Arch Linux

w@hello

Member

Registered: 2022-11-29

Posts: 7

DualBoot with win

I kept getting the error "system type must be set for modification" when installing via Archinstall. The new installer makes me a bit confused.

My disk now:
   sda1 - EFI by win 100M
   sda2 - Some win trash 16M
   sda3 - Windows system 231GB
   FREE SPACE 700GB

I want to make a swap partition and one partition for the whole system without separating /home and have DualBoot.

Can you give me recommendations or steps that need to be done to successfully install with the new installer?
Thank you for your time.

headkase

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 1,981

Re: DualBoot with win

I kept getting the error "system type must be set for modification" when installing via Archinstall. The new installer makes me a bit confused.

My disk now:
   sda1 - EFI by win 100M
   sda2 - Some win trash 16M
   sda3 - Windows system 231GB
   FREE SPACE 700GB

I want to make a swap partition and one partition for the whole system without separating /home and have DualBoot.

Can you give me recommendations or steps that need to be done to successfully install with the new installer?
Thank you for your time.

One big problem is that your EFI partition is only 100MB.  That's not enough to hold both the Windows boot-files and the Linux initramfs's at the same time.  You'd want something more like 500MB to be sure.  And by the UEFI standard there can only be one EFI partition in a system so you're kind of stuck with what Windows gave you.  That EFI partition needs to be resized and that's not a trivial thing in an existing Windows system.

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 54,562

Re: DualBoot with win

/boot and esp don't have to be the same, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_sy … unt_points
But I don't know whether the archinstall script can handle that and I most certainly don't recommend to use it.

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Docbroke

Member

From: India

Registered: 2015-06-13

Posts: 1,433

Re: DualBoot with win

Instead of arch install script use regular method  https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide

You can mount /dev/sda1 at /mnt/boot/efi instead of /mnt/boot so all arch initramfs will remain in arch system partition. Just make sure to correct grub-install command ( --efi-directory=/mnt/boot/efi ) accordingly.

Last edited by Docbroke (2023-08-22 02:27:30)

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Arch is home!
https://github.com/Docbroke

headkase

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 1,981

Re: DualBoot with win

What about GParted? -> https://gparted.org/index.php

That should be able to resize the partition and it's a bootable ISO.  And the initramfs's have to be in the EFI partition because motherboard firmware has a FAT32 filesystem driver, which the EFI is.  If the initramfs is on say an ext4 partition then a driver for that isn't in the firmware and can't access it.  Firmware has FAT32, that loads initramfs, that binary has other filesystem drivers to then continue.

Docbroke

Member

From: India

Registered: 2015-06-13

Posts: 1,433

Re: DualBoot with win

Here efi is sda1, windows is on sda2
It is not possible to resize (increase) efi partition without deleting sda2.

Grub can look for initramfs on other partitions, only grubx64.efi needs to be on efi partiton. Debian does this by default. I have done similar setup on my arch. I actually did it after installing arch by modifying /etc/fstab and reinstalling grub to efi using grub-install.

[ins][doc@think-arch ~]$ /usr/bin/lsblk
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
nvme0n1     259:0    0 476.9G  0 disk 
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0   953M  0 part /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0  27.9G  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p3 259:3    0  27.9G  0 part /
├─nvme0n1p4 259:4    0  18.6G  0 part [SWAP]
└─nvme0n1p5 259:5    0 401.5G  0 part /home
[ins][doc@think-arch ~]$ ls /boot
efi  grub  amd-ucode.img  initramfs-linux-fallback.img  initramfs-linux.img  vmlinuz-linux
[ins][doc@think-arch ~]$ ls /boot/efi
EFI
[ins][sharad@think-arch ~]$ ls /boot/efi/EFI
ARCH  debian
[ins][doc@think-arch ~]$ ls /boot/efi/EFI/ARCH
grubx64.efi

It also avoids mixing initrafms and vmlinuz-linux files of different os's on same partition. Especially useful if one is trying multiple linux os's on different partitions.

Last edited by Docbroke (2023-08-22 02:06:56)

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headkase

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 1,981

Re: DualBoot with win

For that to work, Docbroke, then grubx64.efi must contain a filesystem driver - if it doesn't how is it able to read a Linux partition?  I don't doubt you, I'm just working through the boot chain where I don't know it all.

Docbroke

Member

From: India

Registered: 2015-06-13

Posts: 1,433

Re: DualBoot with win

Read this

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Boot_l … comparison

and this

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_sy … unt_points

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headkase

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 1,981

Re: DualBoot with win

Thank you Docbroke, GRUB does have filesystem drivers.  I use systemd-boot by contrast and that doesn't - it only gets the firmware FAT32.

2ManyDogs

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 4,645

Re: DualBoot with win

when installing via Archinstall. The new installer makes me a bit confused.

Moving to Guided Installer forum.