Unable to choose destination disk for partition during F20 install

[AlexanderVL]

I'm trying to get F20 to install on my brand new box. Screenshots first:

http://alexandervanloon.nl/F20_partitioning.png
http://alexandervanloon.nl/F20_selecteddisks.png
http://alexandervanloon.nl/F20_errorpartitioning.png

All the NTFS partitions belong to Windows 7. I want the other halves of my SSD and hard disk to be used for the F20 installation. From the start EFI has been enabled before the Windows 7 installation.

All the unused space was unpartitioned, but Fedora 20 refused to make the partitions itself. Maybe the limitations outlined in topic 296327 could be the cause. So I had to do it manually, but this hasn't worked for me yet. Apparently the last error message should be solved if I add a /boot partition (I thought just /boot/EFI was enough) according to topic 295792, so I' ll try that.

The question I actually want to ask in this topic is different: why do I seem to be unable to decide if a specific partition should be created on my SSD or my hard disk? The only thing bothering me is that I can't move the swap partition from sda (my SSD) to my hard disk (sdb). As far as I know the swap partition gets a lot of writes, and that will wear my SSD out faster. Not that I worry much about SSD wear – mine is a Samsung 840 Evo which has near eternal life – but if possible I want the swap partition on sdb. The "name" entry is grayed out so I can't change it, any advice on how to proceed?

[Ahmad Samir]

About the error you got, it looks like you're hitting this issue http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common...unclear_errors .

As for where to put the swap partition:
- Delete the current one (from the screenshot); and resize / to add the resulting empty space to it
- Resize /home to get some free space, which you can then use to create a swap partition

IMHO, 16GB for a swap partition is too much; 2-4GB should be enough. (FWIW, I have 8GB of RAM, and I run the system without a swap partition at all).

[AlexanderVL]

Thank you so much for your help Ahmed. You were right, I was indeed affected by that bug. I reinstalled Windows 8.1 on my box and had to do so again when I figured out that it managed to use MBR partitioning again rather than GPT. To fix this I simply removed the bootmgr file from my USB flash drive which installs Windows 8.1. This makes it impossible for Windows Setup to boot in BIOS mode and forces UEFI mode, I read on Microsoft Technet.

As for choosing the destination disk of a partition, your method didn't work for me. However, there is an easily missed button in the lower left corner of the partitioning screen of Anaconda which allows you to choose which disk the partition should be created on. This design is user-unfriendly and I guess I'll file a bug about it later. Anyway, with Windows 8.1 GPT partitions Anaconda had no problem at all and the installation went fine. I also have 8 GB RAM, but having read topic #1559051 some time ago I put a 4 GB swap partition on my hard disk to be safe. I'm not sure if 8 GB is enough to have no swap partition if I'm running a video game and have Firefox open in the background with a billion tabs?

Until I restarted that is. GRUB2 managed to boot Fedora 20 fine, but Windows 8.1 no longer boots because bootmgfw.efi can't be found. I've noticed that many others have problems with this too, in topic #1681887 you give a summarized solution in which you refer to topic #1661415 for more detailed instructions.

I followed the first steps. My Windows 8 EFI System Partition (ESP) is /dev/sda2 and my Fedora ESP is /dev/sda5. I did the following per your advice as root:

mkdir /mnt/efi-windows
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/efi-windows/
cp -r /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/ /mnt/efi-windows/EFI/

This copied the files succesfully, but then you write it's necessary to edit fstab. My fstab is:

#
# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Fri Jan 10 19:04:49 2014
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info
#
UUID=3ec4114b-a84c-45ee-b2d0-27d839fad557 /                       ext4    defaults        1 1
UUID=749fb40e-7153-4ba6-87ff-58569b7b7cc4 /boot                   ext4    defaults        1 2
UUID=5EEB-7ABA                            /boot/efi               vfat    umask=0077,shortname=winnt 0 0
UUID=5f7547da-f5e5-480b-844c-fed13e92b151 /home                   ext4    defaults        1 2
UUID=08fda7d7-e2ea-4de8-95fe-8f0787dfb398 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0

But what do I do next? Obviously /boot/efi has to be replaced with an entry pointing to the Windows 8 ESP now, but how? The instructions aren't clear to me and I'm afraid I might make a mistake. I would appreciate any help very much.

I spent nearly the whole day trying to set up both Fedora 20 and Windows 8.1 and I'm very frustrated now. I'd wish UEFI and GPT weren't so complex to turn dual-booting into rocket science, with BIOS and MBR it was easy.

[Ahmad Samir]

I forgot about needing a swap partition to hibernate the system (I rarely ever use hibernation on my box).

The consolidate-two-efi-partitions are really srs5694's instructions from the post you linked.

First find the UUID of /dev/sda2:

blkid /dev/sda2

then edit /etc/fstab and replace the UUID bit in in the /boot/efi entry with the UUID of /dev/sda2.

Then you have to tell the firmware about the new location for Fedora, as root:

efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sda -p 2 -l '\EFI\fedora\shim.efi' -L Fedora

[AlexanderVL]

I followed your instructions and now I can dual boot fine again, thanks a ton Ahmed! Only thing I changed in your instructions is to refer to grubx64.efi instead of shim.efi as advised in the other topic, because I disabled Secure Boot. I'll make sure to report a bug about this whole ordeal.

[Ahmad Samir]

Great, glad you got it fixed.

FWIW, I have Secure Boot disabled and my Fedora UEFI entry points to shim.efi, it seems to work, or maybe it falls back to grubx64.efi if Secure Boot is disabled.

Edit: It seems that even when I enable secure boot in the firmware is still says "booting in insecure mode", I am not bothered since I don't need secure boot anyway.

[AlexanderVL]

For those interested, I finally got around to posting bug reports:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1057376 for choosing the destination disk of a partition
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1010704 for the Windows 8/EFI dual boot issue