Arch Linux

RedsDead

Member

From: Jerz

Registered: 2025-03-25

Posts: 3

Cannot Boot Into Drive

Hello! I am a complete noob when it comes to Linux and I thought it would be a smart idea to try to do it without arch install. The process has helped me gain a better understanding of the filesystem and how to properly format drives within Linux. Given that this is my first time diving into it, I ran into a issue where I can not get it to boot. It does not throw me an error and the drive is visible from BIOS! I thought maybe taking out the installation usb and booting would help it find the drive but to no avail. Booting with the drive back in gives me an installation menu with a couple options, one being "boot to existing os". When selected, it does nothing and does not throw any error. It is starting to make me question if I even formatted it correctly but there is nothing that directly indicates so. I was wondering if someone could look at my work and help me understand what I did wrong.

The only outputs I am familiar with providing are:

fdisk -l
lsblk -f
df -h
ls -lr /boot 

Here is the results: https://imgur.com/a/RJWBxVE
If there is anything else I can provide please let me know.
Any help would greatly appreciated!

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,157

Re: Cannot Boot Into Drive

You're currently not booted into EFI mode (could be normal, but feels unlikely with such a comparatively modern system) and even if so you mostly provided info on the live disk rather than your system. Mount like you envision the partitions to be correct and then chroot and show an ls /boot from there.

Did you install a bootloader? Which? By which mechanism?

jl2

Member

From: 47° 18' N 8° 34' E

Registered: 2022-06-01

Posts: 1,321

Re: Cannot Boot Into Drive

blind guess because it happened to me on my first try too: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Instal … oot_loader (most people will choose between grub and systemd-boot, UKI and EFISTUB isn't good for dualbooting).

efibootmgr

---

Why I run Arch? To "BTW I run Arch" the guy one grade younger.
And to let my siblings and cousins laugh at Arsch Linux...

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RedsDead

Member

From: Jerz

Registered: 2025-03-25

Posts: 3

Re: Cannot Boot Into Drive

Went back to retrace my steps, I start running into the EFI issue you mention when I try to mount my first partition. (mounted last)

mkdir /boot/EFI
mount /dev/sda1 /boot/EFI
mount: (hint) your fstab has been modified, but systemd still uses the old version; use 'systemct1 daemon-reload' to reload arch linux when i mount to /boot/EFI 

I didn't think this was a valid error so I continued to add the grub bootloader right after this.

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --bootloader-id=grub_uefi --recheck
Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
EFI variables are not supported on this system.
EFI variables are not supported on this system.
grub-install: error: efibootmgr failed to register the boot entry: No such file or directory. 

Did I miss something or do I have to change a setting in BIOS so that my system is able to use EFI?

Here is the ls /boot from chroot following the previous input: https://imgur.com/a/HCONaRF

jl2

Member

From: 47° 18' N 8° 34' E

Registered: 2022-06-01

Posts: 1,321

Re: Cannot Boot Into Drive

mkdir /boot/EFI
mount /dev/sda1 /boot/EFI
mount: (hint) your fstab has been modified, but systemd still uses the old version; use 'systemct1 daemon-reload' to reload arch linux when i mount to /boot/EFI 

you should mount it to /boot/ instead of /boot/EFI, the latter should be a directory.

I don't know about grub, but try again, I can't help you with the rest.

Can we have the output of 'efibootmgr'?

---

Why I run Arch? To "BTW I run Arch" the guy one grade younger.
And to let my siblings and cousins laugh at Arsch Linux...

Upload longer text output like this

RedsDead

Member

From: Jerz

Registered: 2025-03-25

Posts: 3

Re: Cannot Boot Into Drive

Can we have the output of 'efibootmgr'?

Same "EFI not supported" as the when I try to add bootloader: https://imgur.com/a/rpfkFee

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,157

Re: Cannot Boot Into Drive

The UEFI mode is selected before you boot the system, when trying to boot from the Arch USB you should see two entries, one prefixed with [UEFI] and one without (what exactly is your laptop/mainboard vendor and which model is it?). You could technically install in BIOS mode if you indeed don't have UEFI in which case you'd have to adjust the grub-install command for a BIOS mode boot and install it directly onto your main drive: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB#BIOS_systems