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#1 2012-11-18 01:18:44

AlanF00
Member
Registered: 2012-11-18
Posts: 16

DVD Booting Does Not Detect UEFI Bios

Howdy,

I recently discovered ArchLinux and today attempted to install it to a fairly new computer  that I'm using to experiment with Linux installations. I got to the point of rebooting, but all I got as a response was a "GRUB" prompt. I installed everything according to the installation guide on the installation page https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_Guide (or so I think).

Later I found the Beginner's Guide ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide ) and began working my way through it. Unfortunately things hung up almost immediately with the section "Testing if you are booted into UEFI mode". I have a new ASUS P8Z77-V board that has a UEFI bios. The guide states:

############
In case you have a UEFI motherboard, the CD/USB will launch UEFI Shell and display a message that startup.nsh script will be launched. Allow the shell to launch it, and exit the shell. Select "UEFI CD: Arch Linux" (or similar) from a list. Then, to check whether you have booted into UEFI mode, load the efivars kernel module (before chrooting) and then check whether there are files in /sys/firmware/efi/vars/:

# modprobe efivars       # before chrooting
# ls -1 /sys/firmware/efi/vars/
#############

When I select  "Boot Arch Linux" from the DVD startup menu, everything seems to work fine, except that what the Guide describes does not happen -- no shell script is launched and no "efi" or "efi/vars" directories are created. That indicates that for whatever reason, the booting software is not detecting that my Bios is a UEFI bios.

I'm brand new to ArchLinux and would like some advice on where to go from here.

As a side note, when I discovered ArchLinux a few days ago I realized that it could help me to learn about setting up a Linux installation with a GPT partition system and LVM stuff. I searched a couple of archives on this board for information, and it appears that my surmise is right. Comments?

Thanks!
Alan

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#2 2012-11-18 19:34:58

srs5694
Member
From: Woonsocket, RI
Registered: 2012-11-06
Posts: 719
Website

Re: DVD Booting Does Not Detect UEFI Bios

AlanF00 wrote:

When I select  "Boot Arch Linux" from the DVD startup menu, everything seems to work fine, except that what the Guide describes does not happen -- no shell script is launched and no "efi" or "efi/vars" directories are created. That indicates that for whatever reason, the booting software is not detecting that my Bios is a UEFI bios.

You've stated this backwards. It's not the boot software that detects the firmware type (BIOS vs. EFI); it's the firmware's boot mode (BIOS vs. EFI) that determines what boot software to load and run from the DVD, flash drive, hard disk, or other boot medium.

Chances are one of two things is happening:

  • Your boot medium lacks proper EFI support. If this is the case, most modern UEFI implementations will fall back to a BIOS/legacy boot. The fix is to re-create the boot medium with appropriate support. OTOH, if you've downloaded and burned an Arch Linux DVD image, this is an unlikely explanation; my understanding is that recent Arch installation images include such support.

  • Your firmware settings are precluding an EFI-mode boot. Unfortunately, there are a large number of specific sub-possibilities associated with this one, since firmware differs so much from one implementation to another. I recommend you peruse your firmware options looking for terms such as "legacy boot," "EFI boot," "UEFI boot," and so on. Also, some systems that support Secure Boot will fall back to a legacy/BIOS boot if they're set to boot with Secure Boot active and the boot medium isn't signed with keys that the firmware recognizes. Thus, disabling Secure Boot may be required. Finally, many systems enable you to select from a list of boot options if you hit a key during the boot process. (On my own ASUS P8H77-I, this key is F8, so you might try that.) In this list, you may see two options for a DVD device, one for a BIOS/legacy boot and another for an EFI boot. Be sure to select the latter option.

As a side note, when I discovered ArchLinux a few days ago I realized that it could help me to learn about setting up a Linux installation with a GPT partition system and LVM stuff. I searched a couple of archives on this board for information, and it appears that my surmise is right. Comments?

EFI is not required for either of these features. Although GPT is often associated with EFI, it's possible to use GPT on a BIOS-based computer. Linux can boot from a GPT disk on a BIOS-based computer, although Windows can't; that's a Windows limitation, not a BIOS limitation, as many in the Windows community seem to believe. LVM is independent of the firmware type. Windows' equivalent of LVM is "dynamic disks." The two systems are incompatible, though.

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#3 2012-11-18 21:12:34

AlanF00
Member
Registered: 2012-11-18
Posts: 16

Re: DVD Booting Does Not Detect UEFI Bios

srs5694 wrote:

You've stated this backwards. It's not the boot software that detects the firmware type (BIOS vs. EFI); it's the firmware's boot mode (BIOS vs. EFI) that determines what boot software to load and run from the DVD, flash drive, hard disk, or other boot medium.

OK.

Chances are one of two things is happening:

  • Your boot medium lacks proper EFI support. If this is the case, most modern UEFI implementations will fall back to a BIOS/legacy boot. The fix is to re-create the boot medium with appropriate support. OTOH, if you've downloaded and burned an Arch Linux DVD image, this is an unlikely explanation; my understanding is that recent Arch installation images include such support.

