[SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

chulaluk · 2013-06-09 07:41:12

I've spent the better part of 2 days trying to install arch on this toshiba laptop I got. I don't want to go into all of the details about everything I've tried. I'm going to start by just trying the one suggestion I've read, but I can't figure out how to do:

On the UEFI page of the wiki, it says:
"Note: If the UEFI Firmware arch and Linux Kernel arch are different, then the "noefi" kernel parameter must be used to avoid the kernel panic and boot successfully. The "noefi" option instructs the kernel not to access the UEFI Runtime Services."

How exactly do I do this?

My problem is a kernel panic every time I boot with UEFI. I've read many people have this same problem.

I turned off the secure boot, but even booting to the CD with UEFI on gives me a kernel panic. To get to the CD, I have to turn UEFI off and turn on legacy. Then the CD will boot. But when I try to install, I can't boot into the installed version on my HDD.

Sorry, I know that is a bit jumbled. If someone could just tell me how to use the noefi option then I'll give that a shot. If that doesn't work, I'll return with screenshots, output, and details.

Thanks in advance for your help. This is killing me...

Last edited by chulaluk (2013-06-13 03:00:16)

Mr Green · 2013-06-09 09:31:34

Could you post the model of your laptop? and which arch media you are using? I have a Toshiba that I am trying to get UEFI Arch booting with... something in wiki mentioned option 'noefi' [but that might not be the problem.

With secure boot turned off and a FAT32 formatted usb stick with iso files on it I get menu appear then kernel panics. I am new to this UEFI stuff and so you are not alone. Plenty of information in wiki but as yet not managed to get mine to boot.

[Feel like I may have crossed posted by accident]

Success adding 'noefi' to boot menu [press E] allowed system to boot fine......

Last edited by Mr Green (2013-06-09 09:52:20)

chulaluk · 2013-06-09 10:14:06

Could you describe exactly how to do it? I'm not 100% sure what adding noefi to boot menu means.

Thanks so much for helping.

Last edited by chulaluk (2013-06-09 10:27:38)

Mr Green · 2013-06-09 10:29:23

When boot menu appears hit down key [to stop booting] then select top entry hit 'e' then edit to look like below by adding in 'noefi'

archisobasedir=%INSTALL_DIR%  noefi  archisolabel=%ARCHISO_LABEL%

Last edited by Mr Green (2013-06-09 10:32:07)

chulaluk · 2013-06-09 10:41:18

Thank you so much for your detailed response.

I'm using rEFInd. I'll try to see if I can do something similar with that.

Will report back.

Mr Green · 2013-06-09 10:42:53

I did know that I thought you were just trying to get arch-install-media working anyway thought I would let you know how I got it working good luck

chulaluk · 2013-06-09 11:49:40

Sigh. When I put in noefi, I get:

kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

Further down the screen is:

WARNING: at arch/x86/kernel/smp.c:123 native_smp_send_reschedule+0x57/0x60()

I'm doing this on a Toshiba Satellite C855D. I thought it would be a cheap laptop for linux... instead it's become quite expensive in terms of wasted time.

Mr Green · 2013-06-09 13:40:28

Can I ask if this is with arch-install-media? are you using a cd? or usb method? I have the similar laptop [850] and it works for me.

WonderWoofy · 2013-06-09 13:55:37

Honestly, at this point I would just use bios compatibility mode. The only thing UEFI really brings you in terms of benefits, is the ability to have multiple bootloaders. I guess it may be a smidge faster as well, but unless you have some pretty solid firmware, as you are finding out, that speed somes at the cost of some crazy bugs sometimes.

I use UEFI on my latop, which is a Thinkpad. But it started out as a bios booting system. So why don't you get the system on the machine for now, then you can figure out what kind of quirks the machine might have with UEFI and then convert the system to UEFI booting. UEFI and legacy bios can happily coexist on the same installation.

Mr Green · 2013-06-09 13:57:58

For my part I am just trying out UEFI, so not fully up to speed on it at the moment. Did not want to upset Windows 8, well not yet

WonderWoofy · 2013-06-09 14:02:21

Windows 8 can also coexist with bios compatibility mode as well. The parts of the disk that bios uses is totally different from that of UEFI. the first 512 bytes are bios booting's MBR, while the GPT starts after that and extends to the first partition at sector 2047. Then UEFI uses the EFI System Partition to hold bootloaders rather than having it at a fixed point on the disk like the MBR.

So I guess what I am trying to say is that I think it might be better to get the system on disk, then continue learning about UEFI and the quirks of your machine, rather than continuing to struggle with the live media forever.

chulaluk · 2013-06-09 19:59:29

Thanks everyone. I really appreciate your input.

@MrGreen - I'm using the CD, which I think might be part of the problem. I was going to try a USB today.

@WonderWoofy - do I need to do anything specific to use bios compatibility mode other than adjust the proper settings in the bios settings menu? Once I do that, I just install as if it uses bios?

I guess the upside to all this is that I learned more than I ever wanted to know about UEFI

WonderWoofy · 2013-06-09 20:12:33

UEFI is a good thing IMO. It really brings potential improvments to the way we boot our systems, which had been the same for about 30 years. But like any new software, the firmware is not without a few bugs. Bios mode may have been pretty rock solid, but you have to consider how much time it has had to get everything working properly and nicely standardized.

