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#1 2012-09-01 11:29:41

ewaves
Member
Registered: 2012-09-01
Posts: 39

[solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

Hi all,

I'm trying to install arch on my macbook, everything goes well until I have to install grub. I use the command in the beginners guide:

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

but I get this error:

Fatal:  Couldn't open either sysfs or procfs directories for accessing EFI variables.
Try 'modprobe efivars' as root.

I've already tried with some research but didn't find anything helpful.

Thanks in advance!

Last edited by ewaves (2012-09-02 20:51:49)

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#2 2012-09-01 17:49:34

nrujac
Member
Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 15

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

I assume you're already chrooted before you try the grub-install? If so, can you post your /etc/mtab? proc and sys should both be mounted (bound) from the iso's filesystem.

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#3 2012-09-01 19:42:23

ewaves
Member
Registered: 2012-09-01
Posts: 39

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

yes i were chrooted.
Here is my mtab

rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
none /sys sysfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
none /proc proc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
none /dev devtmpfs rw,relatime,size=368480k,nr_inodes=92120,mode=755 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000 0 0
/dev/disk/by-uuid/567d6121-1215-4a66-98f4-0d69ba8e2199 / ext4 rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,user_xattr,acl,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
none /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw,relatime 0 0
none /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw,relatime 0 0
none /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw,relatime 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime 0 0
none /var/run tmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,mode=755 0 0
none /var/lock tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
none /lib/init/rw tmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,mode=755 0 0
/dev/sr0 /media/ARCH_201208 iso9660 ro,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=0,gid=0,iocharset=utf8,mode=0400,dmode=0500 0 0
/dev/sdb2 /media/26b143cd-8a28-4d28-80d9-15af75961770 ext2 rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,errors=continue,user_xattr,acl 0 0
/dev/sdb4 /media/6e479927-4d15-4014-afe7-47f120bf500a ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/sdb5 /media/67c8ce5b-a165-46d9-9e2c-6d1d65c2b658 ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0

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#4 2012-09-01 21:05:36

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

Are you sure that you are booted w/ uefi and not the bios compatibility layer?

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#5 2012-09-01 21:07:41

ewaves
Member
Registered: 2012-09-01
Posts: 39

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

WonderWoofy wrote:

Are you sure that you are booted w/ uefi and not the bios compatibility layer?

indeed, I'm in doubt, I'll try this https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UE … B_from_ISO and update this 3d

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#6 2012-09-01 21:17:54

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

Yeah because it is sure as heck not gonna work unless you are booted in uefi.  I am kind of suprised that you were able to boot the media at all on your macbook w/o first removing either uefi or bios, as the forums have recently been filled with complaints of an inability to boot the media on mac's of all kinds.

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#7 2012-09-01 21:21:20

ewaves
Member
Registered: 2012-09-01
Posts: 39

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

just a question, wich may seems stupid but for me it's not, what do they mean with archiso or archboot in the link I posted? What is the difference?

I simply booted a CD with archlinux-2012.08.04-dual.iso burned on it...

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#8 2012-09-01 22:49:03

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

This I do not know... as I have not had to deal with that.  On my mac, I did this before I was aware of these instructions, and simply found a distro that *would* boot via uefi (happened to be ubuntu), and installed from there.  Really the process is the same, you simply don't have pacstrap, arch-chroot, and genfstab.  You also have to install pacman, but that isn't incredibly hard.


Edit: That made me think that maybe if you could boot from the Mac specific ubuntu uefi installer, then maybe you could simply chroot into your already (mostly) installed system and install grub from there.  You would then have access to efivars and whatnot.

Last edited by WonderWoofy (2012-09-01 22:51:00)

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#9 2012-09-02 13:32:13

ewaves
Member
Registered: 2012-09-01
Posts: 39

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

nada, same error. The funny thing is that it says "Installation finished. No error reported." after 4 lines of the same error xD . This time I'm booted in efi mode for sure. The only doubt is that i left a GPT partition table, but that shouldn't be a problem...

EDIT: I tried to just don't care but when I try to bless like this:

bless --folder=/Volumes/efi --file=/Volumes/efi/efi/arch_grub/grubx64.efi --setBoot

it says:

Could not set boot device property: 0xe00002bc

Last edited by ewaves (2012-09-02 14:04:15)

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#10 2012-09-02 15:08:57

ewaves
Member
Registered: 2012-09-01
Posts: 39

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

Ok it seems I almost solved, here [https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=148184] is how I did, but I'll write it down here for people with the same problem.
I followed the instructions to boot via USB using UEFI, then i did "modprobe efivars" just after boot to be sure. I followed the instruction to install grub on the GRUB archwiki page instead of the beginners guide and everything went fine.
Now the problem is that it doesn't find the partitions, it drops me in a recovery shell, what should i repair?

EDIT: ok don't worry, I was booting via usb, I inserted the hd but now during the boot the screen goes totally black, ummm... It's loading the ramdisk, the last thing it writes is waiting for udev or something like this.

Last edited by ewaves (2012-09-02 15:51:09)

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#11 2012-09-02 15:29:06

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

I think that your "efi problem" is solved and now you have a grub problem.  It is dropping you into the grub recovery shell?  What does the recovery shell tell you about why you are there?  How did you set up your fstab (label|device|uuid)? How did you set grub up to recognize your partitions (again uuid|label|dev)?  Did you actually generate a grub.cfg?

