Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

ghostface · 2013-08-16 03:00:24

So this is a bit of a weird problem. I was having trouble installing arch from USB with GPT and UEFI last night (got a new SSD and did a fresh install onto it). Everything worked fine except efibootmgr couldn't find efivars, but I ended up fixing that and setting a boot entries.

Now, I can boot into Arch, everything works perfectly, but only if my USB stick is plugged in when I boot. If it isn't, I just boot into a black screen and have to do a hard restart. Once I am booted into Arch I can remove the USB stick without anything failing.

The only thing I can think of is I might have somehow written some important information needed to boot onto the USB instead of the SSD? I don't know enough about linux/UEFI/booting to pin point exactly what is going wrong, though. Any ideas?

I'm using a Lenovo Thinkpad T420 if that helps. I previously had arch installed with UEFI and GPT before doing a fresh install on the new hdd, so I don't think it's the laptop.

Cheers!

HalosGhost · 2013-08-16 03:12:03

That's one possibility, it's also possible, though it seems unlikely to me. Are you using /dev folder identifiers for your partition scheme in fstab? If so, then the USB might be offsetting the identifier. If you're using /dev identifiers in your fstab, I'd strongly recommend you switch to labels or UUIDs.

If that's not the case, then yes, it is possible that you wrote something (maybe your ESP?) to the USB on accident. Does it have to be the particular USB? If so, then that's a pretty clear indication that something's depending on it.

All the best,

-HG

cfr · 2013-08-16 03:12:46

How are you booting? That is, I know EFI but are you booting the stub loader directly? Or are you using a boot manager (rEFInd, gummiboot)? Or a boot loader (grub, syslinux)? Or something else (no idea but don't want to rule anything out)?

What does

modprobe efivars
efibootmgr -v

give?

ghostface · 2013-08-16 04:42:07

I am using UUID in my fstab.

cfr wrote:

How are you booting? That is, I know EFI but are you booting the stub loader directly? Or are you using a boot manager (rEFInd, gummiboot)? Or a boot loader (grub, syslinux)? Or something else (no idea but don't want to rule anything out)?
What does
modprobe efivars
efibootmgr -v
give?

I ran efibootmgr -v and noticed the entry I set during installation was missing, so I added it again but now I can't boot at all.

I tried using both the direct efibootmgr method and gummiboot method listed in the beginner's install guide.

I can chroot into the system using the live usb but I'm not sure how to post the results of efibootmgr - v here, if I could startx as my user I could but I'm not sure how to do it.

cfr · 2013-08-16 20:45:43

As long as you can get a network connection, install wgetpaste (or similar) and you can paste from the command line.

ghostface · 2013-08-17 05:22:17

http://bpaste.net/show/123715/

Here's the output of efibootmgr -v

Scimmia · 2013-08-17 05:31:19

ghostface wrote:

I am using UUID in my fstab.

It's not really about fstab, it's about the bootloader config. Looking at the output your pasted, you're using root=/dev/sda3, which is probably what's causing the problem. You should switch that to some that's persistent.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pe … ice_naming

ghostface · 2013-08-17 05:45:44

I tried changing it to the UUID but it doesn't seem to help. Here's what it looks like: http://bpaste.net/show/123716/

So I realised the "0e3e9c87-5410-4d9d-8eb8-2312f271ff6f" in the brackets is the PARTUUID of my boot partition, does it matter that I am using UUID rather than PARTUUID to specify my root partition?

Last edited by ghostface (2013-08-17 05:48:17)

Scimmia · 2013-08-17 06:14:15

The parameters passed to the kernel may not matter here if you're not even getting that far. It's looking for HD1, should that be HD0?

I don't know enough about UEFI, I should just stop now.

Last edited by Scimmia (2013-08-17 06:16:11)

ghostface · 2013-08-17 06:16:31

Nope, root is pointing to the root partion, UUID=.0.6.5.f.9.c.c.6.-.b.e.d.5.-.4.6.f.e.-.9.3.8.6.-.2.f.5.4.b.7.3.9.2.3.4.4.

0e3e9c87-5410-4d9d-8eb8-2312f271ff6f is the PARTUUID of the efi boot partition, you can see it in the Arch Linux lines of the efibootmgr -v output. The root uuid is put in manually by me but the boot partuuid is automatically put there.

Scimmia · 2013-08-17 06:17:27

yeah, I got it and edited my post. Sorry for the misread.

ghostface · 2013-08-17 06:18:45

Hm, you could be right about that. Would /dev/sda be HD 0 and /dev/sdb be HD 1?

Fixxer · 2013-08-17 07:02:01

Run whichever livecd, post result of bootinfoscript .

Last edited by Fixxer (2013-08-17 07:11:55)

cfr · 2013-08-17 20:43:35

The 1 is correct. I get that and I only have a single disk. I think vmlinuz-linux needs an .efi extension, though.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-08-16 03:00:24

Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

#2 2013-08-16 03:12:03

Re: Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

#3 2013-08-16 03:12:46

Re: Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

#4 2013-08-16 04:42:07

Re: Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

#5 2013-08-16 20:45:43

Re: Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

#6 2013-08-17 05:22:17

Re: Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

#7 2013-08-17 05:31:19

Re: Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

#8 2013-08-17 05:45:44

Re: Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

#9 2013-08-17 06:14:15

Re: Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

#10 2013-08-17 06:16:31

Re: Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

#11 2013-08-17 06:17:27

Re: Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

#12 2013-08-17 06:18:45

Re: Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

#13 2013-08-17 07:02:01

Re: Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

#14 2013-08-17 20:43:35

Re: Arch will only boot if I have USB drive plugged in

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