After I posted the question, it seems I use MBR as disk’s partition table. The HP laptop might not support MBR as it’s fairly new.
I ran sgdisk -g /dev/sda on the drive (converting MBR to GPT), making it unbootable. It seems I have to reinstall the boot loader. Which I don’t know how to do.
LE: I have manually installed the boot loader like this tutorial explains. But no luck, it’s still unbootable.
LLE: I have wiped the drive, selected GPT as partition table and reinstalled Manjaro with the same partitions, but this time the partitions were made with the setup partitioner. Same issue.
What I meant is the laptop which don’t boot - ensure compatibility mode is enabled when you are using MBR formatted media to load the operating system.
Generally a GPT install does not boot on BIOS/MBR system.
You can boot a GPT installation on MBR only using GRUB and only using an unformatted partition of the BIOS boot Partition Type ID 0xEF02 and contrary to what you may have learned on GRUB install using MBR you must install grub to the bios boot partition.
@linux-aarhus by compatibility mode, I hope you refere to “Legacy support enable”. Because this is the only option in BIOS that sounds remotely like that. With it enabled or disabled, it doesn’t change the outcome.
@linux-aarhus What did I do wrong then? And how can I set EFI to the USB SSD?
@GaVenga With either “Legacy Support Enable and Secure Boot Disable” or “Legacy Support Disable and Secure Boot Disable”, the USB SSD still cannot boot.
Partly because I think we are circling - an xyproblem - the underlying issue is the lack of understanding of the difference between BIOS/MBR and EFI/GPT.
Depending on the type of USB device it may report itself as REMOVABLE and installing Manjaro to a removable device must be done manually and special caution is needed both with the fstab generation and the boot loader installation.
There is several topics on how to target a removable device for installation. Just search the forum - one of them is this
@linux-aarhus I understand how BIOS/MBR and EFI/GPT work (in theory), but all my installs (in the span of the last 10 years) used MBR with GRUB. I never had issues with them. I even experimenting removing the boot loader on purpose, then put it back. Never had issues.
Now I have installed Manjaro the way you described (without the encryption and I used XFCE instead of LXDE). But, still, on the HP laptop it doesn’t see it. However, besides the Asus laptop, now it boots even from a non UEFI machines (I tried it on another old laptop that supports only MBR, that previously didn’t boot from the USB SSD).
So, I guess, the problem is the laptop, somehow… but I wonder: why/how does the Live Manjaro stick work?! Could you explain how it’s made bootable?
==> boot-device is not internal, but on USB-port…
BIOS: something like “boot-device HDD / boot-device-FFD”?
Your Live-USB is recognized, but “Manjaro-SSD” not;
Does the “Manjaro-SSD” show up in BIOS “Boot-Configuration”?
Use Partition-manager: gparted.
If the “Manjaro-SSD” is UEFI - there will be a partition named “/boot/efi” formatted with fat32.
A Live-USB shows up as “iso9660” and “MISO_EFI” to boot.
Setting “USB-SSD” to EFI is too difficult. Better backup valuable data and create “USB-SSD” installation new:
Create a Live-USB, select in boot-menu a start-device called UEFI-xxxx - (should be the live-usb) and try to start
on both machines. If one refuses to start, or does not show the option UEFI-xxx, thats no good.
If usb-live starts on both machines in UEFI-Mode you can install Manjaro on the USB-SSD…
Boot-Options? I see, not showing [UEFI]-Sandisk Cruzer Blade …"
means you can not start in UEFI mode on this laptop…
The Live-medium can start as UEFI - AND/OR - MBR so on this Laptop it chooses MBR-start…
.
So the Tipp of linux-aarhus is the best to do:
@GaVenga I tried gparted and with built-in installation partitioner, as I said. No luck.
And I already tried linux-aarhus tutorial, check a few posts up, and it managed to boot on a non UEFI laptop, which it didn’t boot previously. But the dang HP laptop still doesn’t see it.