That's what I believe I have. Just yesterday I downloaded and burned the latest Arch image that the website offered.

  • Your firmware settings are precluding an EFI-mode boot. Unfortunately, there are a large number of specific sub-possibilities associated with this one, since firmware differs so much from one implementation to another. I recommend you peruse your firmware options looking for terms such as "legacy boot," "EFI boot," "UEFI boot," and so on. Also, some systems that support Secure Boot will fall back to a legacy/BIOS boot if they're set to boot with Secure Boot active and the boot medium isn't signed with keys that the firmware recognizes. Thus, disabling Secure Boot may be required. Finally, many systems enable you to select from a list of boot options if you hit a key during the boot process. (On my own ASUS P8H77-I, this key is F8, so you might try that.) In this list, you may see two options for a DVD device, one for a BIOS/legacy boot and another for an EFI boot. Be sure to select the latter option.

At this point I've done what you said in two ways:

(1) I updated the ASUS AMI bios with new firmware dated late October, then made sure that the BIOS settings were to boot from the UEFI-labeled DVD option.
(2) Used F8 to bring up the menu you suggested, which presented the same set of boot options as doing the equivalent in the "Advanced" BIOS mode, and selected the UEFI boot option.

Selecting the UEFI boot option really does have an effect, because if I don't select it, the system boots from the DVD into the ArchLinux installer and I get an environment in which the full Arch system is downloaded and installed. But if I do select the UEFI boot option, then when the system tries to boot, I get the following message:

"No loader found. Configuration files in /loader/entries/*.conf are needed."

I'm thinking that these files ought to be in the ArchLinux DVD image, right? So here's a listiing (via my Fedora installation) of what's in the DVD:

[alan@alan-fedora /]$ cd /run/media/alan
[alan@alan-fedora alan]$ ls
ARCH_201211
[alan@alan-fedora alan]$ cd ARCH_201211/
[alan@alan-fedora ARCH_201211]$ ls -l
total 8
drwxr-xr-x. 1 alan alan 2048 Nov  1 02:08 arch
drwxr-xr-x. 1 alan alan 2048 Nov  1 02:06 EFI
drwxr-xr-x. 1 alan alan 2048 Nov  1 02:07 isolinux
drwxr-xr-x. 1 alan alan 2048 Nov  1 02:05 loader
[alan@alan-fedora ARCH_201211]$ cd loader
[alan@alan-fedora loader]$ ls -l
total 3
drwxr-xr-x. 1 alan alan 2048 Nov  1 02:05 entries
-rw-r--r--. 1 alan alan   33 Nov  1 02:05 loader.conf
[alan@alan-fedora loader]$ cd entries
[alan@alan-fedora entries]$ ls -l
total 2
-rw-r--r--. 1 alan alan 168 Nov  1 02:05 archiso-x86_64.conf
-rw-r--r--. 1 alan alan  56 Nov  1 02:05 uefi-shell-v1-x86_64.conf
-rw-r--r--. 1 alan alan  56 Nov  1 02:05 uefi-shell-v2-x86_64.conf
[alan@alan-fedora entries]$ cat archiso-x86_64.conf
title   Arch Linux archiso x86_64 UEFI USB
linux   /arch/boot/x86_64/vmlinuz
initrd  /arch/boot/x86_64/archiso.img
options archisobasedir=arch archisolabel=ARCH_201211
[alan@alan-fedora entries]$ cat uefi-shell-v2-x86_64.conf
title  UEFI Shell x86_64 v2
efi    /EFI/shellx64_v2.efi

From other reading I've been doing the past few days on UEFI stuff, this looks fine to me. How about to you? Of course, I'm brand new at this.

Any suggestions for moving forward?

As a side note, when I discovered ArchLinux a few days ago I realized that it could help me to learn about setting up a Linux installation with a GPT partition system and LVM stuff. I searched a couple of archives on this board for information, and it appears that my surmise is right. Comments?

EFI is not required for either of these features. Although GPT is often associated with EFI, it's possible to use GPT on a BIOS-based computer. Linux can boot from a GPT disk on a BIOS-based computer, although Windows can't; that's a Windows limitation, not a BIOS limitation, as many in the Windows community seem to believe. LVM is independent of the firmware type. Windows' equivalent of LVM is "dynamic disks." The two systems are incompatible, though.

Ok, thanks for making that explicit. I sort of had that impression but was not clear. However, I really want to learn this technology, and I figure that only by diving in deep like this will I really learn it. I'm already reasonably familiar with installing Linux using the usual MBR and non-UEFI methods, but want to move forward with the latest stuff. After a lot of web searching I decided that ArchLinux has the most comprehensive set of discussions of getting UEFI, GPT and LVM to work, and that's why I'm here.

Alan

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#4 2012-11-18 22:55:05

AlanF00
Member
Registered: 2012-11-18
Posts: 16

Re: DVD Booting Does Not Detect UEFI Bios

As an addendum to my last post, I just tried booting from a USB stick, with the same result as from the DVD drive, as described earlier.

