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Hey guys. This is my first post. Hello and greetings! I would love to get Arch Linux installed on my d630 laptop. In fact, Arch is my operating system of choice.
My problem is the whole mist of confusion I get into when installing the boot loader. I had previously installed ubuntu 11.04 with grub 2 and I was able to install grub2 to the same partition as my / (root). Of course this is easy in a GUI environment, but I would love to do the same with Arch Linux. Like this I would be able to use another boot loader to get into grub2. In other words, grub2 would not be my primary boot loader. I need to avoid installing it to /dev/sda as a whole, and get it installed to something like /dev/sdaX (/dev/sda6 or /dev/sda5 in my case).
Any help would be appreciated. I'm not exactly sure what command I would have to use to install grub2 to the partition of my choice (the root of arch). I tried something similar to looks of :
$ grub_bios-install --boot-directory=/boot --no-floppy --recheck --force --debug /dev/sda1
this was the old method before grub2 was updated to its beta release. I got it working the OLD way after properly chrooting into the system and trying again.
EDIT: after fiddling around I got it working using the 1.99 version of grub2 and the old grub_bios install method. The new grub-install method brings me to a black screen with grub written in the top right corner.
In other words, installing by the new method reports as a successful install - I run grub-mkconfig and then I reboot, chain loading my Linux partition only to find myself at a black screen which appears to have no prompt with grub written in white/gray letters in the top corner of the screen. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.
RECENT/LAST EDIT: after months of just using an older version of grub, I recently re-tried everything as per the wiki's steps. it works, and although I'm not sure if it's the new steps that require to copy a file over or a bug/regression fixed in a newer version - but it WORKS! (2.00rc1-1)
Last edited by akspecs (2012-07-01 04:36:38)
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Why don't you install grub2 as the primary bootloader and then chainload whatever bootloader you use for OS X.
Archboot does not support installing grub2 to a partition and even normally you should understand that installing grub2 to partition (may) randomly fail due to some file system changes, including a simple fsck. Thats why that method is not recommended and the reason why grub_bios-install requires you to use --force option to do this explicitely.
By hackintosh i suppose you mean installing OS X on a non-Apple system. I tried to find out more about this and it seems to use chameleon as the bootloader which is spposed to be loadable via grub2. I suggest you take this topic to some hackintosh forum as the legality of this is questionable and I don't think this is allowed in Arch forums. Of course if your question is only about installing Arch in a GPT disk thats fine, the legality is about asking on how to boot/chainload to hackintosh/chameleon. I don't think thats allowed.
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Apologies for not being clearer. My main worry is using two different boot loaders and chain loading OS's on a GPT as you clearly noticed. In any event, I would have trouble in a situation where I use a boot loader with certain options and a certain splash image, where I would like to exclude the Arch Fall back session. By simply selection what I would call ARCH on this boot loader I would like to access then the Arch Boot loader in the chain with a different splash image Arch Linux oriented (along with the Arch Fall Back session I previously excluded). I am willing to take the risk of installing the boot loader to my ( / ) root in arch. Does this make sense?? All done on a GPT disk.
EDIT: And I did just try archboot, getting as far as the install boot loader page. I selected my root directory as the grub2 install location and an error came up telling me that I may manually have to install my boot loader.
And if I didn't make it clear before, I did this exact scenario of chain loading boot loaders with Ubuntu. I had a boot loader already in place, and during my install of Ubuntu I made sure to indicate that I wanted grub2 installed on ( / ). The original Bootloader remained intact, and when selecting Ubuntu from it I would then be brought to ubuntu's boot loader. I never had any problems (booting) but the fact that Ubuntu was the operating system in place disappointed me because I am used to getting a lot more out of Arch (in comparison to Ubuntu, Arch is the best ;-)
Last edited by akspecs (2012-02-22 11:06:41)
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EDIT: And I did just try archboot, getting as far as the install boot loader page. I selected my root directory as the grub2 install location and an error came up telling me that I may manually have to install my boot loader.
