Arch Linux

Idlusen

Member

From: France

Registered: 2013-05-15

Posts: 21

[SOLVED] Unable to boot into Arch on a laptop

Hello,

I have a Lenovo Ideapad with Windows pre-installed and, connected via a SATA to USB adapter, an SSD from another computer with Arch installed and, on this other computer, booting by default.
I am trying to boot on the SSD from the Lenovo laptop, I set the boot priority right, first USB then the internal ATA in the boot menu accessible via Fn+F2, but it still ignores my SSD.

I also set up the last Arch installation image on an USB stick and this one boots up fine, I even installed a new Arch on a partition but am still helpless as to how to make the laptop boot to it.
From the installation image booted on the USB stick I can arch-chroot into either my system on the SSD or the new Arch just fine, but it seems of little use since I cant use audio or video hardware properly from the chroot apparently.

I'm writing this from the pre-installed windows so any command I am asked to enter will take me the time of rebooting on the USB stick and possibly chrooting into one of the Arch systems.

Last edited by Idlusen (2019-10-21 14:38:38)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,410

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to boot into Arch on a laptop

How did you install? UEFI or BIOS? Which boot loader, which boot loader config, which boot loader install command, partition layout? There's a lot of relevance missing to even make a suggestion.

Last edited by V1del (2019-10-20 10:52:33)

Idlusen

Member

From: France

Registered: 2013-05-15

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to boot into Arch on a laptop

Sorry about that.
I installed in UEFI mode. My SSD has syslinux configured as the boot loader, on the new Arch system also but I'm not sure I installed it properly.

I will try to get the syslinux.cfg file on windows to paste it here, as well as the partition layout.

Edit: ugh I have to find out how to disable fast rebooting on windows to be able to mount the windows partititon in writable mode. It may take me a while.

Last edited by Idlusen (2019-10-20 11:18:28)

Idlusen

Member

From: France

Registered: 2013-05-15

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to boot into Arch on a laptop

ok so here is the output of lsblk from the booted archiso

NAME                           MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0                            7:0    0 513.1M  1 loop /run/archiso/sfs/airootfs
sda                              8:0    0 119.2G  0 disk 
├─sda1                           8:1    0   260M  0 part 
├─sda2                           8:2    0    16M  0 part 
├─sda3                           8:3    0  72.9G  0 part /mnt
├─sda4                           8:4    0  1000M  0 part 
├─sda5                           8:5    0   646M  0 part 
└─sda6                           8:6    0  44.5G  0 part 
sdb                              8:16   1  28.7G  0 disk 
└─sdb1                           8:17   1  28.7G  0 part /run/archiso/bootmnt
sdc                              8:32   0 111.8G  0 disk 
├─sdc1                           8:33   0   100M  0 part 
├─sdc2                           8:34   0    65G  0 part 
├─sdc3                           8:35   0 460.5M  0 part 
├─sdc4                           8:36   0   500M  0 part 
└─sdc5                           8:37   0  45.8G  0 part 
  ├─vg_argosscientific-lv_root 254:0    0    38G  0 lvm  
  └─vg_argosscientific-lv_swap 254:1    0   7.8G  0 lvm  

sda3 is the main windows partition, sdc2 is my main Arch installation on the SSD, sdc3 the corresponding EFI partition with syslinux, sda6 where I installed the new Arch and sda5 the corresponding syslinux.
sdc5 is an old test, on the main Arch system I used lv-root as a cache for pacman.

