Arch Linux

Nakor

Member

Registered: 2018-04-26

Posts: 2

Dual boot Archlinux/Fedora

Hi everyone,

I have a desktop with 1 internal hard drive and 1 external SSD drive. My initial goal was to install Fedora on the internal drive, and ArchLinux on the SSD drive.
The installation went smoothly for both distributions, but I can't find a way to have a common grub menu (I can boot to either one by pressing F7 and selecting the corresponding grub menu for each).
At first, the easiest way to do it that seemed to just update Fedora's grub, which I did. However, even though it detected the Archlinux distribution, it won't boot when I select it (I get a boot error message saying I need to load the kernel first).

Do you have an idea how to do it? (either using arch's grub or fedora's one)
If it can help, here are some info:

> sudo blkid
/dev/sda1: LABEL="boot" UUID="2C73-F368" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI System Partition" PARTUUID="c6c187ee-0b7b-44f2-89ea-9d52216149b9"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="swap" UUID="bb7ddfc2-9f41-467e-9e67-1553ba23d529" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="7d741846-5155-44d7-93da-801d45adbade"
/dev/sda3: LABEL="Fedora" UUID="29dc51b2-04c0-4ffe-9a08-2976350b80b3" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="3a38050f-71b0-4106-b022-1587d0458bf8"
/dev/sda4: LABEL="Home" UUID="ed69297f-4ceb-45e5-b028-e244a6402a6e" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="3183d25b-798d-4696-b744-60c731d45198"
/dev/sdb: TYPE="isw_raid_member"
/dev/sdc1: UUID="2db13e67-65da-4309-9cdd-578242ae6a31" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="3a503568-50e2-8740-b483-dbba2d2545a1"
/dev/sdc2: UUID="D5A6-5A82" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="f49cfef8-c55c-6e49-8f54-04c99eff6299"
/dev/sdc3: UUID="47012730-d6bc-463b-9dfd-ed6376b9ac2b" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="e5e63f41-26f7-7643-945a-89132a8864b8"
/dev/sdc4: UUID="7f10928c-3ec2-42f6-9285-bc30c284575d" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="bae37a02-f275-9546-924d-5da626f94fc3"

Archlinux entry in /boot/grub2/grub.cfg:

menuentry 'Arch Linux (on /dev/sdc1)' --class arch --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-simple-2db13e67-65da-4309-9cdd-578242ae6a31' {
        insmod part_gpt
        insmod fat
        set root='hd2,gpt2'
        if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
          search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd2,gpt2 --hint-efi=hd2,gpt2 --hint-baremetal=ahci2,gpt2  D5A6-5A82
        else
          search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root D5A6-5A82
        fi
        linuxefi /vmlinuz-linux root=UUID=2db13e67-65da-4309-9cdd-578242ae6a31 rw quiet
        initrdefi /intel-ucode.img
}

Thank you for your help!

Last edited by Nakor (2018-04-26 08:24:34)

cafe

Member

Registered: 2014-03-20

Posts: 156

Re: Dual boot Archlinux/Fedora

You probably just need to fix the root of archlinux config file in Fedora's frub. Try to compare both generated config files to find out the differences.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,532

Website

Re: Dual boot Archlinux/Fedora

If you want to configure your fedora bootloader to boot arch and manage the bootloader via fedora, you should really ask on the fedora support channels.  As far as I know, fedora's grub configurations are quite similar to arch's, but "as far as I know" isn't very far: the fedora people will know exactly how to configure their boot loader without having to guess or assume.

---

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

eschwartz

Fellow

Registered: 2014-08-08

Posts: 4,097

Re: Dual boot Archlinux/Fedora

grub.cfg *can* be understandable: https://ptpb.pw/mk7y

I suggest you write your own grub.cfg by hand, so you know what it is actually doing. I doubt Fedora's grub is different enough from Arch's to matter, but their grub-mkconfig script for autogenerating "something that seems to work" might indeed be annoyingly different.

Note: linuxefi/initrdefi are downstream patches comparable to the linux/initrd modules, which add secure boot shims signed by Microsoft. This shouldn't matter, except in regard to which keyword you use. I believe Fedora should have both versions available... not sure why they modified the name though.

...

grub-mkconfig seems to be failing to detect the initramfs-linux.img file, you can ask Fedora why. Maybe they can add this patch: https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/pack … kages/grub

Or maybe people should stop using the horrid grub-mkconfig. Did I mention I'm biased?

---

Managing AUR repos The Right Way -- aurpublish (now a standalone tool)

Nakor

Member

Registered: 2018-04-26

Posts: 2

Re: Dual boot Archlinux/Fedora

Ok, thank you for your replies!
I asked the question in this forum because I thought it was a grub configuration issue and that it should be the same independently of the Linux distribution.
I will ask on a Fedora forum.

shulamy

Member

From: israel

Registered: 2010-09-11

Posts: 454

Re: Dual boot Archlinux/Fedora

have you tried os-prober on fedora?

i have fedora and arch  on diferent disks without problems (but not  SSD)

ezik