GUID Partition Table / Disk Label
 

Hello,

I used GParted to partition my disk for a SuSE 10.2 installation, and I chose the GPT Disk Label instead of MSDOS. The SuSE installer read the disk partitions fine; however, SuSE wouldn't boot after the installation was complete.

Some details:
/boot is on its own partition
/(root) partition is on an md raid1 device which spans two disks/partitions.
Motherboard is an ASUS a8n32 sli deluxe
Disks are Samsung SATA2

I've done this install many times before using MSDOS MBR. Everything went fine. Why not now with GPT?

Sure hope I can get this to work. Thanks for any input...

I may be wrong, but GPT Disk Labels is a IA-64 thing.
From what I learned by reading technical papers, IA-32 BIOSes does not know how to find the boot sector on theses disks because its structure is different from the MSDOS disk label.

At least, you need a GPT aware BIOS in your IA-32 motherboard.

But as I said, I may be wrong. I have no personal experience with IA-64 or GPT disks.

Thanks marozsas,

You and this wikipedia page have confirmed my suspicions. Apparently, an EFI is needed instead of traditional BIOS. But 32-bit motherboard manufacturers aren't cooperating. Maybe there's some politics involved.

Too bad, because I really like the idea. I posted on the ASUS website a few days ago, and nobody replied. I'll post back if I discover anything new.

S.