I have been dual booting linux and Haiku beta5 on a Thinkpad 11e.
Before installing Haiku, I shrank my linux (btrfs) root partition to make room. Then I booted Haiku from the USB stick, created and formatted a new BeFS partition in the empty space, and installed Haiku on it.
So, I think the partition layout is:
sda1 is EFI (FAT32)
sda2 is Linux BTRFS
sda3 is BeFS
I am using rEFInd boot manager, installed from Linux. (In the past, refind has saved so much confusion…I hate grub: so many files and bizarro rescue shell!) Anyway…
I copied bootx64.efi from the USB stick into the hard drive’s EFI/Haiku folder.
Starting up, there’s Haiku on the refind menu. I choose it and (I think) it chainloads Haiku’s boot manager. But the Haiku boot manager screen says “Cannot continue booting (Boot volume is not valid)”
If I press enter on the first choice to “Select boot volume/state”, I get a menu where Haiku is listed twice. If I pick one I get a list of snapshot dates with Latest at the top. If I pick Latest (or anything) the screen just blinks and I think reloads.
If I choose rescan, I have the option to continue booting and Haiku finally boots normally when I press enter on “Continue booting.”
I have not made any customizations to refind.conf. If have found rEFInd is pretty good at finding kernels and root filesystems without any help from me, at least with Linux and FreeBSD.
Last weekend, I installed Ubuntu alongside Windows, install grub2 as bootloader, then install Haiku, copied the /system/data/platform_loaders/haiku_loader.efi from the USB stick into the EFI partition, added a menu entry to load it, Haiku boot smoothly.
My partition layout:
0 EFI (fat32)
1 Windows reserved (unknown)
2 Windows system (NTFS, C:)
3 Ubuntu (ext4)
4 Haiku (befs)
There’s no need to install GRUB,which is really awful and frustrating as you already found out,rEFInd is supported well and often recommended for multi-boot setups with Haiku.
If you get to the Haiku Bootloader,it’s unlikely that the issue has anything to do with rEFInd at all.
It’s more likely that your partition isn’t setup correctly.
Only a few weeks ago,there was nearly the same question here and it turned out the partition type wasn’t set to BFS,but I think Linux data or something like that.
If that’s the case,you can still format the partition as BFS and have a bootable system,but the Haiku Bootloader will not find the right partition,as it only looks for BFS.
Please recheck your partition setup and change the partition type to BFS if it’s now anything else.
Obviously you can’t change the type of a partition currently in use. So, to use DriveSetup, you will have to boot on another drive. Ie. the one that you used to install.
But since you have dual boot, you can use fdisk and “t” to modify the type of a partition.
Yes, I know that. It looks like there is no way to change the partition type in DriveSetup, as far as I can see. Other than deleting and recreating a partition…
I meant was there a Haiku-native command line app similar to Linux’s fdisk. I guess not.
Is there a way to get a list of installed packages and turn it into a shell script for easy reinstall? Haiku Depot is cumbersome.
Wait a sec. I can use Linux’s fdisk to modify the partition type? What number do I pick for BeFS?
Use Installer from your system to install Haiku on a USB drive, then boot from the USB drive, do whatever you need with DriveSetup and install from the USB back to the hard drive. The USB install will contain all packages installed on your system so no need for lists or anything.