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Ari'osika

Member

From: Your computer, okay?

Registered: 2010-06-22

Posts: 175

Empty Boot Directory On Fresh Install [SOLVED]

So.. as the story goes, after successfully booting into my new harddrive's install (using the beginners guide as a reference), I decided to poke around a bit.

What could go wrong right?

Well, as it turns out, plenty because I wound up with a blank /boot directory and after a few hours of rebooting and fiddling around with the fstab I've come to the conclusion; I don't know were I went wrong.

I originally wanted and thus formated a partition scheme of;

512mb - for whatever that voodoo thats needed here (FAT32)
100gb - / (ext4)
12gb - /var (ext4)
8gb - swap (swap)
200mb - /boot (ext4)
800gb - /home (ext4)

Presuming this is a valid layout I genfstab'bed a fstab and while I did a bad bad thing* I wound up with this and it boots just fine;

# /dev/sda2 UUID=0c37f1af-97bc-4a0a-b278-0edad8dbbe44
LABEL=/             	/         	ext4      	rw,relatime,data=ordered	0 1

# /dev/sda5 UUID=f49b03f8-49c0-4e3e-8758-6cdc62350be2
LABEL=/boot         	/boot     	ext4      	rw,relatime,data=ordered	0 2

# /dev/sda1 UUID=78E6-4775
/dev/sda1           	/boot     	vfat      	rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro	0 2

# /dev/sda3 UUID=3148c3f3-2dd4-4271-81ff-797ea993fbfa
LABEL=/var          	/var      	ext4      	rw,relatime,data=ordered	0 2

# /dev/sda6 UUID=881ffb19-91a8-4577-b6b4-fcd846486d74
LABEL=/home         	/home     	ext4      	rw,relatime,data=ordered	0 2

# /dev/sda4 UUID=41ec4729-8d64-4b33-87e9-5b4e5a9c6c50
/dev/sda4           	none      	swap      	defaults  	0 0

Google searches suggestion it has to do with the whole GPT/UEFI thingmabob and error logs show nothings wrong.

Any questions or suggestions are welcome.

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* I mounted /dev/sda5 on /boot, then mounted /sda1 on /boot, because, apparently, at the time of this post I forgot to undo my last attempt. If I remember correctly the old fstab scheme features the absense of the first /boot entry

Last edited by Ari'osika (2014-07-18 05:42:59)

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If you're reading this; you're awesome.

Ari'osika

Member

From: Your computer, okay?

Registered: 2010-06-22

Posts: 175

Re: Empty Boot Directory On Fresh Install [SOLVED]

Okay.. so after just posting this I had an epiphany and thus this is my new fstab

# /dev/sda2 UUID=0c37f1af-97bc-4a0a-b278-0edad8dbbe44
LABEL=/             	/         	ext4      	rw,relatime,data=ordered	0 1

# /dev/sda6 UUID=881ffb19-91a8-4577-b6b4-fcd846486d74
LABEL=/home         	/home     	ext4      	rw,relatime,data=ordered	0 2

# /dev/sda3 UUID=3148c3f3-2dd4-4271-81ff-797ea993fbfa
LABEL=/var          	/var      	ext4      	rw,relatime,data=ordered	0 2

# /dev/sda1 UUID=78E6-4775
/dev/sda1           	/boot     	vfat      	rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro	0 2

The /boot directory is now occupied with;

/boot/EFI
/boot/loader
/boot/initramfs-linux.img
/boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
/boot/vmlinuz-linux

Would this mean I could do away with the 200mb /boot partition? While I may have been a linux user from some years this whole GPT/UEFI thing sure as hell makes me feel like a n00b again..

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If you're reading this; you're awesome.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,614

Website

Re: Empty Boot Directory On Fresh Install [SOLVED]

This is really a mess - there is no way for anyone to know what you have actually done.  Trying to read between the lines, I'm guessing sda1 and sda5 were originally for /boot and /boot/EFI (though I have no idea which was which.  But as they were both mounted at /boot, one masked the other and only one was actually used for the installation..

This seems unlikely, though, the bootloader (which one is it?) would not likely find the EFI files.

You need to boot a live media and mount each partition individually to see what is actually in it.  Also check what your boot loader is actually looking at.

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"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

Ari'osika

Member

From: Your computer, okay?

Registered: 2010-06-22

Posts: 175

Re: Empty Boot Directory On Fresh Install [SOLVED]

Oh wow...

I don't even remember posting this thread. I guess Sleep Deprived Me thought it was a good idea to start posting things on the interwebz.

( I wonder what else I'm going find lol )

In any case, the problem was solved.

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If you're reading this; you're awesome.