Arch Linux

DaveBullet

Member

Registered: 2023-03-14

Posts: 11

[SOLVED] rEFInd - ext4_x64.efi driver broken?

I'm posting this to help others....

I am on Arch 7.2.7, using latest extra/refind pacman package

I like to keep my kernels on the same root filesystem, rather than all lumped into the ESP (EFI) partition. It means my EFI can be kept small, and my backups self contained.

I found the ext4_x64.efi driver was failing to find the kernel (loader) on my ext4 filesystem.  I had suspected various ext4 FS features being the culprit, but those same features are on another Linux install I have without any boot issues (albeit using another rEFInd build on Alpine Linux).

None of the various aur (git, bin et al) nor pacman (extra) official packages worked.

The solution is to use an alternative ext4 EFI driver from the opencore-efi package.

As a regular user:

cd ~
yay -G opencore-efi
cd opencore-efi
makepkg --nobuild --nodeps

The above simply downloads the PKGBUILD and opencore files, including drivers without installation

Copy the ext4 driver to your refind drivers_x64 on your ESP partition.  Replace "/boot/efi" with wherever your EFI partition is mounted:

cp opencore-efi/X64/EFI/OC/Drivers/Ext4Dxe.efi /boot/efi/EFI/refind/drivers_x64

Finally, remove the old ext4_x64.efi driver file from /boot/efi/EFI/refind/drivers_x64.  This will ensure the Ext4Dxe.efi will load:

Here is my working /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf:

textonly

use_nvram false

resolution 1920 1080

scanfor manual,internal

timeout 5

menuentry "Arch Media" {
    ostype Linux
    volume ARCH-MEDIA
    initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
    loader /boot/vmlinuz-linux
    options "root=LABEL=ARCH-MEDIA rw loglevel=3 quiet tpm_tis.interrupts=0"
}