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#1 2024-06-14 23:46:50

bigsad
Member
Registered: 2024-05-09
Posts: 7

rEFInd skips the boot menu and loads straight into Arch

Hello,

I recently decided to separate my games into a different Linux distro. I chose bazzite because it’s immutable and I just wanted something with the least chances of breaking so I can enjoy my games.

Because this distro is being installed on a completely different SSD, I saw that it was recommended to use rEFInd so that it can automatically search my drives and add additional boot options.

I first tried switching from systemd boot to refind which I  was successful in doing on my main drive which is also where arch is housed. I rebooted to make sure I can still boot into arch and it worked so I went ahead and installed bazzite.

Unfortunately my pc then started booting straight into bazzite. Thought it was weird so I went into my motherboards boot order and saw that it took the #1 slot so I bumped it and put refind back there. Strangely my Arch boot option is now gone but thought that maybe it would still appear in the boot menu but putting refind at the top boots me straight into arch (at least it wasn’t deleted) and I can’t get the refind boot menu show

At the moment I can only get the boot menu to show by spamming F12 when my PC starts up. The only boot options there though are refind, Bazzite, and Fedora which was added there along with bazzite. Still no arch is listed but it is there when I get to the boot menu using this method and so is bazzite


I used the refind install script so not sure what went wrong. I appreciate any suggestions.

Edit: I edited the config to allow for the refind log and it looks like the menu isn’t being skipped but it’s just not showing on my screen. The monitor goes into standby mode and that 20s timeframe where the menu should be visible, the monitor never comes back on not even if I spam my keyboard and move my mouse around. Then after the menu times out it loads into arch

Edit2: I didn't realize I can set log levels so I set it to 4. Not getting errors of any kind. all it really outputs is that it's waiting in a loop for input (which I am I'm pressing arrow keys and moving the mouse around but it doesn't seem to register)

The message in the log pretty much just said the menu timed out and the next log output is logging into arch

Last edited by bigsad (2024-06-15 00:47:52)

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#2 2024-06-15 07:26:04

d_fajardo
Member
Registered: 2017-07-28
Posts: 1,687

Re: rEFInd skips the boot menu and loads straight into Arch

What does your efibootmgr says on your boot order?

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#3 2024-06-16 00:23:31

bigsad
Member
Registered: 2024-05-09
Posts: 7

Re: rEFInd skips the boot menu and loads straight into Arch

d_fajardo wrote:

What does your efibootmgr says on your boot order?

this is what I get:

BootCurrent: 0002
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0002,0000,0004
Boot0000* bazzite	HD(1,GPT,1eeda139-4e15-47ac-a3b3-2f1e4961630d,0x800,0x12c000)/\EFI\FEDORA\SHIMX64.EFI
Boot0002* rEFInd Boot Manager	HD(1,GPT,01d6ab22-884d-43b3-97fc-d55a9b033871,0x800,0x200000)/\EFI\REFIND\REFIND_X64.EFI
Boot0004* Fedora	HD(1,GPT,1eeda139-4e15-47ac-a3b3-2f1e4961630d,0x800,0x12c000)/\EFI\FEDORA\SHIM.EFI0000424f

so yeah as noted, Arch doesn't even show up anymore, it just shows as rEFInd Boot Manager and I don't get a menu to choose what to boot into, it just instantly boots into Arch and when I should get a boot menu all i see is a black screen. I just know that there are no errors in the boot process because I took a look at the refind log and saw. The very bottom just shows that it's stuck waiting for input but I can't see anything. Here's a paste bin link with what I'm talking about. Don't wanna make this reply too long haha https://pastebin.com/GTu6G5G9

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#4 2024-06-16 12:56:19

d_fajardo
Member
Registered: 2017-07-28
Posts: 1,687

Re: rEFInd skips the boot menu and loads straight into Arch

It looks like rEFInd is kicking in so this must be a configuration issue. Perhaps bazzite created it's own EFI partition when you installed. Generally it is recommended to have only one partition for your whole system and all the boot loader images (this will include bazzite) in that partition. I don't know anything about bazzite so can't help much there.
Can you post your lsblk?

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#5 2024-06-17 21:30:39

bigsad
Member
Registered: 2024-05-09
Posts: 7

Re: rEFInd skips the boot menu and loads straight into Arch

d_fajardo wrote:

It looks like rEFInd is kicking in so this must be a configuration issue. Perhaps bazzite created it's own EFI partition when you installed. Generally it is recommended to have only one partition for your whole system and all the boot loader images (this will include bazzite) in that partition. I don't know anything about bazzite so can't help much there.
Can you post your lsblk?

I ended up wiping my machine's drives and reinstalling arch. Didn't want to go through the whole manual instalation again so I just went the archinstall route and chose grub which is still giving me some weird issues so not sure what's ever going on anymore lol but guess I will be posting a new question. I do think you were right about the whole Bazzite thing creating it's own EFI partition. The reason I found it easier to wipe and reinstall (I didn't have much on my install anyway) was that I ended up doing god knows what and now had like three different refind boot loaders and my arch installation became completely inaccessible lmao. I appreciate the help though

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