No bootable hard drive after installation

Hyugga · 2013-05-25 21:05:22

Hi everyone. I want to install Arch on my laptop samsung 5 series (ssd+hdd) my partition scheme is like this:

Sdb is the SSD 24gb drive:
sdb1 -> 1007.0 KiB - Bios boot partition
sdb2 -> 200 MiB - /boot
sdb3 -> 22.2 gb - /

Hdd is sda:

sda1 -> for /var
sda2 -> for /home

After succesfully installation of "everyting" (grub doesn't prompt any error after installation on sdb) i have no bootable hard drives in bios.
My laptop came with windows 8 with GPT. So i created a new GPT partition table or something...(not MBR)

fstab looks like this:

/dev/sdb3 / ext4 rw,relatime,discard,noatime,data=ordered 0 1
/dev/sdb2 /boot ext2 rw,discard,noatime,relatime 0 2
/dev/sda1 /var ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2
/dev/sda2 /home ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2

Thanks in advance.

Last edited by Hyugga (2013-05-26 14:04:59)

cfr · 2013-05-25 21:32:18

Have you checked that legacy boot or bios boot is enabled in your firmware setup?

How exactly did you install grub?

What error message exactly do you get and at what point?

WonderWoofy · 2013-05-25 22:01:29

Are you sure that the laptop will allow you to boot from sdb? It is meant to be a cache I presume, so maybe it restricts this. You can always put grub on sda and then still boot your current setup. Though this would require that you put that stoopid little partition on sda. Either that or you could use grub legacy, as I think it will then actually fit into the MBR.

Hyugga · 2013-05-25 22:22:05

Thanks for reply!
In the bios setup i had to disable secure boot and uefi boot. That way i was able to boot from usb.
I installed grub following the Unofficial beginners guide, using the grub-install command described there in the /dev/sdb drive.
After that, the only bootable device visible in bios is the usb drive.
I also marked the bios partition as bootable in fdisk as showed in the troubleshooting section...

Thanks!

WonderWoofy · 2013-05-25 22:43:20

If you had secure boot on, how did you boot the install medium?

Hyugga · 2013-05-25 22:49:36

I had to disable secure boot to boot from usb.

cfr · 2013-05-25 23:12:08

You shouldn't need to disable uefi boot to boot from usb.

Hyugga · 2013-05-25 23:29:21

I'm not using EFI booting.
Thanks, but that is not my problem.

Last edited by Hyugga (2013-05-25 23:31:10)

cfr · 2013-05-26 00:02:00

I just meant that that sounded wrong. Something is odd about your firmware if you cannot boot from usb without disabling uefi boot.

Can you boot the OS from the usb media? i.e. use the boot-existing-os option?

EDIT: If you have really set everything up correctly (hard to tell as you haven't given much information about what you actually did), then it is possible that your firmware will not allow BIOS booting with a GPT partition map. My firmware seemed to fall into this category. In that case, since you have a Samsung and probably want to avoid EFI boot, you should probably consider MBR.

Last edited by cfr (2013-05-26 00:12:37)

Hyugga · 2013-05-26 03:01:31

I understand what you mean. Sorry my english isn't very good... I can boot uefi usb drives, but i tried the non uefi configuration described in the wiki.
I'm going to try uefi+gpt configuration.
Thanks!

Hyugga · 2013-05-26 04:18:42

Ok, i changed everything to MBR only configuration. Same partition layout. On the SSD i have the first partition as the / and the second as the /boot (with boot flag)
I can see a bootable device in my bios, but i get the following message when i boot:

"Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key".

Thanks.

Last edited by Hyugga (2013-05-26 04:41:05)

cfr · 2013-05-26 16:22:57

If you really have the same partition layout, that might be the problem. You only need the small bios boot partition for grub with GPT. Maybe having that with MBR confuses things (though I'm not sure about this).

Did you reinstall grub to disk and regenerate grub.cfg?

Hyugga · 2013-05-26 17:29:21

I'm so sorry. I mean the "same" but using MBR (without the gpt bios partition). I have this partition layout:

SDD - sdb
sdb1 -> /
sdb2 -> /boot

HDD - sda
sda1 -> /var
sda2 -> /home

I changed to MBR from GPT using fdisk. And installed grub (twice) with https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … ode_region.

Thanks a lot!

Hyugga · 2013-05-26 18:05:14

My partition layout looks like this (fdisk):

For HDD

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000ee4dc

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1              63    39070079    19535008+  83  Linux
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda2        39070080   976773167   468851544   83  Linux

And for SDD

Disk /dev/sdb: 24.0 GB, 24015495168 bytes, 46905264 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x96218d5c

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1              63    46492109    23246023+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb2   *    46492110    46905263      206577   83  Linux

Thanks.

cfr · 2013-05-26 18:24:13

Is the SDD listed first in the boot device list in BIOS?

You might want to post /boot/grub/grub.cfg so people can see if they can spot anything obvious. (Especially if somebody who uses grub with bios booting takes a look.)

Arch Linux

#1 2013-05-25 21:05:22

No bootable hard drive after installation

#2 2013-05-25 21:32:18

Re: No bootable hard drive after installation

#3 2013-05-25 22:01:29

Re: No bootable hard drive after installation

#4 2013-05-25 22:22:05

Re: No bootable hard drive after installation

#5 2013-05-25 22:43:20

Re: No bootable hard drive after installation

#6 2013-05-25 22:49:36

Re: No bootable hard drive after installation

#7 2013-05-25 23:12:08

Re: No bootable hard drive after installation

#8 2013-05-25 23:29:21

Re: No bootable hard drive after installation

#9 2013-05-26 00:02:00

Re: No bootable hard drive after installation

#10 2013-05-26 03:01:31

Re: No bootable hard drive after installation

#11 2013-05-26 04:18:42

Re: No bootable hard drive after installation

#12 2013-05-26 16:22:57

Re: No bootable hard drive after installation

#13 2013-05-26 17:29:21

Re: No bootable hard drive after installation

#14 2013-05-26 18:05:14

Re: No bootable hard drive after installation

#15 2013-05-26 18:24:13

Re: No bootable hard drive after installation

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