[SOLVED]Arch install will not boot

jvaldezjr · 2013-10-02 19:28:24

I've followed the beginner's guide, and all the information on the Wiki trying to get GRUB installed.

I do not have a UEFI motherboard- I'm working on a Toshiba Satellite Laptop (L305D-S5895) and when I run the checks to see if I'm in EFI mode, that is a negative. I've partitioned my hard drive using GPT, and installed Grub according to the documentation. I have my 1st partition as the BOOT partition (ef02 in cgdisk) and the rest set up accordingly (/ and /home).

Grub installs just fine, no errors, and when I try to reboot- the PC says "no bootable media found".

I'm all out of ideas, can you help?

Last edited by jvaldezjr (2013-10-02 22:30:30)

jasonwryan · 2013-10-02 19:38:51

Did you remember to reset the BIOS to boot from your internal drive?

Posting some useful information would help: your partition table, grub config etc.

Not an Installation issue, moving to NC...

the.ridikulus.rat · 2013-10-02 19:42:13

jvaldezjr wrote:

I've followed the beginner's guide, and all the information on the Wiki trying to get GRUB installed.
I do not have a UEFI motherboard- I'm working on a Toshiba Satellite Laptop (L305D-S5895) and when I run the checks to see if I'm in EFI mode, that is a negative. I've partitioned my hard drive using GPT, and installed Grub according to the documentation. I have my 1st partition as the BOOT partition (ef02 in cgdisk) and the rest set up accordingly (/ and /home).
Grub installs just fine, no errors, and when I try to reboot- the PC says "no bootable media found".
I'm all out of ideas, can you help?

Read http://rodsbooks.com/gdisk/bios.html . Although posting the outputs of "blkid -c /dev/null", "gdisk -l /dev/sda" and "fdisk -l /dev/sda" would definitely help.

EDIT: If even that does not help you and you are sure your system does not support UEFI, I suggest reverting to MBR since that works best with BIOS (unless you absolutely require GPT).

Last edited by the.ridikulus.rat (2013-10-02 19:44:12)

jrussell · 2013-10-02 19:47:57

/boot should not be ef02 as far as I know. /boot should be a normal partition and IF using GPT-bios you need a small ef02 blank partition at the beginning of the disk for use with grub on GPT-bios.

Edit: I can't quite make sense of OP post, dunno if BOOT refers to ef02 or /boot or boot flag

Last edited by jrussell (2013-10-02 19:50:23)

the.ridikulus.rat · 2013-10-02 19:52:30

jrussell wrote:

/boot should not be ef02 as far as I know. /boot should be a normal partition and IF using GPT-bios you need a small ef02 blank partition at the beginning of the disk for use with grub on GPT-bios.

You are right. I didn't notice that while replying to @jvaldezjr.

@jvaldezjr: To make things more clear, EF02 partition is simply raw (unformatted) space for embedding grub(2)'s core.img due to lack of post-MBR gap in GPT disks (where grub normally embeds its core.img, in MBR disks). The EF02 partition is called "Bios Boot Partition" simply because that was the name given by grub devs, but that has nothing to do with linux /boot partition. The /boot partition should use type code 8300 in gdisk. AFAIK only grub(2) uses the EF02 part.

Last edited by the.ridikulus.rat (2013-10-02 19:54:41)

jvaldezjr · 2013-10-02 20:24:29

@ridikulus.rat

I probably described the partition layout wrong. I did not have a separate boot partition.

Ridikulus.rat wrote:

EDIT: If even that does not help you and you are sure your system does not support UEFI, I suggest reverting to MBR since that works best with BIOS (unless you absolutely require GPT).

I'm not totally sure it does not support UEFI. Its about 4-6 years old, shipped with Vista. I'll try reverting to MBR instead and report back. I just tried GPT with only a / and /home partitions using syslinux, and it still will not boot.

Thanks

the.ridikulus.rat · 2013-10-02 20:48:38

jvaldezjr wrote:

@ridikulus.rat
I probably described the partition layout wrong. I did not have a separate boot partition.
Ridikulus.rat wrote:
EDIT: If even that does not help you and you are sure your system does not support UEFI, I suggest reverting to MBR since that works best with BIOS (unless you absolutely require GPT).
I'm not totally sure it does not support UEFI. Its about 4-6 years old, shipped with Vista. I'll try reverting to MBR instead and report back. I just tried GPT with only a / and /home partitions using syslinux, and it still will not boot.
Thanks

Your system is 95% BIOS only, as UEFI support in Windows started only from Vista SP1 (not even Vista RTM). Also most of the UEFI systems are 2 years old or less. Most likely you are issues mentioned at http://rodsbooks.com/gdisk/bios.html . For your system, I wouldn't suggest GPT at all (GRUB or Syslinux, immaterial).

