On 12/30/21 20:07, Marc Chamberlin wrote:
On 12/30/21 12:23, DennisG wrote:
Hi Dennis, thanks for jumping in and sharing your thoughts, much appreciated. I will intersperse my responses to your thoughts/suggestions below -
On 12/30/21 11:26, Marc Chamberlin wrote:
... stuff sent to the bit bucket
My Google searches has led me to a speculation that HP may have installed Windows inside a Docker container which is preventing access to the SSD drive and partition tables, but I know nothing about Docker containers and whether that is a possibility or not. I tried to ask HP support that question also, but they were already refusing to offer any support, so refused to answer that question as well. Sigh, so I guess I am on my own and cannot ask HP any technical questions. Kinda a rough way to treat their customers IMHO!
Can anyone tell me if Docker container could be the problem? I would like to get a second opinion since I don't want to have to learn all about Docker containers if I don't have to. If so, couldn't I just blow away the Windows installation that HP did, and reinstall Windows in a regular fashion, or would doing so wreck Window's capability to use the Optane memory cache? Seems like that is a pretty risky thing to do...
As always, much appreciate any thoughts, advice, and/or guidance to a solution... Marc...
Fwiw, AFAIK Docker is a type of cross-platform sandbox which typically runs under a virtual machine or hypervisor. Among other things, it isolates the file system. My memory may be faulty, but IIRC I've seen ref's on the web indicating this tool is used on enterprise-class systems (which the Spectre falls under) on top of Intel's hypervisor.
Boot into windows and verify if Docker is installed /and/ whether it is running. From the windows power shell (this is important, as not all commands works from cmd) do:
docker ps
More discussion and examples here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57108228/how-to-check-if-docker-is-runni...
Well I gave this a shot, but Windoz Power Shell gave me the middle finger and said the docker command was unknown. So no joy. It appears Windoz 10 gave me several different Powershells to work with, not knowing the difference I tried them all and got the same finger...
See my remarks below. IMO the Docker message is misleading and a dead-end. The installer is encountering something which it is misinterpreting. I suggest taking a closer look at the Optane question. On your system it is nvme1n1 paired with nvme0n1 (and are always seen and accessed as a pair). There are articles and forum posts (Manjaro, Arch, Ubuntu, etc.) about difficulties installing to or booting from a system with this device. Too complex to regurgitate here, especially since there can be multiple causes. But it is important to differentiate between installation vs boot vs using the device for a tertiary purpose (like swap or /var). I did see a passing remark that Fedora and openSUSE were installable, and in fact, openSUSE provides the ipmctl toolset for managing an Optane device. However, that info did not mention co-existing with Windows. All that said . . . An interesting case I found was that linux could not be installed even after Windows was completely removed. It turned out that some of Windows had been cached to the device and consequently the machine was mistakenly still trying to boot Windows. While I found use cases accessing the Optane device like typical additional storage, I could find none where (a) the device is enabled and (b) linux would share the boot partition with Windows. You mention that Windows boot time is <3 sec and transactions are almost instantaneous; this would be consistent with Optane being used for those functions. Intel allows for files/directories/applications to be "pinned" to the Optane; this could have been done by HP to provide the performance you've seen rather than waiting for Optane to "learn" which functions it thinks should be cached (that's the default behavior). One thing you could attempt would be to disengage the Optane device (there are Intel tools on your machine to do this and/or it may also be doable/required in the bios) and then try the openSUSE installation. If the installer sees the storage, you know that this is likely where your problem is. Just keep in mind the above case, because apparently even disengaging it, while allowing installation, it still may not allow openSUSE to boot. If openSUSE still does not install after disengaging Optane, it could be that the module/drivers need to be explicitly called on the installation grub2 command line. Maybe an easy way to test this would be by trying a Fedora install. Finally, if linux can be installed but it is not bootable sharing the Windows boot partition, my understanding is that another separate efi partition can be added for this purpose. I've never tried doing this with openSUSE, but I know it can be done with Fedora.
Maybe first check (if I missed it in all the replies in this thread) whether virtualization is enabled in the bios. If so, disable it and try again.
I found it in the BIOS and turned it off as suggested. Again no joy installing OpenSuSE.
This machine is a discontinued model.
Yeah I know, introduced in late 2020 and I bought this laptop less than a year ago! Gotta love short product lifespans these days!
If it is on your machine and you purchased from HP directly, contact HP Support to determine how it is used and how to remove it before trying anything else. There have been issues with it on Windows 10 Home machines.
However, by chance if you purchased it from a 3rd-party I would inquire there first.
If you have read my previous posting, I tried contacting HP support and found them to be useless!
I was looking to confirm that you had not acquired this machine from e.g. an HP VAR (you might be surprised how many such machines are deployed this way in the U.S.), because, other than machines purchased for enterprise use, it would be shocking for Docker to be on a new consumer machine. Asking HP about it does not require disclosing you are attempting a linux install, it's simply a matter of HP confirming that it is/is not factory installed. In any event, not applicable, see above.
HTH,
It does... Thanks, Marc
--dg 15.3
That's all I got. HTH. --dg 15.3