[SOLVED] GPT BIOS failed to find Arch installation

donniezazen · 2012-12-10 06:36:02

Hello,

I did a clean installation using GPT partitioning and BIOS GRUB. I created following partition scheme.

1 2MB BIOS boot position
2 20GB Linux Filysystem /
3 10GB unused for now
4 400GB Linux Filesystem /home

I followed rest of the wiki and installed GRUB using BIOS Motherboard GRUB installation. When I boot nothing happens. It takes me back to boot menu and no grub is loaded. I have a Lenovo Think pad T420.

Please help.

Last edited by donniezazen (2012-12-10 21:08:10)

DSpider · 2012-12-10 07:52:47

When I boot nothing happens. It takes me back to boot menu and no grub is loaded.

What boot menu? The boot menu where it says "GRUB 2.00"? That's GRUB. You probably just forgot to generate a grub.cfg, or you should have used "grub-install [...] /dev/sdb" instead of /dev/sda (if Arch is on the second drive).

Note: Change /dev/sda to reflect the drive you installed Arch on. Do not append a partition number (do not use sdaX).

Speaking of which, are there any other hard drives in the machine?

And I hope you didn't mount the 2 MiB partition as /boot during the install process; the initramfs image takes up more than that, let alone the kernel and GRUB's files...

Last edited by DSpider (2012-12-10 07:54:51)

srs5694 · 2012-12-10 16:15:36

It's possible your computer has a GPT-intolerant BIOS; see this page of mine for details. In most cases, this can be solved by using Linux fdisk (not GNU Parted, GParted, or any other libparted-based tool) to set the "boot flag" on the 0xEE partition. Ignore fdisk's warning to use parted; you really do need fdisk for this task.

Alternatively, since it seems that this model was released little more than a year ago, it may include EFI support. If so, you can switch from BIOS-mode to EFI-mode installation and set up an EFI boot loader rather than a BIOS boot loader. There's a lot of documentation in the Arch wiki on this topic, such as:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … _Interface
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UEFI_Bootloaders

donniezazen · 2012-12-10 18:07:06

DSpider wrote:

What boot menu? The boot menu where it says "GRUB 2.00"? That's GRUB. You probably just forgot to generate a grub.cfg, or you should have used "grub-install [...] /dev/sdb" instead of /dev/sda (if Arch is on the second drive).

Boot menu in my case is the screen that presents boot order - CD, HDD, USB, Network. No OS on the hard drive is being detected.

Note: Change /dev/sda to reflect the drive you installed Arch on. Do not append a partition number (do not use sdaX).

Installation went fine and I didn't use sdaX.

Speaking of which, are there any other hard drives in the machine?

There is only one hard drive and I am installing from a USB drive.

And I hope you didn't mount the 2 MiB partition as /boot during the install process; the initramfs image takes up more than that, let alone the kernel and GRUB's files...

I created 2 MiB partition using gdisk and marked it as EF02 and then did nothing no formating or anything for that matter. I went ahead and continued the installation and Installed GRUB on BIOS Motherboards usual.

grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck /dev/sda

srs5694 wrote:

It's possible your computer has a GPT-intolerant BIOS; see this page of mine for details. In most cases, this can be solved by using Linux fdisk (not GNU Parted, GParted, or any other libparted-based tool) to set the "boot flag" on the 0xEE partition. Ignore fdisk's warning to use parted; you really do need fdisk for this task.
Alternatively, since it seems that this model was released little more than a year ago, it may include EFI support. If so, you can switch from BIOS-mode to EFI-mode installation and set up an EFI boot loader rather than a BIOS boot loader. There's a lot of documentation in the Arch wiki on this topic, such as:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … _Interface
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UEFI_Bootloaders

It does look like my laptop has GPT-Intolerant BIOS. I did try a few options from that page 1. changing boot flag, 2. recompute chs 3. make changes using GPT and nothing worked so far.

It does have EFI support. I have to figure it out.

UPDATE:- I was able to make it work using EFI but GRUB didn't work though. Thanks.

Last edited by donniezazen (2012-12-10 21:07:50)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-12-10 06:36:02

[SOLVED] GPT BIOS failed to find Arch installation

#2 2012-12-10 07:52:47

Re: [SOLVED] GPT BIOS failed to find Arch installation

#3 2012-12-10 16:15:36

Re: [SOLVED] GPT BIOS failed to find Arch installation

#4 2012-12-10 18:07:06

Re: [SOLVED] GPT BIOS failed to find Arch installation

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