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sml

Member

Registered: 2005-05-21

Posts: 89

New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

1. can you please outline a simple partition example for a UEFI grub install ... sizes, file types, etc.

2. can you please summarise the commands for installing the UEFI grub bootloader (using these simple command(s) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ar … ll_Scripts failed after 4 or 5 attempts).

89c51

Member

Registered: 2012-06-05

Posts: 741

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

Assuming a 128GB SSD

1GB vfat for boot
<amount of ram>GB for Swap
<the rest>GB ext4 -or btrfs if you feel adventurous- for / (which includes home)

I can't help on the bootloader question. Maybe if you report any errors that you are getting someone might help.

Last edited by 89c51 (2012-07-24 22:39:55)

fschiff

Member

Registered: 2011-10-06

Posts: 71

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

1 GB for boot?  Off by a power of ten?

No swap is needed if memory is >2GB

Last edited by fschiff (2012-07-25 01:26:46)

2ManyDogs

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 4,646

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

2. can you please summarise the commands for installing the UEFI grub bootloader (using these simple command(s) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ar … ll_Scripts failed after 4 or 5 attempts).

# pacstrap /mnt grub-efi-x86_64

What is failing? What errors are you getting?

Use the Beginners' Guide, and don't forget to configure the bootloader before you reboot.

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2012-07-25 01:34:33)

tobsen

Member

Registered: 2011-10-13

Posts: 37

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

@fschiff: if you need suspend to ram a swap partition >=ram is necessary

Alber

Member

From: Spain - España

Registered: 2011-11-11

Posts: 227

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

Example without swap.

	FAT32	/boot/efi	500MB-1GB
	ext4	/boot		100MB-1GB
	ext4	/		15-20GB
	ext4	/var		10-12GB Archivos pequeños (little files). Caché de pacman (Pacman's cache).
	ext4	/home		Resto

Last edited by Alber (2012-07-25 11:41:28)

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sml

Member

Registered: 2005-05-21

Posts: 89

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

thanks for the tips ... it really hard to report my errors because i end up spending 4 hours every night trying hundreds of different commands looking at 40 to 50 websites and a huge mess of problems & errors.

tried again tonight for another 4 hours

sml

Member

Registered: 2005-05-21

Posts: 89

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

Example without swap.

	FAT32	/boot/efi	500MB-1GB
	ext4	/boot		100MB-1GB
	ext4	/		15-20GB
	ext4	/var		10-12GB Archivos pequeños (little files). Caché de pacman (Pacman's cache).
	ext4	/home		Resto

thanks .... but why do you have a /boot/efi partition and /boot partition .. whilst the first guy only suggested the one /boot partition?

what is the correct answer for a GPT UEFI boot?

why do I need to use a GPT UEFI boot anyway ... I googled and couldnt find too many outlines of the advantages.

Alber

Member

From: Spain - España

Registered: 2011-11-11

Posts: 227

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

Look at the fylesystem.
The Efi System Partition (ESP) should be FAT-32.
EFI is a firmware that understand filesystem (FAT) and get the bootloader from ESP.
That partition, ESP, must be "marked" with type code EF00 using gdisk. It's rather like "boot flag"

You could use as say 89c51 (I understand the next, sorry if not, he didn't say the mount points)
/boot/efi   vfat     to boot
/     ext4 o btrfs   to root (boot, var, home...)
swap

Last edited by Alber (2012-07-25 19:03:49)

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Because not all of us are native English speakers, try no to use slang or abbreviations, thank you.

ataraxia

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2007-05-06

Posts: 1,553

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

I did this, in a small (30GB) disk of a VM. (VirtualBox can emulate UEFI, which I found useful for trying to get it right.)

/boot/efi 512MB        FAT32 (vfat)
/               all the rest  ext4

/boot/efi only ends up with some very small files that total less than 1MB, so even 512MB is probably overkill. As the previous poster says, the /boot/efi partition has to have type ef00 in gdisk.

