Arch Linux

Joedang

Member

From: Cascadia

Registered: 2020-05-17

Posts: 16

Unable to boot on Z270 motherboard

Previously, I had a dual-boot setup on this motherboard (MSI Z270 SLI PLUS) between Arch and Windows 10. I had used the archinstall script, however Windows broke that at some point and I never figured out how to fix it. (I was unable to boot GRUB. I couldn't even manually select it from the UEFI's boot menu.) Eventually, the drive Windows was on failed. So, I got a new drive and now I'm switching entirely to Arch.

I'm doing a manual install. (Due to the previous breakage, I'd like to avoid using archinstall, so I can understand and fix the problem if it comes up again.) Here are my notes (mostly following the install guide, except for btrfs and a second drive).

# follow installation guide up through partitioning
mkfs.btrfs -L leto-main /dev/nvme0n1p3
cd /mnt                      
mkdir leto-main              
mount /dev/nvme0n1p3 leto-main
btrfs quota enable leto-main 
cd leto-main                 
btrfs subvolume create root  
btrfs subvolume create home  
btrfs subvolume create snapshots
cd ..                        
umount leto-main             
rmdir leto-main              
mkdir root                   
mount -o subvol=root /dev/nvme0n1p3 root
mkdir root/home              
mount -o subvol=home /dev/nvme0n1p3 root/home
swapon /dev/nvme0n1p2        
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 root/boot
reflector --latest 500 --fastest 100 --score 50 --protocol https --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist_new
cd /etc/pacman.d/            
mv mirrorlist mirrorlist_old 
mv mirrorlist_new mirrorlist 
cd -                         
pacstrap -K root base linux-lts linux-firmware
genfstab -U root >> root/etc/fstab
arch-chroot root
# install a bunch of packages
# went with pipewire-jack
# went with tesseract-data-eng
# units is no longer in the repos!
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc
# uncomment en_US line from /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen
echo 'LANG=en_US.UTF-8' >> /etc/locale.conf
echo leto >> /etc/hostname
passwd # saved in pass on arxgus
pacman -S grub efibootmgr
grub-install --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB_LETO-BOOT
# add btrfs module in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
mkinitcpio -P
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
# exit chroot
umount -R root
shutdown now
# unplug install media
# UEFI doesn't recognize boot partition
# get back into chroot with everything mounted
grub-install --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB_LETO-BOOT --removable # per this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB#Installation
# warning: file system 'fat' doesn't support embedding.
# warning: Ebedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
# error: will not proceeed with blocklists.
# sleep on it        
# setup the storage drive to give myself a small win
fdisk /dev/nvme1n1 # create one large and one 64G partition
mkfs.ext4 -c -L Basin /dev/nvme1n1p1
cryptsetup luksFormat --verify-passphrase --key-size 512 --label Skull /dev/nvme1n1p2
cryptsetup open /dev/nvme1n1p2 Skull
mkfs.ext4 -c -L Skull /dev/mapper/Skull
# and add those partitions to fstab...
efibootmgr --create --disk /dev/nvme0n1 --part 1 --label 'GRUB (Leto)' --loader 'EFI\GRUB_LETO-BOOT\grubx64.efi' --verbose # try to manually tell the UEFI about GRUB
efibootmgr --timeout 3 # give me a little more time to press the key (up from 1 s)

Before rebooting, efibootmgr reported that the new entry had been added. Though, GRUB still doesn't show up in the boot menu. However, the increased timeout seems to have been applied. When I boot into the live image and check using efibootmgr, it looks like the new entry got removed:
(Sorry for the large image. When I tried scaling it down by a factor of 2, it became nearly unreadable.)

https://i.postimg.cc/yxxhQ27s/signal-20 … 043156.jpg

Last edited by V1del (2025-02-19 13:59:10)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,857

Re: Unable to boot on Z270 motherboard

MSI tends to have a shit UEFI implementation that does not retain NVRAM entries. I see you used --removable in your grub command already, with that you should be able to boot the "generic" [UEFI] HD identifier boot option.

However the warning from that command also reads weird, an UEFI install shouldn't try to embedd anything...

Last edited by V1del (2025-02-19 14:00:44)