[SOLVED] Mainboard with UEFI and GRUB[1-2] – Arch does not boot

Keba · 2012-02-08 13:03:56

Hi there,

It‘s been a week since I got a new mainboard (Asrock 870 Extreme3), but I fail to install a bootloader correctly. Which seems rather odd, as I have nothing special. No LVM, no LUKs, no RAID, no encryption… Just Uefi

Meanwhile I have these configs. (sdc is an external device and unimportant and the loops and mapper may come from the arch install CD).

Arch install CD? Yes, generally I use the Arch installation CD, mount my root partition and chroot there using these commands:

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -t proc /proc /mnt/proc
(mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/boot/efi)
chroot /mnt

I‘ve tried Grub1 and Grub2 bios installations (my menu.lst looked rather similar to the grub.cfg above) and after booting, grub starts and I can even boot windows (at least I could bevore experimenting, haven‘t tried for a while), but if I try to boot Arch, it will fail: After "triggering uevents", I get the “Error: Unable to find root device '…'“ and get dropped to a recovery shell.

I both tried using UUIDs and /dev/sdX directly instead of this /dev/disk/by-uuid solution, but that does neither helps Grub nor Grub2 booting Arch. I also set and removed the bootable flag on sda2, but it did not seem to change anything.

So I chose to use GRUB2 with uefi: At first I created an UEFI system partition to sda4. Then I followed the wiki to install GRUB2. I executed (in chroot ofc.):

pacman -S grub2-efi-x86_64
mkdir -p /boot/efi
mount -t vfat /dev/sdXY /boot/efi
grub_efi_x86_64-install --root-directory=/boot/efi --boot-directory=/boot/efi/efi --bootloader-id=arch --no-floppy --recheck --debug

and rebooted, but my old GRUB2_bios config was loaded (and failed to boot Arch then).

Then I tried to run an UEFI shell using these commands (yes, I copied the file three times), but if i choose to run uefi-shell from UEFI, it get the “not found“ error… I am not even sure UEFI knows that sda4 is my UEFI system partition.

I also tried to run efibootmgr in my chroot, but that does not work, as I fail to execute modprobe efivars, as my Arch installation has a 3.3 Kernel and the installation cd is at 3.0… I can modprobe these variables outside the chroot, but I do not know how that could help me… Maybe I can somehow “transport“ the variables then before chroot‘ing?

All in all I neither care whether I use GRUB 1 or 2 nor whether UEFI or BIOS variations are used. I just want to boot Arch and I‘m open for all suggestions.
Thanks in advance, Keba

Last edited by Keba (2012-02-11 18:08:50)

the.ridikulus.rat · 2012-02-08 14:27:52

Can you try Archboot iso? You don't need to re-install the whole OS, just install grub2-efi-x86_64 bootloader from the setup script itself. The shellx64.efi path apparently works only for Asus mobos.

Keba · 2012-02-08 18:37:43

the.ridikulus.rat wrote:

Can you try Archboot iso?

Do you mean the install CD? Well, yes modprobe does not fail anymore then, but I still cannot use efibootmgr. The wiki says: „Verify whether there are files in /sys/firmware/efi/vars/ directory. This directory and its contents are created by "efivars" kernel module and it will exist only if you have booted in UEFI mode, without the "noefi" kernel parameter.“

/sys/firmware/efi does not exist and therfore the EFIVARs have not been loaded successfully. So: How to make sure that I boot in UEFI mode? I was not able to find any option in the UEFI settings.

Thanks in advance, Keba,

the.ridikulus.rat · 2012-02-08 18:39:54

Keba wrote:

the.ridikulus.rat wrote:
Can you try Archboot iso?
Do you mean the install CD?

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archboot

Keba · 2012-02-10 11:40:42

the.ridikulus.rat wrote:

Keba wrote:
the.ridikulus.rat wrote:
Can you try Archboot iso?
Do you mean the install CD?
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archboot

Ah, I see, thanks.

Well, but after booting the archboot-iso, the installation fails because even after a modprobe efivars the directory /usr/firmware/efi does not exist. (Ive tried both manual and automatical installation).

Seems that my CD is not loadedin UEFI mode, how to ensure it‘s loaded in that mode?

Keba

the.ridikulus.rat · 2012-02-10 11:43:45

Keba wrote:

Seems that my CD is not loadedin UEFI mode, how to ensure it‘s loaded in that mode?

https://gitorious.org/tianocore_uefi_du … I_boot_USB

cfr · 2012-02-10 14:56:07

/usr/firmware/efi does not exist

This is normal - does /sys/... exist?

Keba · 2012-02-11 17:35:34

cfr wrote:

/usr/firmware/efi does not exist
This is normal - does /sys/... exist?

I meant /sys/… sorry.

But using archboot iso helps. Very easy and straight forward indeed. Problem solved.

Thanks a lot, Keba.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-02-08 13:03:56

[SOLVED] Mainboard with UEFI and GRUB[1-2] – Arch does not boot

#2 2012-02-08 14:27:52

Re: [SOLVED] Mainboard with UEFI and GRUB[1-2] – Arch does not boot

#3 2012-02-08 18:37:43

Re: [SOLVED] Mainboard with UEFI and GRUB[1-2] – Arch does not boot

#4 2012-02-08 18:39:54

Re: [SOLVED] Mainboard with UEFI and GRUB[1-2] – Arch does not boot

#5 2012-02-10 11:40:42

Re: [SOLVED] Mainboard with UEFI and GRUB[1-2] – Arch does not boot

#6 2012-02-10 11:43:45

Re: [SOLVED] Mainboard with UEFI and GRUB[1-2] – Arch does not boot

#7 2012-02-10 14:56:07

Re: [SOLVED] Mainboard with UEFI and GRUB[1-2] – Arch does not boot

#8 2012-02-11 17:35:34

Re: [SOLVED] Mainboard with UEFI and GRUB[1-2] – Arch does not boot

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