Arch and Windows 7 UEFI mode dual boot advice

clang · 2014-04-02 02:25:27

Hello,
I have been trying to dual boot Arch and Windows 7 for the past week, with no luck. I have read through the beginners guide many times. They both install fine, but windows is immediately booted. There is no fastboot/secure boot in the BIOS, and UEFI boot is enabled in the BIOS. When booting into windows, I can confirm that it is in EFI mode. I have no important data on the computer at the moment, and have wiped my HDD many times

I believe that my problem may stem from a poor partitioning scheme (I use a single partition for the EFI system and arch boot, I wasnt clear if this is acceptable). Hopefully someone can help me, and others who are having similar problems. I will explain step by step my process...

1) Boot into arch install usb
Easy

2) Wipe HDD and select GPT table

 gdisk /dev/sdb

O (create new gpt partition), W (write to disk)
Note, sda is the usb
fdisk -l shows a gpt disk wih no partitions

3) Windows Install
Create a new partition, half of the disk size, and install it there. This actually creates three partitions, 1: efi partition, 2: system reserve, 3: primary. Installed on primary with no problems
This is painless, with one caveat. Windows says that it cannot be installed on a gpt disk, but clicking next installs without a problem. When booting into windows I verify that it is in EFI mode

4) Set language/wifi
easy

5)Set up arch partition. I chose to have a single arch partition, including home, boot, and root. I am unsure if this is okay or not.

 cgdisk /dev/sdb

Then filled the rest of the HDD with the arch partition (kept pressing enter then write)

6) Make/Mount the partitions
My disk is organized in the following way (not sure how to export fdisk -l output from the install boot)
/dev/sdb1 EFI system
/dev/sdb2 Microsoft system reserved
/dev/sdb3 Microsoft basic data
/dev/sdb4 linux filesystem

 mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb4

mount /dev/sdb4 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/{home,boot}
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/boot  #note, I do not mount /dev/sdb4 on /mnt/home, since they are the same partition, correct?

7) Install the base system

 pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel refind-efi

8) Fstab

 genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

9) configure system

  arch-chroot /mnt
nano /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen
echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc --utc
passwd

10) Install bootloader
I would like to use refind, but I chose gummiboot for simplicity at first

 mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars              # ignored
pacman -S gummiboot
gummiboot install

11) attempt to reboot

 exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot

Then the gummiboot loader comes up, and only the windows install shows up....
Can anyone tell me why the arch install is not present? It must be because of my partitioning system
I mounted /mnt/boot to the EFI partition (/dev/sdb1) like the wiki says

Arch Wiki wrote:

In case you have a UEFI motherboard, mount the EFI System Partition at your preferred mountpoint (/boot used for example):
# mkdir /mnt/boot
# mount /dev/sdXY /mnt/boot

Should it be mounted to /mnt/boot/efi instead? Also, it says to make sure that

Arch Wiki wrote:

For UEFI boot, the drive needs to be GPT-partitioned and an EFI System Partition (512 MiB or larger, gdisk type EF00, formatted with FAT32) must be present. In the following examples, this partition is assumed to be mounted at /boot. If you have followed this guide from the beginning, you have already done all of these.

I know it is gpt partitioned, I assume that windows took care of correctly formatting the disk, is there a way to confirm this?

Any help is greatly appreciated, especially with the partitioning system and where to mount the partitions

Thank you

jasonwryan · 2014-04-02 02:36:40

Did you configure gummiboot?

clang · 2014-04-02 03:48:57

I added a entry for arch, but now I get an error.

fsck: fsck.vfat: not found
fsck: error 2 while executing fsck.vfat for /dev/sda1
error:fsck failed on '/dev/sda1'
mounting '/dev/sda1 on a real root
mount: unknown filesystem type 'vfat'

In this environment my boot is sda1, I checked
and when I boot back into the arch usb drive, fdisk says it is of type EFI System

clang · 2014-04-02 03:52:26

Also, my arch.conf in loader/entries looks like this

 title arch
linuz              /vmlinuz-linux
initrd              /initramfs-linux.img
options           root = PARTUUID= followed by the correct uuid then rw

clang · 2014-04-02 03:57:17

Also, I tried using refind-install inside of arch-chroot and I get

 the esp doesnt seem to be mounted! trying to find it....
which: no dmraid in (/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:usr/bin:usr/bin/core_pearl)
/usr/bin/refind-instal: line 704:dmraid: command not found
which: no dmraid in (/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:usr/bin:usr/bin/core_pearl)
/usr/bin/refind-instal: line 704:dmraid: command not found
///boot doesnt seem to be on a VFAT filesystem. The ESP must be mounted at //boot or //boot/efi and it must be VFAT!

Also, Fstab correctly identifies /boot as VFAT

Last edited by clang (2014-04-02 04:02:29)

clang · 2014-04-02 04:37:59

update:
I was using the UUID of the boot partition and not of the root! looks like my gummiboot are now fixed, not sure why refind doesnt work

Last edited by clang (2014-04-02 04:39:10)

jasonwryan · 2014-04-02 05:11:06

Glad you got it fixed. Please remember to mark your thread as [Solved] by editing your first post and prepending it to the title.

And please use the edit button rather than bumping the thread...

srs5694 · 2014-04-03 12:44:28

The rEFInd install script failed because it was looking for the dmraid utility and not finding it. You can either install that utility or download a fixed version of the script from here. (Note that the script is called install.sh in the original rEFInd archive but is renamed to refind-install in the Arch package.)

Arch Linux

#1 2014-04-02 02:25:27

Arch and Windows 7 UEFI mode dual boot advice

#2 2014-04-02 02:36:40

Re: Arch and Windows 7 UEFI mode dual boot advice

#3 2014-04-02 03:48:57

Re: Arch and Windows 7 UEFI mode dual boot advice

#4 2014-04-02 03:52:26

Re: Arch and Windows 7 UEFI mode dual boot advice

#5 2014-04-02 03:57:17

Re: Arch and Windows 7 UEFI mode dual boot advice

#6 2014-04-02 04:37:59

Re: Arch and Windows 7 UEFI mode dual boot advice

#7 2014-04-02 05:11:06

Re: Arch and Windows 7 UEFI mode dual boot advice

#8 2014-04-03 12:44:28

Re: Arch and Windows 7 UEFI mode dual boot advice

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