Is a manjaro iso supposed to work/install in legacy mode?

if it is, [UPDATE] And it is!, you better pay attention and make sure to set your tricky to spot boot loader target after setting up swap[UPDATE] or your manjaro legacy install will fail temporarily. Chroot, grub-install /dev/sdx, update-grub fixes it, system boots/runs fine afterwards.

I am aware of that, as well as the numerous posts and ‘how-tos’ on legacy/uefi issues, often caused by mixing things up, however, I have installed 32/64bit manjaro on legacy hardware before and I never had any issues,

In yesterday’s use case I wanted to install xfce on an external 500gb spinner in legacy to allow a young electrician guy to test knackered laps from Dandora, one of the biggest electronic dumps in the world here in Nairobi, in order to find usable hardware for rebuilds.
Also, he mainly uses it on ‘loaned’ hardware which makes legacy preferable since it doesn’t mess with the host machine’s uefi entries.

So my question remains; Should manjaro be expected to work in legacy mode or on legacy hardware, or not?

Yes, it should. The Manjaro .iso will detect whether the machine has booted in legacy mode or in native UEFI mode and will behave accordingly.

However, be advised that 32-bit CPUs are no longer supported.

All my virtualbox tests are using bios/mbr - so yes - it works.

BUT it is 64-bit which would fail on 32-bit hardware - just saying :slight_smile: you already know that :slight_smile:

In that case manjaro-xfce-21.3.7-minimal-220816-linux515.iso isn’t working with ‘Erase disk’ install option.

The installed system also throws the keyring error on first update.

I will download and test it on bare-metal

How on earth did xfce minimal ISO get to be 2.5G - that alone makes me suspicious

I was doing the setup on a lap that has win in uefi and a manjaro in legacy that is a rescued mbr drive installed originally on my non-uefi SurfBeast (Reine Neugierde : Wie schnell ist mein / euer Rechner? - #7 by 6x12) which went up in smoke the day the Queen died…, so yes, this is true legacy, I’m on it right now:

test -d /sys/firmware/efi && echo efi || echo bios
bios

There’s a girl in school right now with an asus netbook on frozen 32bit manjaro… but no, yesterday was all 64bit hardware.

Great, would be good to sort this out.
Please use the ‘erase disk’ option (I recon manually may work, especially if the installer gets to create the msdos partition table). And maybe have a gpt drive with an efi partition present on the system, maybe that’s what threw it off. I should have tested a bit more yesterday but was tightly watched so had to focus on getting it going… :flushed: :rofl:

I used gparted to create msdos partition table with all the rest ‘unallocated space’, then started the installer.

Depending on the scrap collected - you may not be able to use Legacy boot.

I have an 5y old Acer winbook - no legacy boot
I have a 3y old Yepo winbook - no legacy boot

Using xfce iso minimal (codename Ruah)

  • fresh download of manjaro-xfce-21.3.7-220816-linux515.iso

My test subject is a 8y old Asus laptop with an 240G ssd booted in efi mode and installed in efi mode.
CSM enabled.

  1. → Reboot to a ventoy disk using boot override
  2. → choice between efi and bios
  3. → select bios (the non efi entry)
  4. → select xfce minimal (codename Ruah)
  5. → added a 240G SSD on usb (empty no partitions)
  6. → started installer
  7. → select usb (/dev/sdc)
  8. → select erase disk (swap - no hibernate - ext4)
  9. → installer creates dos partition set
  10. → installer fails on bootloader
    → caused by my mistake - I didn’t check which device to install the loader on
    → preselected to /dev/sda
    → fail is to be expected - you cannot write mbr to a gpt disk

Reboot test subject
repeat step 1…8

  1. → set bootloader to /dev/sdc
  2. → installer creates parition set
  3. → installer finish with no errors

Rebooted and sucessfully booted from USB on bios/mbr

$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda      8:0    0 223,6G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   300M  0 part 
├─sda2   8:2    0 214,5G  0 part 
└─sda3   8:3    0   8,8G  0 part 
sdb      8:16   0 476,9G  0 disk 
├─sdb1   8:17   0  76,9G  0 part 
├─sdb2   8:18   0    32M  0 part 
└─sdb3   8:19   0   400G  0 part 
sdc      8:32   0 223,6G  0 disk 
├─sdc1   8:33   0 214,8G  0 part /
└─sdc2   8:34   0   8,8G  0 part [SWAP]
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom  
$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 223,57 GiB, 240057409536 bytes, 468862128 sectors
Disk model: OCZ-AGILITY3    
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 1CC09109-A435-6A43-BFD0-7CE414902324

Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1       4096    618495    614400   300M EFI System
/dev/sda2     618496 450402086 449783591 214,5G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3  450402087 468857024  18454938   8,8G Linux swap
$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdc
Disk /dev/sdc: 223,57 GiB, 240057409536 bytes, 468862128 sectors
Disk model: ITY3            
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xd5abf184

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1  *         2048 450402086 450400039 214,8G 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2       450402087 468857024  18454938   8,8G 82 Linux swap / Solaris

In theory it is possible to boot both bios and efi from same disk - condition - you use grub.

Create an unformatted partition of size between 1M-32M (calamares prefer 32M) on a GPT disk with partition type EF02.

Then run grub-install for i386 targeting the device

It is possible to migrate to Arch32 - I haven’t done it lately so the notes may be imcomplete

That’s what happened here. I may have been distracted a little but I can’t remember being asked to define a boot loader target, the installation in ‘Erase disk’ mode was ‘automatic’ after the swap question. And shouldn’t grub install to the specified target’s mbr instead of ‘→ preselected to /dev/sda’?

At what stage in the ‘Erase disk’ mode were you asked/given an opportunity to do that? Maybe will try that again if I find a drive.

As I said, I’m sure this wouldn’t have happened had I done the partitioning manually. Wanted to demonstrate the simplicity of the ‘Erase disk’ install… :flushed:

It is below - just left of the buttons - easy to miss :slight_smile: - I missed it too …

And there we have it!
The traps of the GRAPHIC user interface when installing in a 9sqm room with 6 guys and 4 kids wanting to know how you can use a drive as a ‘computer’. I didn’t do the actual clicking, just followed the guy doing it on the wall TV screen…

Better not, she’d kill me if I mess that up. Mainly uses bookworm and freeoffice and vlc, hasn’t been updated in a year, was meant to get her to do the homework during lockdown, gave no trouble. Don’t mess with a working system…

Thanks for that, will try that next time.

Maybe two suggestions for the ‘Erase disk’ mode:

  • default boot loader target follows install target instead of using sda
  • make the visual ‘pick bootloader target’ button bigger/more obvious or don’t continue until a choice there is made

And I may need :nerd_face: