Arch Linux

liamki

Member

Registered: 2009-02-13

Posts: 9

Installation partition problem

I managed to install a base Arch system a few times before, but recently I have been having difficulty installing it. I can advance through the install and it all works fine, until I have to install a bootloader. Initially I had no problems with this, and I could install grub to /dev/sda3 and boot into that.

Once or twice grub installed but as when I rebooted and selected 'Arch Linux', it would give me an error saying 'Unknown partition type 0xaf: cannot mount boot device'. Now grub gives me the same error when I try to install it. I tried reformatting the drive to FAT before installation then erasing over that with ext3, but it just gives the same error with partition type 0xab

I should probably note I'm on a macbook, so I found that some of the solutions I did find didn't work, as it says the commands cannot be run on a GUID partition table. I'm just frustrated because I managed to install it last time, so I don't know why it isn't working now. This is on a fresh install for both OSes.

Thanks

liamki

Member

Registered: 2009-02-13

Posts: 9

Re: Installation partition problem

Bump

Mektub

Member

From: Lisbon /Portugal

Registered: 2008-01-02

Posts: 647

Re: Installation partition problem

I don't know about macbook, but here some suggestions:

0xab is listed in fdisk output as "Darwin boot".

From a Linux livecd do a:

fdisk -l /dev/sda3

to see what it thinks this partition is.

Most livecds have gparted installed that will do about the same as fdisk in a graphical interface.

Mektub

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