Arch Linux

ExoDroiD

Member

Registered: 2018-01-01

Posts: 23

[SOLVED] Conflicting vmlinuz-linux & intel-ucode.img

Every time I install Arch I follow the guide to make sure I don't forget anything, and each time I blindly include the intel-ucode package when executing pacstrap; I never dived in and researched what it does.

I noticed that right after pacman finishes downloading the packages and starts installing, it fails because vmlinuz-linux & intel-ucode.img already exist in the EFI system partition. Because of that, each time I have to remember to delete them before I execute pacstrap.

I'm not entirely sure but I think this isn't the right thing to do.

I'd be very thankful for some advice and/or solutions.

Last edited by ExoDroiD (2018-07-19 19:15:23)

TheSaint

Member

From: my computer

Registered: 2007-08-19

Posts: 1,523

Re: [SOLVED] Conflicting vmlinuz-linux & intel-ucode.img

For updates you shouldn't use pacstrap, but pacman -Syu. Why are you doing it ?

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do it good first, it will be faster than do it twice the saint

ExoDroiD

Member

Registered: 2018-01-01

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] Conflicting vmlinuz-linux & intel-ucode.img

I'm not updating, I'm reinstalling after reformatting the disk.

I have a few machines and sometimes I'm just not happy with the install or the partitioning or just want a clean slate.

Last edited by ExoDroiD (2018-07-19 12:19:15)

ooo

Member

Registered: 2013-04-10

Posts: 1,638

Re: [SOLVED] Conflicting vmlinuz-linux & intel-ucode.img

Sounds like you didn't reformat the EFI partition, and those files are there from your previous installation.

ExoDroiD

Member

Registered: 2018-01-01

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] Conflicting vmlinuz-linux & intel-ucode.img

Sounds like you didn't reformat the EFI partition, and those files are there from your previous installation.

Yes, you're correct. But what if I have other OSS which depend on that partition? e.g Windows.

damjan

Member

Registered: 2006-05-30

Posts: 452

Re: [SOLVED] Conflicting vmlinuz-linux & intel-ucode.img

ArchLinux is indeed inflexible about the files in /boot/. One idea that would improve on this is to adopt the kernel-install mechanism, so that the kernel is installed somewhere in /usr/lib/ (preferably together with its modules in /usr/lib/modules/${KVER}/) and then kernel-install places it in the ${ESP}, and sets up the boot loader appropriately.

This would also help with people using secure boot with a combined efistub+kernel+initramfs+cmdline images (ie. me

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,523

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Conflicting vmlinuz-linux & intel-ucode.img

If you didn't reformat the partition, then yes, you'd have to remove the files left over from the previous installation.  Why is that suprising?

But more importantly, there is hardly ever (very very close to never) any reason to have to reinstall arch.  If you are doing so regularly, you are just giving up and starting from scratch which robs you of the opportunity to learn and likely condemns you to making very similar - if not the same - mistakes again.

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

ooo

Member

Registered: 2013-04-10

Posts: 1,638

Re: [SOLVED] Conflicting vmlinuz-linux & intel-ucode.img

Sounds like you didn't reformat the EFI partition, and those files are there from your previous installation.

Yes, you're correct. But what if I have other OSS which depend on that partition? e.g Windows.

Then you of course shouldn't reformat it, unless you're prepared to fix the bootloader for other operating systems, but delete the files instead. The "right thing to do", is to make sure you don't have conflicting files from old installations before running pacstrap.

If you forgot to delete the files beforehand, there's no harm done by re-running pacstrap once it has failed because of conflicting boot files. Just delete the files and run pacstrap again.

If there's some way to pass any arguments to pacman from pacstrap, you could use pacman's --overwrite, but I don't think that's currently possible.

mxfm

Member

Registered: 2015-10-23

Posts: 163

Re: [SOLVED] Conflicting vmlinuz-linux & intel-ucode.img

Having two arch installations with conflicting ucode and vmlinuz does not make any sense. Another possible situation is different distros sharing same efi partition, but in this case they likely name their files differently. So I do not see a problem here. There are no technical reasons to complain about necessity to manually remove ucode and vmlinuz when reinstalling arch.

P. S. Having parallel different distros philosophically is not very different from having parallel two same distros.

TheSaint

Member

From: my computer

Registered: 2007-08-19

Posts: 1,523

Re: [SOLVED] Conflicting vmlinuz-linux & intel-ucode.img

I'm not updating, I'm reinstalling after reformatting the disk.

You may remove the left over files in ESP, prior a new install. Just take the list of them. It isn't useful to have them there.
Another way around, it might be to skip to mount the ESP, then move the /boot freshly create into ESP, manually, which may lead to overwrite the former files.

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do it good first, it will be faster than do it twice the saint

ExoDroiD

Member

Registered: 2018-01-01

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] Conflicting vmlinuz-linux & intel-ucode.img

Thanks for the great advice guys. Apparently it just felt wrong for me to remove those files manually, but I get why one would need to do that.