Arch Linux

axel-sh

Member

Registered: 2023-07-05

Posts: 2

Problem Install Arch Linux dual boot Windows

Hello community

Here is the scenario quickly: Installing Windows 10 already present, I installed arch linux on the command line (without using the archinstall script), in order to have a dual-boot arch/windows.

I think I made a mistake when installing GRUB and the linux and linux-lts images: I mounted the 100MB Windows EFI partition directly on the /boot folder. Suddenly, the linux images vmlinuz-linux, initramfs-linux.img are installed on this partition (sda1 in my case), and necessarily, there is not enough space.

So I did it again: Removed all linux images, mounted EFI Windows in /boot/efi (is this good practice?), then installed the linux kernel, then grub. I confess to having trouble understanding the difference between the /boot and /EFI folders, how should these partitions be mounted during the installation?

Today, my system boots well on Arch with GRUB, but it does not show me Windows option. I have several strange things:
- I don't have a /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, so I can't run the grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg command
- os-prober finds the Windows partition, but I can't add it to grub because I can't run the command grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
- My /boot folder contains only an EFI folder with windows boot. (This EFI partition (sda1) is added to the fstab and mounts fine on boot.)

My questions are:
- Should I go through the live arch linux installation, to reinstall grub? Or can I do it directly on my arch linux system? I'm afraid to fail, because my arch system with Gnome works really good here.
- According to you, where did I miss, and what would be the procedure to follow to repair my errors?

Some additional info:

I can still boot on Windows, when starting the PC, by going to the boot entries (F11 key). The Windows bootloader is therefore not broken.
Disk: 1TB SSD, GPT partition, UEFI system

Output fstab :

# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# /dev/sda5
UUID=3154472d-d205-4486-8ca0-9d560ab1de49	/         	ext4      	rw,relatime	0 1

# /dev/sda1
UUID=6273-2860      	/boot     	vfat      	rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro	0 2

# /dev/sda6
UUID=20716168-0903-4d20-afa7-32e7d17ec23c	/home     	ext4      	rw,relatime	0 2

Output fdisk -l :

Périphérique      Début        Fin   Secteurs Taille Type
/dev/sda1          2048     206847     204800   100M Système EFI
/dev/sda2        206848     239615      32768    16M Réservé Microsoft
/dev/sda3        239616 1024239882 1024000267 488,3G Données de base Microsoft
/dev/sda4    1952450560 1953521663    1071104   523M Environnement de récupération Windows
/dev/sda5    1024241664 1129099263  104857600    50G Système de fichiers Linux
/dev/sda6    1129099264 1952450559  823351296 392,6G Système de fichiers Linux

Sorry for english mistake and french output, and thanks in advance for your help !

axel-sh

Member

Registered: 2023-07-05

Posts: 2

Re: Problem Install Arch Linux dual boot Windows

I finally found the solution, on the arch linux fr forums!

My fstab file was misconfigured: replace /boot with /boot/efi.

Here efi was replacing my boot folder, which is not empty. So I no longer had access to the /boot folder, and that's why the command

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

no longer worked.