And the syslinux.cfg:

# Config file for Syslinux -
# /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg
#
# Comboot modules:
#   * menu.c32 - provides a text menu
#   * vesamenu.c32 - provides a graphical menu
#   * chain.c32 - chainload MBRs, partition boot sectors, Windows bootloaders
#   * hdt.c32 - hardware detection tool
#   * reboot.c32 - reboots the system
#
# To Use: Copy the respective files from /usr/lib/syslinux to /boot/syslinux.
# If /usr and /boot are on the same file system, symlink the files instead
# of copying them.
#
# If you do not use a menu, a 'boot:' prompt will be shown and the system
# will boot automatically after 5 seconds.
#
# Please review the wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Syslinux
# The wiki provides further configuration examples

DEFAULT arch
PROMPT 1        # Set to 1 if you always want to display the boot: prompt
TIMEOUT 500
# You can create syslinux keymaps with the keytab-lilo tool
#KBDMAP de.ktl

# Menu Configuration
# Either menu.c32 or vesamenu32.c32 must be copied to /boot/syslinux
UI menu.c32
#UI vesamenu.c32

# Refer to http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/Doc/menu
MENU TITLE Arch Linux
#MENU BACKGROUND splash.png
MENU COLOR border       30;44   #40ffffff #a0000000 std
MENU COLOR title        1;36;44 #9033ccff #a0000000 std
MENU COLOR sel          7;37;40 #e0ffffff #20ffffff all
MENU COLOR unsel        37;44   #50ffffff #a0000000 std
MENU COLOR help         37;40   #c0ffffff #a0000000 std
MENU COLOR timeout_msg  37;40   #80ffffff #00000000 std
MENU COLOR timeout      1;37;40 #c0ffffff #00000000 std
MENU COLOR msg07        37;40   #90ffffff #a0000000 std
MENU COLOR tabmsg       31;40   #30ffffff #00000000 std

# boot sections follow
#
# TIP: If you want a 1024x768 framebuffer, add "vga=773" to your kernel line.
#
#-*

LABEL arch
    MENU LABEL Arch Linux
    LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux
    APPEND root=/dev/sdc3 rw
    INITRD ../initramfs-linux.img

LABEL archfallback
    MENU LABEL Arch Linux Fallback
    LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux
    APPEND root=/dev/sdb3 rw
    INITRD ../initramfs-linux-fallback.img

#LABEL windows
#        MENU LABEL Windows
#        COM32 chain.c32
#        APPEND hd0 1

LABEL hdt
        MENU LABEL HDT (Hardware Detection Tool)
        COM32 hdt.c32

LABEL reboot
        MENU LABEL Reboot
        COM32 reboot.c32

LABEL poweroff
        MENU LABEL Poweroff
        COM32 poweroff.c32

Last edited by Idlusen (2019-10-20 12:11:47)

Idlusen

Member

From: France

Registered: 2013-05-15

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to boot into Arch on a laptop

I just got an idea: I could edit the bootloader of the archiso installed on my USB stick in order to boot sdc2 by adding an entry in loader/entries?
Any issues I might encounter with the syntax?

Last edited by Idlusen (2019-10-20 12:07:11)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,410

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to boot into Arch on a laptop

Maybe, but what you actually want to do for this to be more persistant is install an EFI boot loader into your existing Windows install's ESP partition. syslinux UEFI has quite a few limitations in that regard and you will want to use GRUB or Refind.

Last edited by V1del (2019-10-20 13:21:14)

Idlusen

Member

From: France

Registered: 2013-05-15

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to boot into Arch on a laptop

Thanks for the pointers, I'll look into that.
Honestly I'm a bit scared to touch the Windows partition as I can only rely on my laptop at the moment and dont want to mess up and end up with no bootable system.

Last edited by Idlusen (2019-10-20 14:37:42)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,410

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to boot into Arch on a laptop

You only touch the ESP (as in the FAT partition), and you only add files, this is absolutely safe unless you run out of space, which you shouldn't if you only install a boot loader

Idlusen

Member

From: France

Registered: 2013-05-15

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to boot into Arch on a laptop

This is reassuring, thanks

Idlusen

Member

From: France

Registered: 2013-05-15

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to boot into Arch on a laptop

Refind installed just fine indeed, I booted on my USB stick, chrooted on the new Arch, mounted /dev/sda1 as /boot and just installed with pacman and the refind-install script.
I just need to configure Refind now, but this can be considered as solved.

Thanks again.