Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

swordfish · 2012-11-19 21:09:18

Hi there,

I'm running an Asrock H77M-ITX UEFI mobo. On this system I've already installed Arch on a Samsung 830 SSD (GPT formatted) - but in BIOS legacy mode because I've written the Arch-ISO image with "dd" to an USB-Stick (and UEFI boot mode wasn't even presented at boot).

Out of curiosity I've re-formatted the stick and copied Arch-ISO following https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … B_from_ISO.

Now I could start the ISO in UEFI mode, but it failed to start gummiboot with the "No loader found. Configuration files in \loader\entries\*.conf are needed." error message, concerning a problem with gummiboot.

Following some advice on the forum, I did this:

- install refind-efi 0.4.7-2

- copy /usr/lib/refind/refindx64.efi to [USB]/EFI/boot and renaming it to bootx64.efi (i.e. replacing the original bootx64.efi from gummiboot)

- Create a new file in the same directory ([USB]/EFI/boot/) called refind.conf

- Add this to it:

textonly
scanfor manual
menuentry Arch {
loader /arch/boot/x86_64/vmlinuz
initrd /arch/boot/x86_64/archiso.img
options "gpt loglevel=7 add_efi_memmap none=UEFI_ARCH_x86_64"
}

With this I can launch Arch-ISO from the USB-Stick in UEFI mode and I can choose Arch from rEFIND. Then Arch-ISO starts booting but it always stops at the same point with this message:

sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
ERROR: '/dev/disk/by-label/' device did not show up after 30 seconds ...
Falling back to interactive prompt
You can try to fix the problem manually, log out when you are finished
sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
[rootfs /]#

sdb is the USB-Stick from which I start Arch-ISO. Again - I didn't use dd to write the ISO to the stick.

Maybe this is pretty easy to solve, but I have to admit that I'm somewhat stuck

Last edited by swordfish (2012-11-19 21:31:43)

AlanF00 · 2012-11-19 22:09:36

swordfish wrote:

Following some advice on the forum, I did this:
- install refind-efi 0.4.7-2
- copy /usr/lib/refind/refindx64.efi to [USB]/EFI/boot and renaming it to bootx64.efi (i.e. replacing the original bootx64.efi from gummiboot)
- Create a new file in the same directory ([USB]/EFI/boot/) called refind.conf
- Add this to it:
textonly
scanfor manual
menuentry Arch {
loader /arch/boot/x86_64/vmlinuz
initrd /arch/boot/x86_64/archiso.img
options "gpt loglevel=7 add_efi_memmap none=UEFI_ARCH_x86_64"
}

I'm trying to do the same thing, but getting stuck because I don't know how to do that stuff. I'm probably missing something obvious.

Can you explain, in excruciatingly rank-newbie terms, exactly what you did to do the above?

Alan

the.ridikulus.rat · 2012-11-20 01:51:37

You guys are using Archboot's kernel options for Archiso. Thats the issue in both the cases.

AlanF00 · 2012-11-20 03:36:54

the.ridikulus.rat wrote:

You guys are using Archboot's kernel options for Archiso. Thats the issue in both the cases.

So what do we do with that information?

Alan

WonderWoofy · 2012-11-20 04:26:34

See what the difference is between archiso and archboot maybe? Seriously, have you made any effort whatsoever?

AlanF00 · 2012-11-20 14:29:47

WonderWoofy wrote:

See what the difference is between archiso and archboot maybe? Seriously, have you made any effort whatsoever?

Of course. Read:

The "Main Page" ( https://www.archlinux.org/ ) states:

"You've reached the website for Arch Linux, a lightweight and flexible Linux® distribution that tries to Keep It Simple."

"Keep It Simple". Yeah!

In line with that, the "The Arch Way" page ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way ) states:

"The following five core principles comprise what is commonly referred to as the Arch Way, or the Arch Philosophy, perhaps best summarized by the acronym KISS for Keep It Simple, Stupid."

The ArchWiki ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/ ) links to several other pages, such as these:

The "Forum Etiquette" page ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Forum_Etiquette ) states under "Ineffective Discussion":

"Arch is a Do It Yourself community" and "treat others as you would be treated; respect them and their views". I am very much a "do it yourself" person -- that's why I like The Arch Way. I also go by the Golden Rule stated here.

Now, everyone is a newbie at some time. I and other posters here are obviously newbies with respect to ArchLinux. Even experts were newbies at one time. Newbies, by definition, do not necessarily know what they're doing, or where to find information. Hence, Arch's "Beginners' Guide" and such. Hence, posts on this board from newbies asking for help.

