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#1 2013-08-20 22:40:49
- ningfengrui
- Member
- Registered: 2013-08-20
- Posts: 4
[solved] BIOS Boot Partition for GRUB in GPT-partitioned BIOS system
Hi, I am an Arch newbie trying to work my way through the Beginners installation guide. I've reached to the part where I am supposed to install GRUB but now the guide tells me I should have made a special "BIOS boot partition" during my initial partitioning (since I am using GRUB on a GPT/BIOS system). I have installed parted via "pacman -S parted" but I do not know the command I need to create such a partition. My table looks like this:
sda:
free space (start 17.4kB, end 1049kB)
sda1 /boot (start 1049kB, end 1075MB) ext4
sda2 / (start 1075MB end 120GB) ext4
(/home is the entire sdb)
How do I create such a BIOS boot partition with parted? Arch wiki tells me it is supposed to be 1007kB
Please help a newbie!
Last edited by ningfengrui (2013-08-20 23:54:08)
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#2 2013-08-20 23:44:23
- srs5694
- Member
- From: Woonsocket, RI
- Registered: 2012-11-06
- Posts: 719
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Re: [solved] BIOS Boot Partition for GRUB in GPT-partitioned BIOS system
Create a 1-2MiB partition and then set its "bios_grub" flag. Alternatively, you can use gdisk and set its type code to EF02.
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#3 2013-08-20 23:52:56
- ningfengrui
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- Registered: 2013-08-20
- Posts: 4
Re: [solved] BIOS Boot Partition for GRUB in GPT-partitioned BIOS system
SOLVED! Instead of using parted (to complicated) I managed to figure out how to do it in cgdisk (much more straight forward for a newbie like me)
Thanks for your time
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#4 2013-08-31 05:44:27
- soote
- Member
- Registered: 2013-07-18
- Posts: 7
Re: [solved] BIOS Boot Partition for GRUB in GPT-partitioned BIOS system
Create a 1-2MiB partition and then set its "bios_grub" flag. Alternatively, you can use gdisk and set its type code to EF02.
Could you add this to the beginner's guide arch wiki? I was stuck on this and this is the only place I found the solution. Either way, thank you for type code.
edit: now that I ctrl f the type code I'm realizing how clearly stated it is in the beginner guide and the grub guide.
Last edited by soote (2013-08-31 06:04:03)
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#5 2013-08-31 06:02:57
- WonderWoofy
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- From: Los Gatos, CA
- Registered: 2012-05-19
- Posts: 8,414
Re: [solved] BIOS Boot Partition for GRUB in GPT-partitioned BIOS system
The reason the Beginners Guide as so many links is so that you can follow them in the event that you might need more information. I don't think that this would add very much more to it, but I also think that adding this snippet means that every small detail should be included.
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#6 2013-08-31 06:41:38
- TheSaint
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- From: my computer
- Registered: 2007-08-19
- Posts: 1,523
Re: [solved] BIOS Boot Partition for GRUB in GPT-partitioned BIOS system
Create a 1-2MiB partition and then set its "bios_grub" flag. Alternatively, you can use gdisk and set its type code to EF02.
I think it is too small to hold any (U)EFI boot loader.
do it good first, it will be faster than do it twice the saint 
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#7 2013-08-31 07:24:58
- WonderWoofy
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- From: Los Gatos, CA
- Registered: 2012-05-19
- Posts: 8,414
Re: [solved] BIOS Boot Partition for GRUB in GPT-partitioned BIOS system
This thread is not about UEFI. Also the bios boot partition is not meant to be used interactivly in any way, but rather it is meant for grub to dump its extra bloat. Grub has gotten to big to fit into the first 446 bytes of the boot sector.
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