Alan

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#5 2012-11-18 23:05:12

89c51
Member
Registered: 2012-06-05
Posts: 741

Re: DVD Booting Does Not Detect UEFI Bios

AlanF00 wrote:

"No loader found. Configuration files in /loader/entries/*.conf are needed."


https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1195266

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#6 2012-11-24 20:13:28

justdanyul
Member
Registered: 2011-09-29
Posts: 130

Re: DVD Booting Does Not Detect UEFI Bios

On all my systems the boot media(such as DVD or USB media) will boot in normal MBR mode unless i explicitly go into the bios and boot it as UEFI. This looks a bit different in all three bioses, its called "boot override" on two of them and on the third it doesn't really have a name. However, its quite clear in all three cases that it boots the media in UEFI mode.

Last edited by justdanyul (2017-02-06 17:10:43)

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#7 2012-11-29 03:16:32

cfr
Member
From: Cymru
Registered: 2011-11-27
Posts: 7,130

Re: DVD Booting Does Not Detect UEFI Bios

Note that USB media need to be created differently for UEFI boot. (You can't just dd them.) This doesn't apply to the CD media, though.


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#8 2012-11-29 05:08:25

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

Re: DVD Booting Does Not Detect UEFI Bios

On my Thinkpad, there is a setting for preference of "legacy bios" or "UEFI".  You can also disable one or the other entirely.  So thinking that the preferential treatment was certainly enough, I set it to UEFI first.  It booted with "Legacy bios"... I actually had to fully disable bios boot support for it to boot the cd in UEFI.  I am not sure why that was, but I have noticed that my firmware is a bit quirky.

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#9 2012-11-29 05:11:46

the.ridikulus.rat
Member
From: Indiana, USA
Registered: 2011-10-04
Posts: 765

Re: DVD Booting Does Not Detect UEFI Bios

WonderWoofy wrote:

On my Thinkpad, there is a setting for preference of "legacy bios" or "UEFI".  You can also disable one or the other entirely.  So thinking that the preferential treatment was certainly enough, I set it to UEFI first.  It booted with "Legacy bios"... I actually had to fully disable bios boot support for it to boot the cd in UEFI.  I am not sure why that was, but I have noticed that my firmware is a bit quirky.

I forgot what is it to use a CD/DVD. I have currently set my Thinkpad to "UEFI Only" and setup both Arch and Windows by booting via USB alone. For my system info see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HC … 0_3254-DAQ .

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#10 2012-11-29 05:17:12

the.ridikulus.rat
Member
From: Indiana, USA
Registered: 2011-10-04
Posts: 765

Re: DVD Booting Does Not Detect UEFI Bios

AlanF00 wrote:

Howdy,
Later I found the Beginner's Guide ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide ) and began working my way through it. Unfortunately things hung up almost immediately with the section "Testing if you are booted into UEFI mode". I have a new ASUS P8Z77-V board that has a UEFI bios. The guide states:

############
In case you have a UEFI motherboard, the CD/USB will launch UEFI Shell and display a message that startup.nsh script will be launched. Allow the shell to launch it, and exit the shell. Select "UEFI CD: Arch Linux" (or similar) from a list. Then, to check whether you have booted into UEFI mode, load the efivars kernel module (before chrooting) and then check whether there are files in /sys/firmware/efi/vars/:

# modprobe efivars       # before chrooting
# ls -1 /sys/firmware/efi/vars/
#############

When I select  "Boot Arch Linux" from the DVD startup menu, everything seems to work fine, except that what the Guide describes does not happen -- no shell script is launched and no "efi" or "efi/vars" directories are created. That indicates that for whatever reason, the booting software is not detecting that my Bios is a UEFI bios.

That info is old. Archiso (and Archboot) now use Gummiboot to boot into UEFI mode. Even that seems to have some problems in Asus systems. Anyway I have modified the wiki page to reflect this change. In my thinkpad gummiboot works fine.

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#11 2012-11-29 05:45:46

the.ridikulus.rat
Member
From: Indiana, USA
Registered: 2011-10-04
Posts: 765

Re: DVD Booting Does Not Detect UEFI Bios

AlanF00 wrote:

Selecting the UEFI boot option really does have an effect, because if I don't select it, the system boots from the DVD into the ArchLinux installer and I get an environment in which the full Arch system is downloaded and installed. But if I do select the UEFI boot option, then when the system tries to boot, I get the following message:

"No loader found. Configuration files in /loader/entries/*.conf are needed."

Follow these steps:

1. Create a UEFI bootable USB : https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … B_from_ISO
2. Install extra/refind-efi pkg and copy /usr/lib/refind/refindx64.efi to [USB]/EFI/boot/bootx64.efi (replace existing file).
3. Copy the config from https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/31894#comment102233 (for Archiso) or from https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 8#p1190788 (for Archboot) to [USB]/EFI/boot/refind.conf
4. Boot the USB.

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