gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

bigboss · 2013-10-10 19:06:06

I am at the point the guide tells me to do some specific work because I got UEFI motherboard

I did a fat 32 partition (type ef00) of 1G , which is my sda3
I created a dir /mnt/boot
I mounted the sda3 there

I type pacman -S gummiboot
result is File system /boot is not a fat efi system parttition file system
error: command failed to execute correctly

I don't get what I did wrong or what I understood wrong in the wiki. My partition is fat32, I try to install the bootloader gummiboot there but I take that error msg even if it's indeed formated as fat32.

edit: i've run the pacstrap -i /mnt base , everything worked smoothly and fast.

Last edited by bigboss (2013-10-10 19:07:22)

cfr · 2013-10-10 23:20:56

In which order did you mount your partitions? You need to mount / to /mnt before making the directory /mnt/boot and mounting the ESP to /mnt/boot.

Did you create the file system on the ESP before you mounted it?

bigboss · 2013-10-10 23:48:12

I firstly did mount / to mnt, / formated as ext4. ESP formated as fat32 and type ef00.

i did in this order

mount root to /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot then mount ESP there
mkdir /mnt/var and mount the var partition there
and mkdir /mnt/home and mount home there

dunno if something is wrong I understood it that way from installation @ wiki

cfr · 2013-10-10 23:53:13

And you've arch-chrooted when you install gummiboot, right?

bigboss · 2013-10-10 23:56:35

no I am not because guide said that ->>>Chroot and configure the base system
Note: If you are planning to reboot Arch in UEFI mode, read #For UEFI motherboards as there are some things to take care of before entering the chroot. This is necessary to ensure the boot loader or manager can be correctly configured within the chroot.

I think guide means i jump to #For UEFI motherboards

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Be … therboards

Last edited by bigboss (2013-10-10 23:58:43)

WonderWoofy · 2013-10-11 00:17:02

When you say you the "ESP formated as fat32 and type ef00" did you actually do both parts of creating the filesystem (the ef00) part as well as making the filesystem (mkfs.vfat)?

bigboss · 2013-10-11 00:21:33

Yes I did both I used cgdisk for doing the ef00 and it shows the partition as Efi partition into cgdisk and the. Used mkfs.vfat -F32
Also I made a gpt table and not mbr

Last edited by bigboss (2013-10-11 00:25:47)

WonderWoofy · 2013-10-11 00:48:46

Oh, you are supposed to do the gummiboot installation from the chroot. But you could also just copy over the efi binary manually to wherever you want it to go as well.

If you are dead set on doing this from outside the chroot, you can use gummiboot --path=/mnt/boot install to install it to the correct place. But you should know that the only things that the gummiboot command will do is copy the efi binary to (ESP)/EFI/gummiboot/gummibootx64.efi as well as (ESP)/EFI/boot/bootx64.efi and then attempt to make a efibootmgr entry (firmare entry). So these things can all be done manually if need be.

cfr · 2013-10-11 00:54:11

It will be simpler, though, to arch-chroot and reinstall the gummiboot package as it should all get set up automatically in that case. That's what it is trying to do now but /boot is not currently a ESP - /mnt/boot is the ESP. That's why it is failing. Try again in the chroot.

WonderWoofy · 2013-10-11 02:20:08

cfr wrote:

It will be simpler, though, to arch-chroot and reinstall the gummiboot package as it should all get set up automatically in that case. That's what it is trying to do now but /boot is not currently a ESP - /mnt/boot is the ESP. That's why it is failing. Try again in the chroot.

This would indeed be simpler, but I just figured for the sake of trying to help bigboss understand what was going on, I would explain what it was actually doing. When I first started using gummiboot, there was no gummiboot command, and all that stuff had to be done manually. I think that although I use the gummiboot command now out of sheer convenience, it certainly has benefited me to understand what it was doing. I guess though when I started using UEFI, the only thing with an automagic installer was grub-efi... and I didn't want to go that route.

