Assigning my existing efi partition to /boot and my ext4 partition to / allowed it to install!
]]>I tried to install where I just had an extra (ext4) partition I assigned to /boot, but that seems to be wrong
]]>Here is what they propose as example (ESP is where your EFI system partition is mounted):
# esp/loader/loader.conf
default arch.conf
timeout 4
console-mode max
editor no
* /boot is where you place all files necessary to initially boot your system, including the later stage bootloader like Grub or Syslinux (the early stage is either on the Master Boot Record or in a EFI system partition) and your Kernel binary with an optional initrd image.
* / is where your system root is. When the kernel in /boot is loaded, it starts Linux at a specific root directory which will become your / directory when you login.
/ and /boot do not necessarily need to be on separate partitions. They might be in the same partition, then boot is simply a subdirectory of /. However, it is important that your early stage boot loader can mount and read from your /boot partition.
Normally /boot is kept on a simple, small and unencrypted partition, so that the boot loader can easily access it. Then when you load the kernel from /boot, it can do more complicated stuff and mount your / partition (for example, decrypt it, mount a ZFS pool or something else).
A very simple setup is to use Grub, put your /boot on a small ext2 partition (1 GB) and then put the / on a bigger ext4 formatted partition. You can add a swap partition of a couple of gig depending on your system and RAM.
I do not know what a loader.conf does. My system does not have any loader.conf in /boot but that's probably because you use a different bootloader. I do have Syslinux's configuration in /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg because I use Syslinux as a bootloader.
]]>I want to use archinstall to install arch on my laptop and make it dual boot, however when selecting partitions it gets stuck in an infinite loop of "leave blank when done"
I found this post (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=266072) which describes the exact issue, and suggests mounting the needed partitions to / and /boot
if I select the rel mountpoints to / and /boot it works for the most part, but at the end the installation it fails due to not finding "loader.conf" in /boot
Do I need to select a special partition to use for /boot?
(I assume / is the partition to use as the linux file system)