[SOLVED] Black screen after UEFI/GPT/GRUB2 boot

Battus · 2012-04-26 10:32:47

Hello,

I'm still struggling to get Arch up and running, booting with GRUB2 from a GPT formatted hard-drive in the UEFI manner.

I install from an Archboot CD, following the install procedure but skipping the "Install bootloader" step. GRUB2 is then
installed following the GRUB2 wiki article.

As far as Arch itself - I've only installed "base" and in fact the boot does work:

ROOT_ARCH: recovering journal
ROOT_ARCH: clean, 40440/457856 files, 198580/1831168 blocks
INIT: version 2.88 booting
> Arch Linux
> http://www.archlinux.org
grep: error while loading shared libraries: libpcre.so.0 cannot open shared object file. No such file or directory.
Your kernel does not have devtmpfs support. This is not supported.
:: Adjusting system time and setting kernel timezone
:: Starting UDev Daemon
:: Triggering UDEv uevents
:: Waiting for UDev uevents to be processed

After this the screen goes blank but the system is there, as when I log in blind and type "reboot" or "shutdown ..." these actions are carried out.

I would be very grateful if someone could give me a clue as to how not to lose the screen since getting further without it is beyond me at the moment!!!
_____
Battus

Last edited by Battus (2012-04-27 12:15:29)

Gcool · 2012-04-26 11:16:49

Try booting from your cd again, chroot into your installed system and upgrade (pacman -Syu). I'm guessing you're having some issues due to outdated versions of pcre and/or glib2.

Battus · 2012-04-26 20:12:49

@Gcool: I've followed you advice and the system is up and running!!! Many thanks!!!
Though I have to say that I still don't understand the error messages I got during previous boots, nor the fact that the screen went blank.
I can, though, accept the fact that a full system upgrade may always solve a problem without understanding why.
(By the way that same message concerning libpcre.so.0 appeared several times during the system upgrade)
This made me really worried, at the time, fearing something completely wrong in my UEFI setup and my amazement all the greater when the subsequent boot was error-free
and I did not lose my terminal...

Can you give me any reasoning behind your advice, please? Just in case I can learn something .

I'm especially delighted because this is the first PC I've built myself and the first time I've got a UEFI/GPT/GRUB2 system up and running, so thanks again...
_____
Battus

Gcool · 2012-04-27 05:02:53

Good to hear you've got everything up and running.

I had seen libpcre.so.0 related errors before (on the forums, mailinglists,...) which were always related to due either pcre and/or glib2 being out of date (packages depending on newer versions,...). So the main idea here was to get those 2 up to date. But seeing how partial upgrades are both unsupported and potentially a way to break your system even more; a full system upgrade is the way to go.

Battus · 2012-04-27 12:51:31

Gcool wrote:

Good to hear you've got everything up and running.

Thanks. However I discovered in the meantime that I cannot "see" my eth0:.
(ip addr only shows lo:)

I'm no expert at "chrooting" and I'm pretty sure now that I forgot to mount the /boot partition
(To tell the truth, I wasn't even sure whether I had one with this UEFI business!).
So I'm going to try all over again in the hope that another full system upgrade with all partitions mounted before chrooting will
give better results.

Will post results.

For other readers with similar problems: the Arch wiki article on Change Root
is a handy check list when "chrooting", even if it doesn't quite cover the GPT situation (fdisk -l doesn't work, so use parted /dev/sdx print).

<update>
Well, I did a full system upgrade again in a carefully chrooted environment but it hasn't helped - possibly because the kernel was not upgraded (???).
I'm not sure now what's wrong as I've found also that I can't mount USB devices either, (so the "solved" above only really applies to the black screen).
I'm beginning to think about a complete reinstall... Advice from anyone would be welcome

Last edited by Battus (2012-04-27 20:45:14)

cfr · 2012-04-27 22:01:56

Maybe you need to run mkinitcpio -p linux by hand? Normally this gets run when linux is updated but if /boot wasn't mounted, it wouldn't have been able to get regenerated properly.

Battus · 2012-04-28 12:33:47

cfr wrote:

Maybe you need to run mkinitcpio -p linux by hand?

Thanks for the tip @cfr. I came across the same action, mentioned at the end of the pacman article in the Arch wiki but apparently to solve another problem. Also they precede it with a system upgrade and installation of udev and mkinitcpio

# pacman -Syu udev mkinitcpio
# mkinitcpio -p linux

I suppose this can do no harm. All this in the chrooted environment of course as otherwise I have no internet connection.
I don't have a lot of time just now but will report back with (hopefully positive ) results...
<update>
Unfortunately mkinitcpio -p linux give an error because it cannot find the requested preset.
I haven't been able to find the preset anywhere on this machine nor on any other I've checked.
Can anyone advise on this issue, please?
<update>
I did find "linux-lts.preset" (which was nor such a surprise since I'm booting the LTS version of Arch...
but when I run

mkinitcpio -p linux-lts

, although it finds trhe preset, other errors occur...

Continuing the search as time permits...
______
Battus

Last edited by Battus (2012-05-04 20:32:11)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-04-26 10:32:47

[SOLVED] Black screen after UEFI/GPT/GRUB2 boot

#2 2012-04-26 11:16:49

Re: [SOLVED] Black screen after UEFI/GPT/GRUB2 boot

#3 2012-04-26 20:12:49

Re: [SOLVED] Black screen after UEFI/GPT/GRUB2 boot

#4 2012-04-27 05:02:53

Re: [SOLVED] Black screen after UEFI/GPT/GRUB2 boot

#5 2012-04-27 12:51:31

Re: [SOLVED] Black screen after UEFI/GPT/GRUB2 boot

#6 2012-04-27 22:01:56

Re: [SOLVED] Black screen after UEFI/GPT/GRUB2 boot

#7 2012-04-28 12:33:47

Re: [SOLVED] Black screen after UEFI/GPT/GRUB2 boot

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