Arch Linux

tychicus

Member

Registered: 2013-08-20

Posts: 3

Grub2 (UEFI) drops straight into the console

I'm trying to install Arch on a Macbook Pro 9,2. I've been following the instructions here (in addition to the Beginner's Guide) and after some issues with efivars I now have grub-install working using the following:

# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=arch_grub --boot-directory=/boot/efi/EFI --recheck --debug

The problem is grub is simply dropping into the console. I'm not sure how to determine if grub isn't finding grub.cfg or if it's the configuration itself. The file is located at /boot/efi/EFI/grub/grub.cfg on /dev/sda5 (mounted at /boot/efi in the chroot environment). What strikes me as odd is that the grub.cfg that was generated by grub-mkconfig has no menuentry sections. It's been a 3-4 years since I last used grub or grub2, but I think that would be an issue.

Any ideas what might be going on? Here's my grub.cfg.

srs5694

Member

From: Woonsocket, RI

Registered: 2012-11-06

Posts: 719

Website

Re: Grub2 (UEFI) drops straight into the console

If it's been so long since you've used GRUB 2, why are you trying to use it now? IMHO, GRUB 2 is the most over-engineered and difficult-to-configure boot loader for Linux, and several alternatives for EFI exist. Most of those have Arch packages, too. Most Arch users seem to prefer the EFI stub loader, usually in conjunction with gummiboot or rEFInd. (Full disclosure: I'm rEFInd's maintainer, so I'm partial to that solution myself.) On a Mac, rEFInd is likely to be the most flexible solution, since it comes with an install script that runs under OS X and it can read Linux kernels and other boot loaders from multiple partitions. (Using gummiboot would require you to manually install it to the OS X partition and put your Linux kernel there, too.)