Confused about antiX installation

[Member kaye]

Hello Friends!

I recently created an antiX Live USB using the Live USB Maker. Pretty sure I checked the “GPT partitioning” checkbox in Advanced Options.

Also chose the “Full-featured mode – writable LiveUSB”. That’s it. The antiX live USB seems to be working as I am now running it.

Now my laptop was purchased 2010. The BIOS has “Legacy OS Boot” in which I can choose between Enabled and Disabled.

Enabled – “Select Enabled to attempt Legacy OS Boot only.”
Disabled – “Select Disabled to attempt EFI Boot first, Legacy OS Boot Second.”

I was only able to boot my antiX live USB by setting the “Legacy OS Boot” to Enabled.

Why is that?? I would think that since I created the antiX live USB with a GPT, I would only be able to boot it if I set the “Legacy OS Boot” to Disabled, since GPT is associated with EFI (?)

Or am I not understanding the basics of it?

I have a follow up question after you guys have educated me on this issue.

Thank you for your time! =)

• This topic was modified 11 months ago by kaye.

[Moderator christophe]

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Try live usb maker with default settings, to see if that works.

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Moderator caprea]

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Windows can boot from gpt devices only in UEFI mode and not in Bios mode.
Linux can , if you have a BIOS boot partition and a bootloader which is able to do so like grub2.
https://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/booting.html

[Member kaye]

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UPDATE

Turns out I can boot the antiX live USB from “Legacy OS Boot – Enabled” as well as “Legacy OS Boot – Disabled” (REGARDLESS if the antiX live USB is GPT or MSDOS, not sure anymore, it’s all so confusing to me)

The difference is that if “Legacy OS Boot – Enabled”, I get the screen with Planet earth and stars graphics. If “Legacy OS Boot – Disabled”, I get the black grub screen.

Also, if I boot the antiX live USB with “Legacy OS Boot – Enabled”, I cannot install antiX onto the GPT hard drive. I get this message:

The following drives are, or will be, setup with GPT, but do not have a BIOS-GRUB partition:
sda
This system may not boot from GPT drives without a BIOS-GRUB partition.
Are you sure you want to continue?

If I boot the antiX live USB with “Legacy OS Boot – Disabled”, I don’t get that message and I can install antiX onto the GPT hard drive, except the GRUB onto the efi system partition – I get an error on that one:

GRUB installation failed. You can reboot to the live medium and use the GRUB Rescue menu to repair the installation.

So I abort the installation at about 95%, then proceed to run “Repair GRUB configuration file” –> “Select root location” –> I select the / partition.

Hard drive now has antiX installed and I can run it.

I will now try installing antiX onto the hard drive without using an efi system partition; I will only use the / partition – no home partition, no esp, etc., just /.

Sorry for boring you. I just want to document this.

Thank you

[Member olsztyn]

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kaye wrote:

Hard drive now has antiX installed and I can run it.
I will now try installing antiX onto the hard drive without using an efi system partition; I will only use the / partition – no home partition, no esp, etc., just /.
Sorry for boring you. I just want to document this.

This your experience is very interesting. I read it with great interest. Hopefully you will nail down all these and document. Thanks for taking the time to document.

kaye wrote:

The difference is that if “Legacy OS Boot – Enabled”, I get the screen with Planet earth and stars graphics. If “Legacy OS Boot – Disabled”, I get the black grub screen.

If I am not mistaken booting as Legacy (through MBR) is performed using syslinux boot loader, not Grub, as expected and booting in UEFI mode is through Grub.
This is another interesting variation in antiX Live boot process. I am not sure why booting in UEFI mode needs to use Grub. If I am not mistaken latest versions of syslinux are also able to boot in UEFI mode.
I wish our antiX experts can explain this design…
Thanks again…

Adding:
I remember performing an experiment early last year, where I was using just syslinux, no Grub in boot process and I deleted UEFI partition altogether, all antiX Live was in one EXT4 partition and I was able to boot in both Legacy and UEFI mode (on Thinkpad T520) without UEFI partition.
I did not keep detailed notes, but reported that experiment in this forum. The expert reply in this forum to that experiment was that UEFI partition is retained just to maximize compatibility with various computers. Now, with your experiment basically confirming similar experience I start doubting whether in antiX Live architecture the UEFI partition is needed at all. It might be important to have for Windows UEFI mode but perhaps it does not do anything for Linux, at least not for antiX. I could be wrong though, so I am curious of expert explanations…
Thanks again…

• This reply was modified 11 months ago by olsztyn.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

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