhat books.
(BTW. A response of; here read these 'books' really isn't helpful. Something like
read page 10-11 of this book, would be, but even better would be taking a shot at an
answer.)

MB: Gigabyte Z87X-UD5h
CPU: Intel i7-4770k
500 GB SSD Samsung drive.

I originally dual booted the machine the normal way, using BIOS. Both Systems came up fine.
Noting that UEFI was the latest and greatest thing, and that soon enough everything
will migrate to that, I decide to wipe the drive, and load it using UEFI.
10 hours later, I wiped it again, and went back to BIOS. and I have my dual boot.
I can't list everything that I've tried, the list would be exhaustive. The highlights are:
I moved the firmware settings to UEFI.
I let Win 7 create it's own partitions. (and I tried to create them myself)
It created 3. /dev/sda1 for EFI formated FAT32 around 126 MB
/dev/sda2 is reserved for Microsoft. It's around 100 MB
/dev/sda3 for Windows7 format NTFS around 200 GB
I then loaded CentOS 6.5.
While doing so I created two more partitions
/dev/sda4 for swap 16384 GB
/dev/sda5 for / ext4 around 250 GB
I let the CentOS bootloader be installed into /dev/sda1 (While it looks like Coug created a 6th partition)

I could not get Centos to boot.
It immediately booted Win 7 every time. (Incredibly fast boot too. Nice SSD)
Every time that I went into setup, and changed the boot order, it didn't care. it booted to Windows.
BTW CentOS was one of the boot options. As was 'Windows boot Manager'
Other options changed, but the SSD drive was often one of them (tried that too).
It felt as if there was a permission problem with the boot order. It wasn't going to allow me to change it,
and even when I'd click on 'CentOS' in Boot Override, the screen would flash, and not change.

BTW I'm running Firmware F7 of Gigabyte UEFI DualBIOS.
I also tried F4, as that was the firmware on the backup BIOS (It came with F4).
(One of the cool discoveries that I made was that the Gigabyte Board has a toggle switch for two BIOS chips.
You can pick either one, and boot to that. I average a new Gigabyte build a year, and hadn't cause to figure
out what that was all about, previously. It's a nice option)

I did find one thing that I couldn't correct.
After booting to rescue mode with the CentOS DVD, and mounting /dev/sda1
#efibootmgr -v returns that
CENTOS is at \EFI\redhat\grub.efi
WINDOWS is at \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgr.efi
The Windows path and efi file exists
The Centos path and efi does not.
What is there is \EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi

Looks like CentOS is pointing to the wrong thing.
As I mentioned I didn't correct this. I tried.
I tried a symbolic link, but that's not allowed.
I tried to copy the bootx64.efi into .\redhat\grub.efi
I tried to create a new booter by using efibootmgr which pointed at Boot\bootx64.efi
You'd think that the last one would work, but I couldn't make it work.
I gave up, and went back to BIOS - an hour later I had my Dual Boot. (Going
through those packages takes time)

I believe that there's a bug here. Centos putting the wrong thing into /dev/sda1
Am I correct?
Where does the bug report go?
Do you have any specific suggestions?

One last thing. For the newbs.
BIOS can only create/use 4 primary partitions. If you need more partitions, you have to make an extended partition,
then make sub-partitions in there.
UEFI can handle around 128 partitions.
We've been referring to the computers firmware for BIOS for so long that the terms are interchangeable.
I think that we're going to have to adopt some naming conventions to keep these things straight.
We'll call the software that boots the computer The Firmware. BIOS is one type of Firmware,
UEFI is a different/newer type of Firmware.

Wiggly
 
Old 12-29-2013, 07:55 PM   #2
John VV
LQ Muse
 
Registered: Aug 2005
Location: A2 area Mi.
Posts: 17,624

Rep: Reputation: 2651Reputation: 2651Reputation: 2651Reputation: 2651Reputation: 2651Reputation: 2651Reputation: 2651Reputation: 2651Reputation: 2651Reputation: 2651Reputation: 2651
first RHEL6.5 is NOT free !
you MUST buy the required "license" / support contract

or

use one of the FREE rebuilds
CentOS 6.5
ScientificLinux 6.4 ( soon to be 6.5 )

also in dealing with Microsoft windows i find it BEST !!!!!!! to let Microsoft have the MBR on the first drive !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this makes life MUCH EASIER
do not even fight the "war" with windows for the MBR
( the only way to win it to NOT play the game)

every linux OS will boot just fine from a small "/boot" partition on the drive
and most will AUTO set up the windows controled MBR in GRUB as "windows 7 " in the boot menu

most computers now that come with Win7 have a HIDDEN "recovery" partition
get a install disk from Microsoft
-- this might have changed but ....
i was able to have MS send me a free install dvd in the US mail
all i needed was the activation code ( from the sticker on the computer )

steps
1 reformat the drive(s)

2 install windows7 to the first drive ( or first half of the drive - NO "recovery" partition - you have the install dvd )

3 install cent to the second drive or second half of the drive

the "Gparted" layput should look something like
/dev/sda1 -- Windows7 ( with windows bootloader on the MBR)
----------------
/dev/sda2 /boot -- about 500 meg
/dev/sea3 -- SWAP
/dev/sda4 EXTENDED
/dev/sda5 /
/dev/sda6 /home

set the partition "/boot" as the partition to boot from



and let CentOS's anaconada installed install grub to that /boot partition
centos will boot fine on ext3 formatted boot partition

Last edited by John VV; 12-29-2013 at 07:58 PM.
 
Old 12-30-2013, 12:15 AM   #3
wigglytoes
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Feb 2009
Posts: 17

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 2
John:
I definitely appreciate the time that you spend in here. I know that I've seen your name on searches in the past.
In this case, I'm not so sure that you read my post.
Can't blame you really. Sunday afternoon. The football playoffs are being determined,
and I'm long winded, and the only question was buried in the middle.
I agree with everything that you said. Except I wouldn't name any partition 'extended'. That's just going
to mess up the people who aren't experts on partitioning.
Seriously though, I do appreciate the work you put in here.
Wiggly
 
Old 12-30-2013, 05:53 AM   #4
onebuck
Moderator
 
Registered: Jan 2005
Location: Central Florida 20 minutes from Disney World
Distribution: SlackwareŽ
Posts: 13,925
Blog Entries: 44

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Moderator Response

Your post(s) and replied post have been moved to a new thread. In the future please create a new thread instead of high jacking one. Your posts were associated but did warrant a new thread.
 
  


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