Can you post the exact error you get? During Archboot booting did you get grub2 screen (uefi boot) or syslinux screen (bios boot). For grub2 you shouldn't select the root directory (eg /dev/sda3) as target but the (whole) disk containing the partition (eg /dev/sda).
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I have in the past tried to install grub2 to partition but although I'm told everything went fine the other bootloader seemed to be unable to detect it. You might have a different experience. What I have done ultimately was to just devote a few GBs to install, in my case, the then sidux, with grub2 installed to partition, and just use that to boot my linux installs, editing the grub.cfg manually. I have since just used grub2 to boot every system.
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I would to make it clear that I have done this with other distributions. During the phase which grub is installed the installer asks where the installation of grub2 should happen simply choosing /dev/sdaX where 'root' was located was always what made it possible to boot multiple os's along with the help of gptsync ( aur has it, running gptsync will sync the hard drive after the reboot of the initial arch install).
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Hey there once again. In the whole midst of things I managed to get grub2 working installed directly to a partition and have another bootloader chain load it that way. But this success wasn't long lived, as I did it onion version 1.99 before the 2.00 betas came out. The old method of installing grub to a partitionworked well for me:
# chattr -i /boot/grub/core.img
# grub_bios-install --boot-directory=/boot --no-floppy --recheck --force --debug /dev/sdaX
# chattr +i /boot/grub/core.imgAs opposed to to this new method:
# chattr -i /boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img
# grub-install --directory=/usr/lib/grub/i386-pc --target=i386-pc --boot-directory=/boot --recheck --force --debug /dev/sdaX
# chattr +i /boot/grub/i386-pc/core.imgIn the new method the installation is claimed to be successful, but when loading this partition I get to a black screen with grub written in the top right corner. Downgrading grub version and going back to the previous install method has helped, in terms of getting things working the way I expected. Any suggestions?
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Hey there once again. In the whole midst of things I managed to get grub2 working installed directly to a partition and have another bootloader chain load it that way. But this success wasn't long lived, as I did it onion version 1.99 before the 2.00 betas came out. The old method of installing grub to a partitionworked well for me:
# chattr -i /boot/grub/core.img # grub_bios-install --boot-directory=/boot --no-floppy --recheck --force --debug /dev/sdaX # chattr +i /boot/grub/core.imgAs opposed to to this new method:
# chattr -i /boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img # grub-install --directory=/usr/lib/grub/i386-pc --target=i386-pc --boot-directory=/boot --recheck --force --debug /dev/sdaX # chattr +i /boot/grub/i386-pc/core.imgIn the new method the installation is claimed to be successful, but when loading this partition I get to a black screen with grub written in the top right corner. Downgrading grub version and going back to the previous install method has helped, in terms of getting things working the way I expected. Any suggestions?
You need to contact upstream via #grub channel in freenode or bug-grub ML. I have no experience with installig grub2 to a partition boot sector. In my system (BIOS+UEFI+GPT) grub2 works fine from the MBR (in BIOS) and UEFISYS (in UEFI).
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Recently I tried following the instructions in the wiki regarding installing to a partition.
The link to the wiki which describes effectively everything that must be done is here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … nless_Disk
Although I always did to the wiki's writings, version 1.99-6 as the arch repos provided it always worked just fine, though the newer beta versions stopped.
Recently I decided to try again, with this version 2.00rc1-1 - and it worked.
I'm not sure if it's due to these new steps outlines in the wiki or if the newer version solved an issue I had earlier, but if anyone else is having an issue I will say it works for me just fine.
These steps are the ones I refer the as new :
# mkdir -p /boot/grub/locale
# cp /usr/share/locale/en@quot/LC_MESSAGES/grub.mo /boot/grub/locale/en.moBecause I had an older version of grub2 installed, I had to also (prior to following instructions in wiki) :
# chattr -i /boot/grub/core.imgbecause the new one is going to be in /boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img
If one is interested into the nature of my I install it in such a way feel free to PM / email me.
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