Cannot boot into Arch on a USB thumb drive [SOLVED]

graysky · 2023-12-21 11:46:35

I followed install_Arch_Linux_on_a_removable_medium, but am unable to get the resulting setup to boot.

What happens is I hit F11 as I reboot my machine to get the boot menu, and I select the option corresponding to the USB stick Arch install. If an error message is displayed, it goes by too quickly to see. All I see is my machine's usual grub menu not the grub menu on the USB stick I created. Did I miss a critical step or detail that would cause this?

Here is the partition scheme I created on the USB stick from gdisk:

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/sdb: 31266816 sectors, 14.9 GiB
Model: Ultra           
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): ECE1E5AD-3529-46C9-8B65-A2EE6BB94F20
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 31266782
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 4029 sectors (2.0 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048            4095   1024.0 KiB  EF02  BIOS boot partition
   2            4096         1050623   511.0 MiB   EF00  EFI system partition
   3         1050624        31264767   14.4 GiB    8300

Per the wiki, I created both a BIOS and EFI partition.

When I was chrooted into the USB stick, I installed both flavors of grub per the wiki:

# mount /dev/sdb3 /usbstick
# mount /dev/sdb2 /usbstick/boot/efi

# arch-chroot /usbstick
# grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sdb --recheck
Installing for i386-pc platform.
Installation finished. No error reported.

# esp=/boot/efi
# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=$esp --removable --recheck
Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
Installation finished. No error reported.

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-linux
Found initrd image: /boot/intel-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-linux.img
Found fallback initrd image(s) in /boot:  intel-ucode.img initramfs-linux-fallback.img
Warning: os-prober will not be executed to detect other bootable partitions.
Systems on them will not be added to the GRUB boot configuration.
Check GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER documentation entry.
Adding boot menu entry for UEFI Firmware Settings ...
done

EDIT: I think I found the problem. On my initial efi grub install, I omitted the --removable flag. Repeated it (edited post) gives a bootable USB.

Last edited by graysky (2023-12-21 12:10:13)

Arch Linux

#1 2023-12-21 11:46:35

Cannot boot into Arch on a USB thumb drive [SOLVED]

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