On my system, I have the choice to boot with UEFI Only, BIOS Compatibility Only, or Both. If I choose both, then I am also given the choice of having UEFI or BIOS compatibility as being given priority. This is so that if there is an instance in which I select a disk to boot from and it has a bootloader in the MBR as well as an ESP with an efi application at \EFI\boot\bootx64.efi, then it will know which one to choose. When I have this enabled, I always choose to ahve Bios mode have priority because if I want to boot with UEFI then I will be having it select an efibootmgr entry (an entry into the firmware's boot manager) rather than selecting the actual disk itself.

So you are just going to have to look through your bios and see what is offered in terms of options. Just about every bios interface is different, so I really cannot help you with hardware I don't have.

chulaluk · 2013-06-09 20:21:01

Great. Makes sense. In my situation, I can only choose UEFI or compatibility - not both. So when I do the install, I will do the partitioning (no need for GPT and a separate partition for ESP) and bootloader as if I have a BIOS mobo?

Again, I can't express how much I appreciate your help.

WonderWoofy · 2013-06-09 20:27:41

Yeah that is how you would do it. I would stil recommend GPT though, as MBR partitioning is also old and crufty. Extended partitions are a nightmare and increase the potential for breakage quite a bit. GPT on the other hand can handle 128 "primary" partitions by default, and can be made to handle more when you create it. It also creates a backup copy of the partition table at the end of the disk, so if the first part of your disk gets damaged somehow, you stand a much greater change of being able to recover.

That said, I have heard of some buggy firmwares that cannot use GPT/bios (or MBR/UEFI). But it is absolutely worth a try since converting to MBR is as simple as selecting an option in gdisk. So really you have nothing to lose.

You can also leave out the ESP, unless you plan on trying to set UEFI up later. If it were me, I would create a 512MB-1GB partition now, so that I know I have the space to make it later. You also have to remember that if you want to use grub2 and GPT, you need to make a 2MB grub partition. But there is always syslinux, which I like far better anyway, which doesn't require this sillyness.

chulaluk · 2013-06-09 20:33:16

you're a lifesaver. I'll give it all a shot and then report back.

srs5694 · 2013-06-11 01:50:46

If Windows is already installed in EFI mode, it requires GPT partitioning. Although Linux can boot from a GPT disk in BIOS mode, doing that while still booting Windows in EFI mode can be tricky. You can often get this to work with rEFInd by uncommenting the "scanfor" item in refind.conf and adding "hdbios" to the scan list, but this doesn't always work. Even if it works, you'll need to install a BIOS-mode boot loader in addition to rEFInd. IMHO, it's better to stick with a single boot mode (EFI or BIOS) for both OSes.

The "Unable to mount root fs" error indicates that one of two things is wrong:

The kernel requires an initial RAM disk (initrd or initramfs) file, and it can't find it
You haven't told the kernel where to find the root filesystem on your hard disk

Both problems can be corrected by adjusting the options passed to the kernel from the boot manager or boot loader, but precisely what you need to pass depends on the details of your system configuration. I'm not sure offhand what those options should be when booting the Arch installation CD. The initrd is set via an "initrd=" option, though, and the root filesystem is set via a "root=" option. Note that adding the "noefi" option is not likely to solve this particular problem (although of course it's possible that you've got another problem that would require using that option). In fact, using "noefi" when installing Arch in EFI mode will make it impossible to use the "efibootmgr" utility to adjust your boot manager/loader configuration. Therefore, I recommend finding the appropriate initrd= and root= options for the Arch installer and setting them via rEFInd, but do not use "noefi".

chulaluk · 2013-06-11 03:05:52

Thanks for your suggestions srs5694 - as I'm sure you're quite aware, everything you said is spot on, but I don't have the knowledge to figure out some of these details. Instead, I went with a simpler solution

Just wanted to give a quick update in case other people stumble on this looking for answers.

I ended up having to ditch UEFI entirely. Instead, I had to do the following:
1) turned off secure boot in the BIOS settings
2) changed from UEFI to legacy booting
3) I had to change the boot order to make it boot the CD before the hard drive (again, in the BIOS settings)

1-3 allowed me to get the install CD running (ugh).

4) used a gparted live cd to:
a) create a MSDOS partition table
b) create two ext3 partitions - a /root and a /home
5) Install archlinux as discussed in the beginner guide
6) I used grub as the bootloader
7)... profit

OK, well, not profit, but after 3 or 4 days I finally got a prompt after booting from the hard drive. I'm sure I have many more frustrations ahead of me, but this worked.

Granted, I cannot dual boot Windows 8 and Linux, but I was less than impressed in the 30 minutes I spent looking at Window 8. I may try to dual boot windows 7 and linux later. But for now, just a linux laptop is just fine with me.

Needless to say, this is *not* a solution to getting archlinux to boot with UEFI on this laptop. But this laptop was only $300USD and I'm guessing they used really cheap components that don't want to play nice with anything. So, I'm perfectly happy with legacy.

Thanks again for all of your help. You folks are great.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-06-09 07:41:12

[SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#2 2013-06-09 09:31:34

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#3 2013-06-09 10:14:06

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#4 2013-06-09 10:29:23

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#5 2013-06-09 10:41:18

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#6 2013-06-09 10:42:53

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#7 2013-06-09 11:49:40

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#8 2013-06-09 13:40:28

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#9 2013-06-09 13:55:37

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#10 2013-06-09 13:57:58

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#11 2013-06-09 14:02:21

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#12 2013-06-09 19:59:29

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#13 2013-06-09 20:12:33

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#14 2013-06-09 20:21:01

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#15 2013-06-09 20:27:41

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#16 2013-06-09 20:33:16

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#17 2013-06-11 01:50:46

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

#18 2013-06-11 03:05:52

Re: [SOLVED] Toshiba UEFI laptop - noefi kernel parm

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