Arch Linux

MagicPumpkin

Member

Registered: 2013-10-18

Posts: 2

[SOLVED] Struggling during installation - can't mount EFI partition

Hello and thank you to be here! In advance sorry if this problem has been asked about and solved 10 000 times already on this forum, I've been researching my issues without success and therefore I'm calling for help here in the newbie corner...

I am trying to install Arch Linux for the first time.
My disk is a ssd, and I completely formatted it before trying to install Arch Linux on it. However the laptop itself have had another disk in the past, with windows8 pre-installed and so an UEFI motherboard.

I am at this point in the beginner's guide to install Arch Linux :
"Gummiboot
First install the gummiboot package and then run gummiboot install to install the bootloader to the EFI System Partition:
# mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars              # ignore if already mounted
# pacman -S gummiboot
# gummiboot install"
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners'_Guide#For_UEFI_motherboards

So I try to mount my EFI partition :

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
mount: /dev/sda1 is write-protected, mounting read-only
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1,
   missing codepage or helper program, or other error

   In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so.

I checked dmesg but didn't see anything that seemed to have any relation with my problem.

I also tried

# pacman -S gummiboot
(...)
File system boot is not a FAT EFI System Partition (ESP) file system.

My partition table looks like this :
Disk /dev/sda
Disk label type: gpt

#   Type
1   EFI system
2   BIOS boot partition (i made this one in case i want to transplant my disk with my system on another machine with a BIOS-compatible motherboard, dont know if that's useful or stupid)
3   Linux swap
4   Linux filesystem
5   Linux filesystem

Thank you very much for any attention or help
Have a good day

Last edited by MagicPumpkin (2013-10-18 03:19:36)

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: [SOLVED] Struggling during installation - can't mount EFI partition

First of all, welcome to the forums!

Second, please use code tags for things like... code.  You can see how to do this by following the 'BBCode' link under the 'Quick reply' input box below.  There are also a whole bunch of other useful post formatting tricks there as well.

Third, there is apparently something wrong with your EFI System Partition (ESP).  The output from trying to mount the partition tells you that useful info might be able to be found by issuing dmesg | tail.  Have you tried this?  Also, just as a sanity check, you did actually create a filesystem on the ESP haven't you (mkfs.vfat).

MagicPumpkin

Member

Registered: 2013-10-18

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] Struggling during installation - can't mount EFI partition

Thank you for this warm welcome

I modified my message according to your tips.

And well, your sanity check made my day Indeed i didn't created a filesystem on this partition, I only did it on the linux filesystems (like it's written in the guide i believe). Thanks to you my understanding of wth is going on in my computer has progressed Have a good day sir