As regards initial installation of ArchLinux, and consistent with the above, the FAQ ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FAQ ), under "Q) Arch needs an installer. Maybe a GUI installer", states:

"A) Since installation doesn't occur often (read the rest of this article to know more about what rolling release means), it is not a high priority for developers or users. The Installation Guide and Beginners' Guide have been fully updated to use the command-line method. If you're still interested in using an installer, consider using Archboot."

So the basic installation instructions explicitly state that Archboot is not needed.

The "Installation Guide" ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_Guide ) says nothing about either Archboot or Archiso.

The "Beginners Guide" ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide ) says nothing about either Archboot or Archiso.

The "Archboot" page ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archboot ) is consistent with the above information, because it states:

"Archboot is a set of scripts to generate bootable media for CD/USB/PXE.
It is designed for installation or rescue operation."

The "Archiso" page ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archiso ) states:

"Archiso is a small set of bash scripts that is capable of building fully functional Arch Linux based live CD and USB images. It is a very generic tool, so it could potentially be used to generate anything from rescue systems, install disks, to special interest live CD/DVD/USB systems, and who knows what else."

So the pages describing both Archboot and Archiso clearly state that these tools are oriented towards already-existing installations -- even though it seems that they might be used, in certain circumstances, for initial installations.

I happen to be very new at playing around with installing Linux distros (although I've used Unix/Linux as a regular user for more than 30 years), and am brand new with respect to ArchLinux. I only began playing with it this past Saturday. So I would expect a bit of useful help as opposed to "RTFM!" I will soon get past the need to RTFM for basic tasks, but I have a way to go.

The fact is that for me and a number of other new ArchLinux users, the installation guides simply do not work. C.f. my post https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=153170 . I've done a lot of googling as well as searching the archives on this board, and others have come up against the same show-stopping installation problems that I have. I and others have posted to several recent threads on this board, trying to get past the problems, so far with no success.

Now, the.ridikulus.rat had written:

"You guys are using Archboot's kernel options for Archiso. Thats the issue in both the cases."

Given that neither of these sets of scripts were used by me or swordfish, this comment is not useful.

Given the above, can you or anyone else tell us what Archiso or Archboot might do to help us with our installation problems? Also, can you tell us how we, as newbies, ought to have found out how these might help?

Alan

the.ridikulus.rat · 2012-11-20 15:02:50

Use config from https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/31894#comment102233 .

swordfish · 2012-11-20 17:20:16

the.ridikulus.rat wrote:

Use config from https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/31894#comment102233 .

Thanks man, that's working !!!

Nabobalis · 2012-11-20 22:29:34

I've used the correct conf file to get UEFI booting to work on my USB stick. But I then get 'Mounting 'dev/loop0' to '/run/archiso/sfs/root-image' ' SQUASHFS error: unable to read inode lookup table. I'm not quite sure what is wrong really.

lano1106 · 2012-11-22 04:14:40

I had problems loading with UEFI with the error message:

no loader found \loader\entries\*

I was blindly following the Beginnner guide which says that you have to copy the arch and the EFI folders to the USB key.

One important omission is that you also need to copy the loader directory :-) and edit one of .conf file to change the kernel option 'archisolabel' to archisodevice with the partition UUID.

WonderWoofy · 2012-11-22 04:41:59

@AlanF00

After all that crazy talk about doing such a great job finding information, you did not even think to check the wiki? Isn't that one of the "selling points" of this distribution? The community puts a lot of hard work into making that thing, and making it usable. So you should always check that first. (Or I guess in this case, check it after getting the advice)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archiso

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

One more peice of advice... it would probably be in your best interest to learn how to install the manual way if you really want to learn. It will teach you some basic things that will probably come in handy if you ever run into trouble (like chroot-ing, rebuiling intramfs, installing packages to an alternate root, etc). I have never used Archboot, but I hear it is nice and convenient, and also a great way to make a custom live environment. Archiso is kind of like the beginning.... where you have to start to get anywhere else. Though if you hunt around these forums, there are others who have created installer scripts to make deployment a bit easier.

joebrooks · 2012-11-24 03:53:53

WonderWoofy wrote:

@AlanF00
After all that crazy talk about doing such a great job finding information, you did not even think to check the wiki?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archiso
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archboot

He referenced (and linked to) both of those pages in his response...