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg 

I am not sure if that is still the place where the grub.cfg goes in a uefi system.  I imagine it just depends on how you set up grub and where you mounted yout EFI System Partition.

In any case, you really need to provide more info, and if it is something that you think is going to take more than say, one more post, I would start a new thread.  It keeps the forums more organized, making it easier for people (like you) to find information relevant to problems they may be having.

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#12 2012-09-02 15:56:08

ewaves
Member
Registered: 2012-09-01
Posts: 39

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

WonderWoofy wrote:

I think that your "efi problem" is solved and now you have a grub problem.  It is dropping you into the grub recovery shell?  What does the recovery shell tell you about why you are there?  How did you set up your fstab (label|device|uuid)? How did you set grub up to recognize your partitions (again uuid|label|dev)?  Did you actually generate a grub.cfg?

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg 

I am not sure if that is still the place where the grub.cfg goes in a uefi system.  I imagine it just depends on how you set up grub and where you mounted yout EFI System Partition.

In any case, you really need to provide more info, and if it is something that you think is going to take more than say, one more post, I would start a new thread.  It keeps the forums more organized, making it easier for people (like you) to find information relevant to problems they may be having.

I solved that recovery shell thing, i messed up the fstab. But that back screen issue keeps going :\ it just stops during the boot and it's too fast to see where it stops. I'm not sure but the very last thing after udev is a problem with isight... I just don't know... Do you think this is worth a new thread? If so I'll move it.

EDIT: Everyone solve this problem like this https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=128487 but in grub2 there is no menu.lst and /etc/default/grub has no kernel line to edit, i'll move this post.

EDIT 2: new thread here https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1155629

Last edited by ewaves (2012-09-02 16:41:39)

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#13 2012-10-29 15:58:00

kelvinh
Member
Registered: 2012-09-15
Posts: 13

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

ewaves wrote:

Ok it seems I almost solved, here [https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=148184] is how I did, but I'll write it down here for people with the same problem.
I followed the instructions to boot via USB using UEFI, then i did "modprobe efivars" just after boot to be sure. I followed the instruction to install grub on the GRUB archwiki page instead of the beginners guide and everything went fine.
Now the problem is that it doesn't find the partitions, it drops me in a recovery shell, what should i repair?

EDIT: ok don't worry, I was booting via usb, I inserted the hd but now during the boot the screen goes totally black, ummm... It's loading the ramdisk, the last thing it writes is waiting for udev or something like this.

Hi ewaves, how could you successfully boot via USB using UEFI? Could you please share your experience (which ISO version used, how to make the USB stick)? I followed the wiki, and tried a lot, but always fails... https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=151599

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#14 2012-10-29 17:20:21

ewaves
Member
Registered: 2012-09-01
Posts: 39

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

kelvinh wrote:
ewaves wrote:

Ok it seems I almost solved, here [https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=148184] is how I did, but I'll write it down here for people with the same problem.
I followed the instructions to boot via USB using UEFI, then i did "modprobe efivars" just after boot to be sure. I followed the instruction to install grub on the GRUB archwiki page instead of the beginners guide and everything went fine.
Now the problem is that it doesn't find the partitions, it drops me in a recovery shell, what should i repair?

EDIT: ok don't worry, I was booting via usb, I inserted the hd but now during the boot the screen goes totally black, ummm... It's loading the ramdisk, the last thing it writes is waiting for udev or something like this.

Hi ewaves, how could you successfully boot via USB using UEFI? Could you please share your experience (which ISO version used, how to make the USB stick)? I followed the wiki, and tried a lot, but always fails... https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=151599

I symply fallowed the wiki
What exactly goes wrong in the process?

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#15 2012-10-30 13:11:22

kelvinh
Member
Registered: 2012-09-15
Posts: 13

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

ewaves wrote:

I symply fallowed the wiki
What exactly goes wrong in the process?

I followed the wiki too, and there are three options, the option 1 is "Arch Linux archiso x86_64 UEFI USB", but after selecting it, there is only a blank screen.
Which ISO did you use, the 10.06 ISO or earlier?

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#16 2012-10-30 14:38:31

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

Might be a kms issue.  I know my intel based devices tend to do those kinds of things without early kms.  When you get to the three options, hit e to edit the kernel command line.  then just add i915.i915_modeset=1 and see if that works for you.  I know that there can alse be issues with the efi/bios compatibility implementation of macbooks, but if you are getting to the gummiboot screen and booting via uefi that should not be an issue.

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#17 2012-10-30 15:19:01

kelvinh
Member
Registered: 2012-09-15
Posts: 13

Re: [solved] Arch only in Macbook 4,1 efi problem

WonderWoofy wrote:

Might be a kms issue.  I know my intel based devices tend to do those kinds of things without early kms.  When you get to the three options, hit e to edit the kernel command line.  then just add i915.i915_modeset=1 and see if that works for you.  I know that there can alse be issues with the efi/bios compatibility implementation of macbooks, but if you are getting to the gummiboot screen and booting via uefi that should not be an issue.

Hi WonderWoofy, thanks for your reply, as I mentioned here, I have tried this parameter but it did not work, any other suggestions? Thanks very much.

Edit:
I have already solved this problem (see here), thank you all.

Last edited by kelvinh (2012-11-04 13:32:18)

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