You should modprobe efivars now, or at least before you enter the chroot. (It won't work from inside the chroot because the kernel modules in there don't match the ISO's kernel.
I make these filesystems, mount them, install the base system, and chroot inside, all just as the Beginners' Guide says. Then:

pacman -S grub-efi-x86_64
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
grub-install --recheck

When you run the UEFI version of grub-install, you will see some output from it running efibootmgr to create a boot entry for itself in the firmware. In my case, I had a problem here: VirtualBox's UEFI implementation only "pretends" to let efibootmgr change the boot entries, so when I rebooted after I was all done, it tried to boot some nonsense entry and I couldn't boot. I had to use the menus in EFI itself to make a new boot menu entry for GRUB's "grubx64.efi" file and set it as the first thing to boot. (How you do this depends on your particular motherboard.)

As for whether to have a separate /boot partition, that's really up to your own opinion. The /boot/efi partition is required by the EFI version of GRUB, though.

Alber

Member

From: Spain - España

Registered: 2011-11-11

Posts: 227

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

The Efi partition is intended for bootloaders, config files (in grub wiki is recomendes put it in /boot/grub/grub.cfg) and programs as memtest. So if you go just to put arch_grub bootloader 100MB would be more than sufficient.

@DSpider:I didn't know that. I didn't know that wiki issue. Thankyou by point that.

Last edited by Alber (2012-07-25 19:22:17)

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Because not all of us are native English speakers, try no to use slang or abbreviations, thank you.

DSpider

Member

From: Romania

Registered: 2009-08-23

Posts: 2,273

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

Why 512 MB:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EF … n_in_Linux

Last edited by DSpider (2012-07-25 19:17:56)

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"How to Succeed with Linux"

I have made a personal commitment not to reply in topics that start with a lowercase letter. Proper grammar and punctuation is a sign of respect, and if you do not show any, you will NOT receive any help (at least not from me).

Alber

Member

From: Spain - España

Registered: 2011-11-11

Posts: 227

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

But.. I don't know..
If you use FAT-16 or FAT-12, could it be small?

Last edited by Alber (2012-07-25 19:33:58)

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Because not all of us are native English speakers, try no to use slang or abbreviations, thank you.

DSpider

Member

From: Romania

Registered: 2009-08-23

Posts: 2,273

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

FAT16 is from 1987.

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"How to Succeed with Linux"

I have made a personal commitment not to reply in topics that start with a lowercase letter. Proper grammar and punctuation is a sign of respect, and if you do not show any, you will NOT receive any help (at least not from me).

cfr

Member

From: Cymru

Registered: 2011-11-27

Posts: 7,152

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

Here's what I have:

/dev/sda5        19G   /                    - ext4
/dev/sda1       476M  /boot/efi         - fat16
/dev/sda2       229M  /mnt/rescue1  - ext2
/dev/sda3       230M  /mnt/rescue2  - ext2
/dev/sda6        14G   /var               - ext4
/dev/sda7        19G   /usr/local        - ext4
/dev/sda8        19G  /mnt/generic    - ext4
/dev/sda9        14G  /mnt/generic/var - ext4
/dev/sda10      140G /home             - ext4
/dev/sda11       66G  /mnt/between  - ext4

I had my reasons for doing it this way (good ones, bad ones, indifferent ones). The only partitions I would _have_ to have would be / and /boot/efi.

At the time I installed, the suggested size for the EFI partition was 100-200 MB. I could not boot with my EFI partition formatted fat32. I used Ubuntu's installer to figure out it would work with fat16. That was sufficiently traumatic that I am sticking to it for now - 1987 or not, it works where nothing else did!

This stuff is all on the wiki, though...

Last edited by cfr (2012-07-26 00:26:12)

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sml

Member

Registered: 2005-05-21

Posts: 89

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

thanks ....
made these filesystems (used gparted).
gpt table
/boot/efi fat32 boot flag via gparted
/ ext4

mount them
install the base system
modprobe efivars
chroot inside
pacman -S grub-efi-x86_64
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
grub-install --recheck

result .. source_dir doesn't exist. please specify --target or --directory

Last edited by sml (2012-07-26 10:44:20)

Alber

Member

From: Spain - España

Registered: 2011-11-11

Posts: 227

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

Grub install go first.
Check the output to see if have errors about efivars
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gr … _systems_2

Last edited by Alber (2012-07-26 11:04:15)

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Because not all of us are native English speakers, try no to use slang or abbreviations, thank you.

