No bootable Media

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1

I have installed Haiku to an HP Laptop. I can boot but only if I have the USB drive in it. If I don’t I get “No bootable media…” This isn’t the first time I’ve had this issue. To be honest, and I am, I have had this exact same problem every time I have ever installed Haiku. Without fail, every time. It’s been at least two years since the last time I tried to really install Haiku and now I can’t remember the command line to get this to work. Honestly, I just don’t understand why getting a working Haiku install is such a problem.

P.S. Yes it boots to the HD and not the USB when the USB is connected.

2

Not sure if this is on legacy or EFI? But I’ll try to help with both, like if it’s legacy, this one’s easiest. Restart back into the Haiku USB and open the Installer, then set up the boot menu (from Tools).

For EFI, first thing I can think of is DriveSetup; make the EFI system partition (ESP) active and also check that Haiku EFI files are in there; it should be seen after this.

But if it still doesn’t see it, if you have something like Ubuntu on a flash drive, start GParted (or parted) and flag the ESP as boot, esp in flags. And if it still doesn’t see it, you’ll probably just have to choose it with the computer’s built-in boot menu every time. If it’s totally invisible after everything, turn off Secure Boot in your EFI options/setup (on every HP I’ve used, the key is F10 for setup and F9 for the boot menu). Hope this helps :slight_smile:

3

Is it an MBR install? If so read on…

The legacy/MBR booting sequence involves a few pieces of code in your bootable media:

  • First the BIOS reads the very first sector of your disk, the Master Boot Record, and executes it.
  • The most basic MBRs (like Windows’) will just search your partition table for the active partition, but it can contain more complex code for a boot menu as well. Anyway, the MBR code should find a partition to boot from, either the active partition or whatever was selected in that boot menu.
  • The MBR code will then load the very first sector of the partition, AKA the Partition Boot Record, and execute it
  • The PBR is OS specific and is responsible for loading the OS kernel.

To successfully boot Haiku you need both a valid MBR that gets to the Haiku partition, and a valid PBR that loads Haiku itself. The way I’d do it is like this:

  1. Erase the Haiku partition using another bootable media
  2. With the partition gone, boot the Haiku install media (it should stop booting from the HDD)
  3. Create the Haiku partition with the installer, and also be sure to set it to active (right click, modify parameters, check the checkbox)
  4. Back to the first screen enter the “Tools” menu. The first option should write the boot menu to the MBR, the second option should write the PBR to the selected target partition.
  5. Proceed the setup normally.

Now if you are using EFI things are more complicated. The EFI booting process involves looking for the boot manager on a special EFI partition, and I believe the Haiku installer doesn’t install it automatically. Here is what you should do:

  1. Be sure Secure Boot is off (check your BIOS settings) and your disk is initialized as GPT.
  2. Be sure the EFI System Partition exists - if it doesn’t you can use the Installer’s partitioning tools to create it, format it as FAT32 and label it to something like “EFIBOOT”. You might need to delete the Haiku partition from another bootable media if the flash drive’s boot manager insists on loading the Haiku install from the HDD.
  3. With the ESP partition in place, install Haiku normally if you deleted the partition beforehand, if not just use the flash drive to start it up.
  4. In the bootable media’s first partition (mount it if it’s not already) you should find a BOOTX64.EFI file inside /haiku esp/EFI/BOOT. Save it to the desktop, remove the flash drive and mount your disk’s ESP partition.
  5. If Haiku will be the only OS on the PC, copy that file to the exact same location in your HDD’s ESP partition (e.g. /EFIBOOT/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI), creating the parent folders as necessary.
  6. If not, then you’ll need a more involved setup using a boot manager like Clover or rEFInd
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4

I have it installed and booting from HD now. Thanks

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5

THANK YOU! I have a great little mini PC with everything working now after finding this answer - even the spiffy new hi-rez scaling on a 4K monitor, sound, wifi, etc. AWESOME!

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