@bigboss, you should also know that having UEFI and the old MBR/bios method of booting on the same computer at the same time will work just fine. So if you understand the traditional boot process (and setup) a bit better, you could actually install in the traditional fashion with a bios bootloader, and then work out the UEFI booting after getting things up and running. The only downside is that having window in UEFI mode and Linux in bios would be a bit clumsy. But it would work.

I actually keep a bios bootloader on my machine as a backup, just in case all else fails. I haven't had to resort to this yet though. I used to use syslinux, but now I have btrfs spanning a whole disk, and since syslinux relies on a partition being marked as "boot", that really doesn't work (since I have no partitions).

BTW, I'm glad we were able to start over after that last thread went so downhill.

cfr · 2013-10-11 02:37:06

That's true. But even if I were to do it manually, I would do it from the chroot so I was clear about which directories I was using. It's easier to think inside the system as it will be installed than to have to remember to prefix everything with /mnt. At least, so I find. MSMMV [More Sophisticated Minds May Vary.]

WonderWoofy · 2013-10-11 05:47:06

cfr wrote:

At least, so I find. MSMMV [More Sophisticated Minds May Vary.]

Honestly, because you have had more problems with your UEFI firmware than pretty much anyone else I have seen on these threads, I would venture to say that your UEFI knowledge has to be pretty good. The amount of debugging and digging into the issues that you have faced has forced you to a thorough understanding. Besides, because of this, you seem to have the most back and forth with srs5694 than anyone else.

bigboss · 2013-10-11 08:46:08

Had to sleep, now I am back.

Arch chrooting seems to overcoming that error message I was getting "no fat 32 ... " running pacman -S gummiboot into sh-4.2
has the result : copied /usr/lib/gummiboot/gummibootx64.efi to /boot/EFI/gummiboot/gummibootx64.efi
Failed to create EFI boot variable entry : no such file or directory
::Run /usr/bin/gummiboot install

then I run that and get >Created /boot/EFI/Boot
>Created /boot/loader
>Created /boot/loader/entries
>copied /usr/lib/gummiboot/gummibootx64.efi to /boot/EFI/gummiboot/gummibootx64.efi
>copied /usr/lib/gummiboot/gummibootx64.efi to /boot/EFI/Boot/BOOTX64.efi
>Failed to create EFI boot variable entry : no such file or directory <------------------ is that a big problem?

WonderWoofy wrote:

BTW, I'm glad we were able to start over after that last thread went so downhill.

was pretty much my bad for not reading thoroughly the wiki, you were right the documendations there are great.. I just get a bit lazy when I am bombarded with tons of info
but I managed.

bigboss · 2013-10-11 08:57:47

Well I found a solution to the Failed to create Efi boot var entry

had to do # mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars after Chroot

I did not do it because yesterday I typed that command it said that's already mounted but I wasn't chrooted seems that chroot does change that and you need to # mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars after Chroot

With respect to the wiki authors maybe they should edit that note a bit

"Note: If you are planning to reboot Arch in UEFI mode, read #For UEFI motherboards as there are some things to take care of before entering the chroot. This is necessary to ensure the boot loader or manager can be correctly configured within the chroot."

I jumped to #For UEFI motherboards which tells you to install gummiboot but that fails indeed if you are not chrooted, and get that message of no fat 32 detected.

i think the note should tell you to chroot first, or when you jump @ #For UEFI motherboards and there it tells you to run pacman -S gummiboot they should warn you that you need to be chrooted.

I dunno if I make any sense, I explain why I was confused and not chrooted, maybe beginners like me gonna run to that problem too in future.

jasonwryan · 2013-10-11 09:11:15

The balance is between providing accurate information for the Beginners' Guide, without replicating all of that in every page (like the gummiboot one) that is referenced from the guide.

It is probably helpful to think of the wiki as a jigsaw puzzle: mostly the information is accurate, but you are still expected to piece it together yourself...

Whenever I have tackled a complex change (like the move to UEFI/GPT/EFISTUB), I have spent a lot more time reading and re-reading the pages until it starts to make sense than sitting in front of the machine typing commands.

bigboss · 2013-10-11 09:20:06

I understand what you mean, but I've never chrooted again in my life, so I couldn't know how important it was, the guide made me jump to gummiboot before chrooting so I did that. I just meant that a note could be helpful there as it's a beginner guide, not for myself now I know what to do but just for future people that may run into my problem.

