Opensuse Leap 15.5 UEFI on VMware Workstation Pro

[alex676]

I'm trying to run Opensuse Leap 15.5 on VMware Workstation 17 Pro in Windows 11. I have tried multiple combinations to run  Opensuse Leap 15.5 64-bit in uefi mode such as changing the linux version and vmware version. It appears the openSuse linux version doesn't support uefi on vmware workstation 16 and 17. The only success I found was when I specify the kernel version. However, in the installation process, it seems opensuse couldnt recognize the efi boot partition such that it wanted to be formatted with vfat. 

[Technogeezer]

The OpenSUSE 64-bit OS type does not allow the switch to EFI firmware in the GUI.

Have you tried a guest operating system type of SUSE Enterprise Linux 15 64-bit, enabling EFI firmware in the VM's Settings and then installing? Leap 15 shares its kernel with SLES 15. Setting the OS type to SLES 15 allows Workstation to set the VM's firmware type to EFI. 

The Leap 15 installer will boot with EFI firmware. It will recognize that the VM has been configured for EFI boot. By default the partitioner will configure the virtual disk as GPT, and provide partitions on /dev/sda1  for /boot/efi with vfat, /dev/sda1 for / with btrfs and a swap partition. on /dev/sda3. There are a number of btrfs subvolume operations on / to create additional mount points.  

The EFI boot partition being formatted as vfat is normal, and is where the EFI firmware is configured to find the GRUB EFI bootloader  from. The root partition will change from btrfs if you use the guided setup in the installer to choose another file system type (e.g. ext4) as your root .  

I just verified this with Workstation 17 Pro running on Fedora Linux 39. It should work on a Windows 11 host as well.

[alex676]

Im just not comfortable using sles for a linux version placeholder. It seems inaccurate and dishonest although they use the same kernel. I was trying to explore the rpm/dnf ecosystem with an xcfe desktop environment. I'm used to seeing the efi partition with esp flag and formatted as fat32

[Technogeezer]

It's not inaccurate or dishonest. VMware never updated the definition of OpenSuse x64 to account for the fact that OpenSuse now supports UEFI. If you check the VM configurations, you'll find that not much is different between the two. Using the SLES operating system type saves you the hassle of having to manually hack the VM configuration file to get EFI firmware.

As far as the disk formatting, that's entirely up to the Leap installer, and nothing to do with Workstation (with the exception of recognizing the firmware type that the VM is configured with, which changes how the installer formats the disk).

In the default configuration when using EFI firmware, the disk format is as you are expecting. Partition 1 is the EFI partition, formatted as fat32 and flags of boot, esp.  Leap mounts the EFI partition as /boot/EFI once the operating system is booted and the root mounted from partition 2.