Bug 507454 – Boot flag not set on /dev/sda2

• Status: UNCONFIRMED
• Product: Documentation

[Description roleohibachi 2014-04-11 22:35:01 UTC]

Code listing 3.7 shows that the boot flag has not been set for the boot partition. This will cause some systems, particularly those with another bootable disk later in the boot sequence, to fail to boot to Gentoo after the system is configured. I verified this with my 2-disk system.

A code listing should be added instructing users to set the boot flag on the example disk:

(parted) set 2 boot on

[Comment 1 Bruce Lilly 2014-07-21 22:57:40 UTC]

Seen here also installing amd64 from 20140717 on a fresh disk.

Handbook gives instructions for fdisk, but not for parted.

Related (because a documentation fix will necessarily describe how to set the boot flag): parted help disk_toggle incorrectly lists flags (or parted doesn't honor flags listed by parted help -- take your pick):

GNU Parted 3.1
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) help disk_toggle                                                 
  disk_toggle [FLAG]                       toggle the state of FLAG on selected device

        FLAG is one of: boot, root, swap, hidden, raid, lvm, lba, hp-service, palo, prep, msftres, bios_grub, atvrecv, diag, legacy_boot


Neither "boot" nor "legacy_boot" actually work; parted instead suggests "pmbr_boot", which isn't listed.

Haven't tried with set.

Ideally, bug would be fixed by GNU parted upstream; unless/until then, documentation should note the discrepancy to avoid confusing newbies.

[Comment 2 Bruce Lilly 2014-07-21 23:08:40 UTC]

For patch info., see http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.parted.bugs/11233

[Comment 3 Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) 2015-01-03 09:35:42 UTC]

I never needed the boot option (even on my current laptop I have two disks + two msata's (who act as disks as well)). Only when switching to EFI I had to use the "set # boot on" for the EFI System Partition (not particularly to set the boot flag, but to set the right partition type).

I don't mind adding setting a boot flag, but I'd like to know the right command for this (perhaps as suggestion through the discussion/talk page on the wiki) with perhaps a reference to how this is a solution.

[Comment 4 Matthew Marchese 2017-02-11 00:15:07 UTC]

I need to revise the disk partitioning section to better structure and define what needs to happen for MBR vs. GPT. It is my hope to deal with this bug in the process of making these corrections.

[Comment 5 Matthew Marchese 2017-03-27 22:09:48 UTC]

I have not forgotten about this bug...