[SOLVED] UEFI firmware doesn't recognize ESP (Acer Aspire 3 A315-59)

GoldenHound · 2024-04-12 08:31:31

I've followed the installation guide and picked the same partition layout as listed in the "UEFI with GPT" example layouts.

The output of lsblk -f gives:
(Note: I had a second USB flash drive plugged in where I redirected the command outputs to, which shows up as sda and will be present in some outputs below)

NAME        FSTYPE   FSVER            LABEL       UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
loop0       squashfs 4.0                                                                     0   100% /run/archiso/airootfs
sda                                                                                                   
└─sda1      vfat     FAT32            BIOS_UPDATE 863C-F6E0                              28.6G     0% /mnt/my_stuff
sdb         iso9660  Joliet Extension ARCH_202404 2024-04-01-17-57-21-00                              
├─sdb1      iso9660  Joliet Extension ARCH_202404 2024-04-01-17-57-21-00                              
└─sdb2      vfat     FAT16            ARCHISO_EFI 5B0E-F324                                           
nvme0n1                                                                                               
├─nvme0n1p1 vfat     FAT32                        F961-DE33                             847.9M    17% /mnt/boot
├─nvme0n1p2 swap     1                            72b31bdd-fcf9-407b-9bfc-3140891513d1                [SWAP]
└─nvme0n1p3 ext4     1.0                          0aa981cd-8394-4caa-a248-7ee736e49881  438.2G     0% /mnt

Before that I also changed the logical sector size of the SSD as was suggested prior in the guide. This is the sector size used currently:

# nvme id-ns -H /dev/nvme0n1 | grep "Relative Performance"
LBA Format  0 : Metadata Size: 0   bytes - Data Size: 512 bytes - Relative Performance: 0x2 Good 
LBA Format  1 : Metadata Size: 0   bytes - Data Size: 4096 bytes - Relative Performance: 0x1 Better (in use)

Then formatted the partitions like this:

# lsblk -f /dev/nvme0n1
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 476.94 GiB, 512110190592 bytes, 125026902 sectors
Disk model: WD PC SN740 SDDQNQD-512G-1014           
Units: sectors of 1 * 4096 = 4096 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 61CEB8B5-F63C-4189-89DD-53D4C89803C2

Device           Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1     256    262399    262144     1G EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2  262400   1310975   1048576     4G Linux swap
/dev/nvme0n1p3 1310976 125026815 123715840 471.9G Linux root (x86-64)

...and mounted them like this:

mount /dev/nvme0n1p3 /mnt
mount --mkdir /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot
swapon /dev/nvme0n1p2

I'm now skipping over to the installation of the boot loader (GRUB in my case) as I don't think the steps in between matter for my problem. I excuted this while chroot'ed into the new system (i.e. arch-chroot /mnt):

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

The output showed no errors being reported and indeed a new boot entry appeared:

# efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,2001,2002,2003
Boot0000* USB CDROM: USB	UsbWwid(781,5581,0,0401e6da3d62eb7fbed806ebbb1734c8c921e643f553a253ecd38d08ed354f501bb700000000000000000000b36054000081e618815581074a2b1d1)/CDROM(1,0x1d6000,0x1e000)RC
Boot0001* GRUB	HD(1,GPT,2d895ac2-a065-457c-bd3a-d1a7cdbde43b,0x100,0x40000)/\EFI\GRUB\grubx64.efi
Boot2001* EFI USB Device	RC
Boot2002* EFI DVD/CDROM	RC
Boot2003* EFI Network	RC

Upon restarting I expected the GRUB boot loader to take over but that didn't happen. Going into the menu (pressing F12 in my case) didn't show anything either, so I decided to boot from the Arch install medium again and the boot entry didn't show up there anymore:

# efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 2001,2002,2003
Boot0000* USB CDROM: USB	UsbWwid(781,5581,0,0401e6da3d62eb7fbed806ebbb1734c8c921e643f553a253ecd38d08ed354f501bb700000000000000000000b36054000081e618815581074a2b1d1)/CDROM(1,0x1d6000,0x1e000)RC
Boot2001* EFI USB Device	RC
Boot2002* EFI DVD/CDROM	RC
Boot2003* EFI Network	RC

Then I tried using the UEFI shell, but here the FAT32 EFI system partition I created on the SSD doesn't even show up:

Shell> map
Mapping table
      FS0: Alias(s):HD0m0b:;BLK1:
          PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(0xC,0x0)/HD(1,MBR,0x05B1E07D,0x3F,0x3947F9C)
      FS1: Alias(s):CD0o0b:;BLK4:
          PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(0xE,0x0)/CDROM(0x1)
     BLK0: Alias(s):
          PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(0xC,0x0)
     BLK2: Alias(s):
          PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(0xE,0x0)
     BLK3: Alias(s):
          PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(0xE,0x0)/CDROM(0x0)

Here FS0 is my second USB flash drive for redirecting command outputs to, FS1 is the Arch install medium and BLK0, BLK2, BLK3 dont show having any files in them using the ls command. Without my second USB flash drive there are only FS0 (Arch install medium) and two emty block devies BLK0, BLK1. Unsurprisingly the shell doesn't show the GRUB boot entry either:

Shell> bcfg boot dump
Option: 00. Variable: Boot2001   
  Desc    - EFI USB Device
  DevPath - 
  Optional- Y
Option: 01. Variable: Boot2002   
  Desc    - EFI DVD/CDROM
  DevPath - 
  Optional- Y
Option: 02. Variable: Boot2003   
  Desc    - EFI Network
  DevPath - 
  Optional- Y

At this point I was at a loss. I found several reports of Acer firmware being stupid/weird, so I expected to select the grubx64.efi as a trusted source (as described here). But this doesn't help as the Select an UEFI file as trusted for executing didn't display the partition either.

Any help is highly appreciated!

Last edited by GoldenHound (2024-04-12 11:33:33)

V1del · 2024-04-12 09:02:00

Maybe try reverting the sector adjustment, maybe they are having some issues groking an adjusted sector size

Last edited by V1del (2024-04-12 15:46:11)

GoldenHound · 2024-04-12 11:33:57

V1del wrote:

Maybe try reverting the sector adjustment, maybe they are having some issues groking an adjusted session

Yes that did the trick! Thanks so much!

Arch Linux

#1 2024-04-12 08:31:31

[SOLVED] UEFI firmware doesn't recognize ESP (Acer Aspire 3 A315-59)

#2 2024-04-12 09:02:00

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI firmware doesn't recognize ESP (Acer Aspire 3 A315-59)

#3 2024-04-12 11:33:57

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI firmware doesn't recognize ESP (Acer Aspire 3 A315-59)

Board footer