AlanF00 · 2012-11-24 13:34:29

WonderWoofy wrote:

@AlanF00
After all that crazy talk about doing such a great job finding information, you did not even think to check the wiki? Isn't that one of the "selling points" of this distribution? The community puts a lot of hard work into making that thing, and making it usable. So you should always check that first. (Or I guess in this case, check it after getting the advice)
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archiso
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archboot

Yes, I did. Had you read my "crazy talk" past the first couple of lines you'd have seen that I referenced both and asked some specific questions, which so far have not been specifically answered. Like:

Just how do those pages help me with my particular UEFI bios problem?

Given that one page is not even mentioned in the beginner's installation guides, and that the other is explicitly discounted as being of help, how is a rank newbie supposed to know that these pages would be of help?

I'm not being sarcastic with these questions. I'm finding that there's a great deal of information on this site, but it's not necessarily easy to sort it all out into something useful for a particular problem.

One more peice of advice... it would probably be in your best interest to learn how to install the manual way if you really want to learn. It will teach you some basic things that will probably come in handy if you ever run into trouble (like chroot-ing, rebuiling intramfs, installing packages to an alternate root, etc). I have never used Archboot, but I hear it is nice and convenient, and also a great way to make a custom live environment. Archiso is kind of like the beginning.... where you have to start to get anywhere else. Though if you hunt around these forums, there are others who have created installer scripts to make deployment a bit easier.

I certainly am trying to install ArchLinux manually. I know of no other way yet. My problem appears to be that the UEFI bios on my new motherboard is not acting the way people expect. That's being covered in another thread, which I'll pick up again when I get home in a few days.

Alan

shaurz · 2012-11-29 20:41:32

I have the exact same problem with my ASRock Z77E-ITX. I've had it up to here with this UEFI bollocks. I've decided to just go back to using MBR partitions and bootloaders which actually work and don't require hours of research and messing about to get working. The advantages of GPT are not worth it (the boot drive is smaller than 2TB anyway) and UEFI is an overengineered piece of crap that needs to die.

gcb · 2014-02-12 06:30:25

shaurz wrote:

I have the exact same problem with my ASRock Z77E-ITX. I've had it up to here with this UEFI bollocks. I've decided to just go back to using MBR partitions and bootloaders which actually work and don't require hours of research and messing about to get working. The advantages of GPT are not worth it (the boot drive is smaller than 2TB anyway) and UEFI is an overengineered piece of crap that needs to die.

Please share with us how.

I have all that shenanigans disabled in my BIOS, but when i flash (`dd if=arch.iso of=/dev/sdX`) the iso to a SD card/pendrive, all I get in the boot menu is "UEFI: pendrive", which fails to do anything.

shaurz · 2014-02-12 09:47:30

gcb wrote:

Please share with us how.
I have all that shenanigans disabled in my BIOS, but when i flash (`dd if=arch.iso of=/dev/sdX`) the iso to a SD card/pendrive, all I get in the boot menu is "UEFI: pendrive", which fails to do anything.

I did the same thing, so I'm not sure why it isn't working for you.

My angry rant aside I'm going to give UEFI another shot in my next installation, heh...

WonderWoofy · 2014-02-12 18:19:00

Though dd should work for both UEFI and bios booting these days, you could also try the old method of making a UEFI archiso as well. This consisted of simply making a vfat partition and then copying all the contents of the archiso to the partition. Then just name the partition correctly. The name can be found in the kernel command line of the gummiboot config (/loader/entries/archiso.conf I think it is... it is definitely in /loader/entries). Just look at what it is looking for as 'root=....'. It should be something like 'ARCH_201402' for February.

Otherwise, you could try using grub to actually boot the archiso itself from a loop mount. The grub Arch wiki page tells you how to do this.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-11-19 21:09:18

Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#2 2012-11-19 22:09:36

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#3 2012-11-20 01:51:37

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#4 2012-11-20 03:36:54

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#5 2012-11-20 04:26:34

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#6 2012-11-20 14:29:47

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#7 2012-11-20 15:02:50

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#8 2012-11-20 17:20:16

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#9 2012-11-20 22:29:34

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#10 2012-11-22 04:14:40

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#11 2012-11-22 04:41:59

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#12 2012-11-24 03:53:53

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#13 2012-11-24 13:34:29

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#14 2012-11-29 20:41:32

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#15 2014-02-12 06:30:25

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#16 2014-02-12 09:47:30

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

#17 2014-02-12 18:19:00

Re: Booting Arch-ISO from USB-Stick in UEFI mode fails

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