DSpider

Member

From: Romania

Registered: 2009-08-23

Posts: 2,273

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

sml, don't just run "grub-install --recheck". Specify a fricken device, and THEN generate a .cfg:

# grub-install /dev/sda
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Be … bootloader

Last edited by DSpider (2012-07-26 11:10:51)

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"How to Succeed with Linux"

I have made a personal commitment not to reply in topics that start with a lowercase letter. Proper grammar and punctuation is a sign of respect, and if you do not show any, you will NOT receive any help (at least not from me).

sml

Member

Registered: 2005-05-21

Posts: 89

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

Thanks ... Rebooted with the following results ...
mkdir /mnt/boot
mkdir /mnt/boot/efi
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
arch-chroot /mnt
grub-install /dev/sda

** Source_dir doesn't exist. Please specify --target or --directory.

Last edited by sml (2012-07-26 11:18:44)

DSpider

Member

From: Romania

Registered: 2009-08-23

Posts: 2,273

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

mkdir /mnt/boot
mkdir /mnt/boot/efi
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
arch-chroot /mnt
grub-install /dev/sda

Reverse these two (meaning you should mount in /mnt before you mount in "/mnt/boot/efi").

Also, use [ code ] tags when posting code.

Edit: Here you go:

# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
# mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
# arch-chroot /mnt
# grub-install /dev/sda

Last edited by DSpider (2012-07-26 11:47:47)

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"How to Succeed with Linux"

I have made a personal commitment not to reply in topics that start with a lowercase letter. Proper grammar and punctuation is a sign of respect, and if you do not show any, you will NOT receive any help (at least not from me).

sml

Member

Registered: 2005-05-21

Posts: 89

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

Thanks ... I tried that but still have the following error ... "Source_dir doesn't exist. Please specify --target or --directory."

DSpider

Member

From: Romania

Registered: 2009-08-23

Posts: 2,273

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

All right... Then use the full, long-ass command from the wiki:

# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
# mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
# arch-chroot /mnt
# grub-install --directory=/usr/lib/grub/i386-pc --target=i386-pc --boot-directory=/boot --recheck --debug /dev/sda

See if it complains then! Fricken GRUB... It's why I switched to Syslinux.

Edit: I think you missed the edited post with the stuff from the [ code ] tags. The order was:

Mount root.
Make dirs.
Mount boot.
Chroot.
Install GRUB.

I think you did:

Make dirs.
Mount root.
Mount boot.
Chroot.
Install GRUB.

.... which is wrong!

Last edited by DSpider (2012-07-26 12:09:52)

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"How to Succeed with Linux"

I have made a personal commitment not to reply in topics that start with a lowercase letter. Proper grammar and punctuation is a sign of respect, and if you do not show any, you will NOT receive any help (at least not from me).

sml

Member

Registered: 2005-05-21

Posts: 89

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

Yes, I did mess up the order.
I rebooted and tried again but without success.
It's already been about 3 hours tonight .. will need to get back into it again tomorrow

cfr

Member

From: Cymru

Registered: 2011-11-27

Posts: 7,152

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

pacman -S grub-efi-x86_64

This installs the 64 bit version.

# grub-install --directory=/usr/lib/grub/i386-pc --target=i386-pc --boot-directory=/boot --recheck --debug /dev/sda

is for the 32 bit version. Which version are you trying to use? /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc isn't _supposed_ to exist for the 64 bit version and the target isn't supposed to be i386-pc.

# grub-install --directory=/usr/lib/grub/x86_64-efi --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=arch_grub --boot-directory=/boot --recheck --debug

is the command I use on my system.

---

CLI Paste | How To Ask Questions

Arch Linux | x86_64 | GPT | EFI boot | refind | stub loader | systemd | LVM2 on LUKS
Lenovo x270 | Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7200U CPU @ 2.50GHz | Intel Wireless 8265/8275 | US keyboard w/ Euro | 512G NVMe INTEL SSDPEKKF512G7L

sml

Member

Registered: 2005-05-21

Posts: 89

Re: New ISO - UEFI SSD Partitions & Grub Install Commands

yes, i switched them to the 64-bit version .. but i'll try again tonight.