WonderWoofy · 2013-10-11 16:25:08

Hopefully you also say this line:

gummiboot install wrote:

Copied /usr/lib/gummiboot/gummibootx64.efi to /boot/EFI/Boot/BOOTX64.EFI.

The \EFI\boot\bootx64.efi spot on the ESP is special. It is the "default" spot, which was originally intended to ensure that a UEFI USB flash drive, or other external media, would be able to boot. So in those cases, there is obviously not going to be a firmware entry as there potentially are for internal devices. So with external media, it finds the first ESP it can and automatically boots whatever is placed in that position. After a while, this feature started to be implemented to the internal devices as well.

This of course has its benefits, but also downsides. It means that you can actually boot UEFI without making an efibootmgr entry at all. You can instead set the machine to boot from the device (as though you were booting with the old MBR system) and have things set to UEFI. It will then, like the external devices, find the first ESP and then boot the \EFI\boot\bootx64.efi, whatever that is. But this also has made it so that different installers will "compete" for that default spot. So although gummiboot copying itself to that spot is in my opinion, convenient, I believe the microsoft installer will also make an attempt to write over this as well. Hence, it is better (but not essential) to have a firmware entry.

As far as the efibootmgr mounting issue you had, it may be that the info is not in the beginners guide simply because of the recent changes to the efibootmgr binary. See this section of the UEFI wiki page to understand what happened. Baiscally there is a new system in the kernel for EFI variables, and we have now switched fully. But I also agree with jasonwryan here that it is also likely that there just simply has to be a balance between providing a nice up to date layout of the installation process in the beginners guide, while not totally regurgitating every single but of information from the rest of the wiki.

jasonwryan · 2013-10-11 18:36:55

bigboss wrote:

I just meant that a note could be helpful there as it's a beginner guide, not for myself now I know what to do but just for future people that may run into my problem.

The Beginners' Guide is publicly editable: if you think that a brief note would be helpful, feel free to add it; that is the only way the wiki is improved, as people who have been working through an issue decide to update the relevant page(s).

bigboss · 2013-10-11 18:45:12

jasonwryan wrote:

bigboss wrote:
I just meant that a note could be helpful there as it's a beginner guide, not for myself now I know what to do but just for future people that may run into my problem.
The Beginners' Guide is publicly editable: if you think that a brief note would be helpful, feel free to add it; that is the only way the wiki is improved, as people who have been working through an issue decide to update the relevant page(s).

I am really looking forward to contribute somehow, I really liked the whole arch concept (making things from scratch and learn how things work behind the scenes), the wiki really made me understand and learn some new things not just for linux, but as well as how the boot proccess works. Mostly I want to give a try to translate wiki pages to my mother language as it's in a very early stage the translation.

Currently I am at the X11, and trying to decide which window manager and enviroment I want to use. I really like the xfce looks like OS X. Also cairo dock is really beautiful.

cfr · 2013-10-11 23:07:48

The Beginners' Guide now seems to say that all commands should be run INSIDE the chroot. I assume this was updated in light of the changes and you probably just got caught in the gap between the repos updating and the wiki following.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-10-10 19:06:06

gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#2 2013-10-10 23:20:56

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#3 2013-10-10 23:48:12

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#4 2013-10-10 23:53:13

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#5 2013-10-10 23:56:35

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#6 2013-10-11 00:17:02

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#7 2013-10-11 00:21:33

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#8 2013-10-11 00:48:46

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#9 2013-10-11 00:54:11

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#10 2013-10-11 02:20:08

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#11 2013-10-11 02:37:06

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#12 2013-10-11 05:47:06

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#13 2013-10-11 08:46:08

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#14 2013-10-11 08:57:47

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#15 2013-10-11 09:11:15

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#16 2013-10-11 09:20:06

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#17 2013-10-11 16:25:08

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#18 2013-10-11 18:36:55

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#19 2013-10-11 18:45:12

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

#20 2013-10-11 23:07:48

Re: gummiboot error : file system is not a fat efi system partition (ESP)

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