Last edited by the.ridikulus.rat (2013-10-03 08:00:01)

jvaldezjr · 2013-10-02 20:57:05

Thanks, I'm in the middle of trying to use MBR (I've partitioned the disk with fdisk into a / and /home) however, when I tried to install GRUB- I got this message:

/usr/bin/grub-bios-setup: warning: this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; ...
...
/usr/bin/grub-bios-setup: error: will not proceed with blocklists

So I ran fdisk -l on my hard drive and I saw something weird:

fdisk -l /dev/sda
WARNING: fdisk GPT support is currently new...blah blah blah

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB ... 
...
...
...
Disk label type: gpt

...
...
...

How do I force MBR?

Thanks

the.ridikulus.rat · 2013-10-02 20:59:02

jvaldezjr wrote:

Thanks, I'm in the middle of trying to use MBR (I've partitioned the disk with fdisk into a / and /home) however, when I tried to install GRUB- I got this message:
/usr/bin/grub-bios-setup: warning: this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; ...
...
/usr/bin/grub-bios-setup: error: will not proceed with blocklists
So I ran fdisk -l on my hard drive and I saw something weird:
fdisk -l /dev/sda
WARNING: fdisk GPT support is currently new...blah blah blah

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB ... 
...
...
...
Disk label type: gpt

...
...
...
How do I force MBR?
Thanks

You have residual GPT data left in the disk which you need to remove using fixparts http://www.rodsbooks.com/fixparts/ (part of gptfdisk pkg in Arch), and then re-install GRUB.

EDIT: I don't think you have converted the system properly back to MBR. See http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/mbr2gpt.html "Converting from GPT to MBR" section.

Last edited by the.ridikulus.rat (2013-10-02 21:00:35)

jvaldezjr · 2013-10-02 21:32:02

No dice, tried your recommendations and it still will not work.

jvaldezjr · 2013-10-02 22:17:25

Well now this is promising, it looks like the flag on the primary partition is not being set as bootable. I ran cfdisk and saw that my primary partition was not listed as bootable. When I changed that I got a "Error with operating system" message upon boot (which is because I need to reinstall grub). So maybe closer!

jvaldezjr · 2013-10-02 22:20:50

ok that worked, Grub installed properly and it boots to it now, however now I have problems with the image being loaded improperly.

EDIT:
Ok I solved it. In hindsight I probably should have used cfdisk and double checked the 'BOOTABLE' option in the console, because somehow I missed that with fdisk commands. Running through the reinstall of grub with, and regenerating the config file:

# grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck /dev/sda
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

and everything works properly.

Thanks for the help @rat

Last edited by jvaldezjr (2013-10-02 22:32:10)

cfr · 2013-10-02 22:22:44

Please stop bumping your thread. There is an Edit button you can use when no posts intervene between your last and new postings.

Also, please start providing some information. What sort of problems? Which image? What did you do? What exact errors do you get?

Arch Linux

#1 2013-10-02 19:28:24

[SOLVED]Arch install will not boot

#2 2013-10-02 19:38:51

Re: [SOLVED]Arch install will not boot

#3 2013-10-02 19:42:13

Re: [SOLVED]Arch install will not boot

#4 2013-10-02 19:47:57

Re: [SOLVED]Arch install will not boot

#5 2013-10-02 19:52:30

Re: [SOLVED]Arch install will not boot

#6 2013-10-02 20:24:29

Re: [SOLVED]Arch install will not boot

#7 2013-10-02 20:48:38

Re: [SOLVED]Arch install will not boot

#8 2013-10-02 20:57:05

Re: [SOLVED]Arch install will not boot

#9 2013-10-02 20:59:02

Re: [SOLVED]Arch install will not boot

#10 2013-10-02 21:32:02

Re: [SOLVED]Arch install will not boot

#11 2013-10-02 22:17:25

Re: [SOLVED]Arch install will not boot

#12 2013-10-02 22:20:50

Re: [SOLVED]Arch install will not boot

#13 2013-10-02 22:22:44

Re: [SOLVED]Arch install will not boot

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