cannot install bootloader to root partition

Hello! I was not able to install Guix having 2 partitions:

/dev/sda1 ext4 Linux filesystem

/dev/sda2 Linux Swap

`guix system init` says in this case:

guix system: error: failed to install bootloader

Screen: http://0x0.st/zeLs.jpg

Hi,

which grub is that? grub-efi?

Znavko,

znavko@disroot.org wrote:

Installing GRUB to your root partition isn't supported, and should

never be necessary anyway.

This is a strange partition layout; it's missing a ‘BIOS boot

partition’ and can never work without forcing GRUB to do something

it doesn't like to do.

Did you create this layout manually? If so, why?

Kind regards,

T G-R

Danny,

Danny Milosavljevic wrote:

i386-pc, so ‘BIOS’ (which means it's trying to use blocklists,

which is fragile & won't work without --force).

Kind regards,

T G-R

I have another laptop (Lenovo G50-30) where Guix works on this partition layout I've made manually:

# fdisk -l /dev/sda

...

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type

/dev/sda1 2048 230000000 229997953 109.7G 83 Linux

/dev/sda2 230000640 234441647 4441008 2.1G 82 Linux swap / Solaris

But all the new installations on other two notebooks with the same layout do not work.

June 17, 2019 5:07 PM, "Tobias Geerinckx-Rice" <me@tobias.gr> wrote:

Yes, I use Bios grub everywhere.

June 17, 2019 5:10 PM, "Tobias Geerinckx-Rice" <me@tobias.gr> wrote:

Hi Tobias,

Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <me@tobias.gr> writes:

FWIW, I used this partition layout for years, including on Guix systems,

and it worked fine. Long ago, bootloaders were only able to access the

first 8 GB or so of the disk, because of limitations in the old INT 13h

BIOS interface. Maybe this is still an issue on some ancient machines,

but I tend to use older hardware (my best laptop is ~11 years old, and

that's typical for me) and I've not had this issue in recent memory.

The only reason I started using a separate boot partition again is

because I now encrypt my root partition.

Mark

Znavko,

znavko@disroot.org wrote:

^ You removed the most important part, please don't do this on

help lists.

Still, we can tell that this is an ‘mbr’ layout:

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

They aren't the same: the one in your screenshot is a completely

different ‘gpt’ layout.

Hence my unanswered question:

Although now I suspect there was no reason and that the installer

isn't to blame.

So you can either:

- throw away your existing layout and create new MBR disklabel.

Your partitioning software will ask you or provide an option

somewhere. Since modern partitioning software leaves a huge gap

before the first partition, GRUB will nestle cosily into that

first unused ~MiB.

- keep it as GPT (it has some minor features MBR doesn't), and

create an additional GPT ‘BIOS boot partition’ as recommended

before. It only needs to be a few 100 KiB, so I use the space

before the first partition (= before the first megabyte; turning

off ‘alignment’ in your partitioning software). This tiny

partition is for use by GRUB, and GRUB alone: do not format or

mount it.

Both options work equally well, but you need to choose.

Kind regards,

T G-R

Mark H Weaver wrote:

Impossible, sorry.

Kind regards,

T G-R

On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 04:33:22AM +0200, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice wrote:

The graphical installer does not display a warning when not adding a

separate boot partition on GPT (an installer bug?), but installs

everything only to fail at the very end (this is another bug of guix

system?) at bootloader installation.

Regards,

Florian

Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <me@tobias.gr> writes:

In fact, it _is_ possible, if you use an MBR partition table. I assumed

that znavko was using MBR, but having now finally looked at the provided

screen image, I see now that they're using GPT. I agree that in this

case, a BIOS boot partition is required. I should have looked more

closely before responding, sorry.

Best,

Mark