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GabrielElysiaOrbit

Member

Registered: 2023-03-01

Posts: 2

[Solved] How to deal with Acer UEFI Bios bootloader installation?

My Laptop has a rather shitty (UEFI) bios. Because of that I am not able to just use `grub-install` or `bootctl install`.
I have no idea what EFI Variables are and what they do but the are the cause of the problem and it seams to be from grub-install itself.
My work around is to remount the EFI variables directory with rw enabled and install grub using the --removable flag. systemd-boot still doesn't work.

Should I just suck it up and accept that my laptop is special or should I make a PR on the archinstaller and add 2 lines of code?

I have a local copy of the archinstall script with the 2 lines needed but I feel like it's selfish to add them just for my machine. And the code only fixes grub and not systemd-boot.

The laptop in question is Acer Switch 3 SW312-31
The main storage is /dev/mmcblk1. There also is mmcblk1boot0 and mmcblk1boot1 but from what I can tell it doesn't matter.

Last edited by GabrielElysiaOrbit (2023-03-04 18:32:01)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,659

Re: [Solved] How to deal with Acer UEFI Bios bootloader installation?

Acers do work with NVRAM variables, but their implementation is stupid indeed. For them to work, you need to enable an administator password in the UEFI and enable secure boot. Then go back into the UEFI and add the grubx64.efi as a trusted binary then disable secure boot (or do the setup dance), after adding a trusted entry the entry will stick.

Regarding the "fix". Unless you are actively and conditionally limitting the additional parameter to just Acer (or initial just your mainboard) it is not a good idea to unconditionally run the --removable flag, since what this is doing is not actually writing any NVRAM variables but overwriting the fallback location under esp/EFI/BOOTx64.EFI which might be under contention with different systems and might pose unwanted side effects.

GabrielElysiaOrbit

Member

Registered: 2023-03-01

Posts: 2

Re: [Solved] How to deal with Acer UEFI Bios bootloader installation?

OMG IT actually worked! Thank you. I have been stuck with my "fix" for a long time but was never able to use systemd-boot. Thank You!

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,523

Website

Re: [Solved] How to deal with Acer UEFI Bios bootloader installation?

Please edit your first post to mark the thread as [solved].  And while you're at it, you can edit the title to be something meaningful.  Very specific problems deserve very specific titles.

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