[SOLVED] UEFI woes

FerretBuster · 2013-10-26 14:39:50

Hi everyone, this is my first post on this account on the forums - however it is not my first time installing arch.

Having installed arch previously a few years ago successfully, a lot seems to have changed and it seems 100x more complicated than before.

Anyway, I am having serious issues trying to install Arch on my ASUS 1215b.

First of all I managed to boot my memory stick in uefi mode once, when I tried my first install. However there were certain things that were not done correctly, and hence I had to start over.

I now am unable to boot Arch Linux in uefi mode from my USB stick, I have tried things all over the internet, and everything in the beginners guide. I have no clue where to go from here - hence why i'm posting.

I think the best approach would be to start over completely with a blank drive again, which I don't mind doing. But not being able to boot in UEFI mode is an issue, because I managed to get to the step in the beginners guide involving bootloaders, but when I tried running the command:

# mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

it couldn't find the mountpoint or something along those lines.

Help me arch community please

(I have been at this for 2 days now)

TLDR; How do I reformat my memory stick to enable UEFI booting of the Arch Live CD (Note that I am running windows, and hence must format the memory stick under windows)

Last edited by FerretBuster (2013-11-01 02:07:32)

mcloaked · 2013-10-26 14:51:47

Did you prepare your usb media for uefi boot as per https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … B_from_ISO?

teateawhy · 2013-10-26 14:56:41

To create an UEFI bootable memory stick, follow these instructions:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UEFI#In_Windows

FerretBuster · 2013-10-26 14:58:25

Yes I formatted it as FAT32, I then extracted the iso to it. And renamed the volume as per the instructions.

One thing worth noting is that i'd been having issues formatting the memory stick in windows device manager, however after wiping the memory stick and reconnecting it I was able to format it using the basic right click format interface.

teateawhy · 2013-10-26 15:11:28

Can you boot the archiso without UEFI, in legacy BIOS mode?

FerretBuster · 2013-10-26 15:47:28

What's the best way to do that? just extract the iso to a USB stick? There seem to be several ways on the wiki... Or should I just use the win32diskimager program

FerretBuster · 2013-10-26 15:52:00

Well i just extracted the contents of the iso to my usb stick formatted with fat32. I then booted off of it, and an error message popped up saying "Failed to install override security policy: (14) Not Found", which I then pressed OK to. And it gave me a message saying isolinux.bin is missing or corrupt. Reboot or select proper boot device.

mcloaked · 2013-10-26 15:57:10

FerretBuster wrote:

What's the best way to do that? just extract the iso to a USB stick? There seem to be several ways on the wiki... Or should I just use the win32diskimager program

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/US … On_Windows

FerretBuster · 2013-10-26 16:12:32

Using win32 disk imager to put the iso on usb now. will post results soon

FerretBuster · 2013-10-26 16:17:51

Ok it seems the legacy mode works. How would I go about configuring it then? Considering my laptop uses uefi

cfr · 2013-10-26 16:20:37

teateawhy wrote:

Can you boot the archiso without UEFI, in legacy BIOS mode?

If you can do this, you can work around not being able to boot in UEFI mode. Although slightly more complicated, there are several ways of doing this. I think the simplest is probably to copy you EFI application to EFI/boot/bootx64.efi on your EFI partition. This is the "fall back" position and your firmware will very likely be able to boot this without your having set an EFI menu entry. Once booted in EFI mode, you can then add the menu entry. Note that because you've got Windows installed, you may need to use your firmware's boot menu to pick the hard drive in order to get this to work - I'm not sure as I don't use Windows but this would make sense.

cfr · 2013-10-26 16:21:38

FerretBuster wrote:

Well i just extracted the contents of the iso to my usb stick formatted with fat32. I then booted off of it, and an error message popped up saying "Failed to install override security policy: (14) Not Found", which I then pressed OK to. And it gave me a message saying isolinux.bin is missing or corrupt. Reboot or select proper boot device.

You need to disable SecureBoot in your BIOS.

FerretBuster · 2013-10-26 16:30:27

Just to clarify, i'm not actually using windows on the netbook, i'm using windows on my desktop to format the memory stick. Also there doesn't seem to be an option to disable secureboot in my BIOS.

EDIT: There is definitely nothing about secureboot in my BIOS

Last edited by FerretBuster (2013-10-26 16:50:27)

FerretBuster · 2013-10-26 17:14:10

I think the simplest is probably to copy you EFI application to EFI/boot/bootx64.efi on your EFI partition. This is the "fall back" position and your firmware will very likely be able to boot this without your having set an EFI menu entry. Once booted in EFI mode, you can then add the menu entry. Note that because you've got Windows installed, you may need to use your firmware's boot menu to pick the hard drive in order to get this to work - I'm not sure as I don't use Windows but this would make sense.

I don't quite understand what you mean by this, do you mean the EFI partition I would have to create on my hard drive?

cfr · 2013-10-26 18:08:45

Yes. You basically follow all the steps to install but the creation of the menu entry will fail. So you copy the installed efi application to that position and your computer will very likely reboot using that application. Once booted, you can then add the menu entry as you'll then be booted in EFI mode.

FerretBuster · 2013-10-26 18:25:14

Well if it's any help I actually got to the bootloader installation part of the install before, but as I said when I ran the command

# mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

I was unable to mount efivarfs as efivars didn't exist

Last edited by FerretBuster (2013-10-26 18:26:14)

the.ridikulus.rat · 2013-10-26 18:28:20

FerretBuster wrote:

Well if it's any help I actually got to the bootloader installation part of the install before, but as I said when I ran the command
# mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars  
I was unable to mount efivarfs as efivars didn't exist

/sys/firmware/efi/efivars directory will exist only if you have booted in UEFI mode. Otherwise even /sys/firmware/efi/ will not exist.

EDIT: You can also try creating a entry using UEFI Shell v2 "bcfg" command https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … rface#bcfg .

Last edited by the.ridikulus.rat (2013-10-26 18:49:11)

cfr · 2013-10-26 18:37:56

FerretBuster wrote:

Well if it's any help I actually got to the bootloader installation part of the install before, but as I said when I ran the command
# mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars  
I was unable to mount efivarfs as efivars didn't exist

The only bit you need this for is creating the menu entry. Do everything else, copy the .efi application to the default location and your computer will very likely reboot using that fallback. When you reboot, that command will work and you can create the menu entry.

If you use e.g. gummiboot's automated install or grub-install, you'll get an error when it can't create the menu entry. That's OK. It will do everything else. In particular, the .efi application will get created and installed on the EFI partition. Just copy it to the fallback position, reboot and then deal with efivars and create the menu entry.

FerretBuster · 2013-10-26 19:21:46

cfr wrote:

FerretBuster wrote:
Well if it's any help I actually got to the bootloader installation part of the install before, but as I said when I ran the command
# mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars  
I was unable to mount efivarfs as efivars didn't exist
The only bit you need this for is creating the menu entry. Do everything else, copy the .efi application to the default location and your computer will very likely reboot using that fallback. When you reboot, that command will work and you can create the menu entry.
If you use e.g. gummiboot's automated install or grub-install, you'll get an error when it can't create the menu entry. That's OK. It will do everything else. In particular, the .efi application will get created and installed on the EFI partition. Just copy it to the fallback position, reboot and then deal with efivars and create the menu entry.

Ok great I will try that now, however I don't understand what you mean by copying the .efi application to the default location. Do you mean copy a .efi file from my memory stick, to the efi partition I am meant to make?

If so where do I find the .efi application and where is this default location?

cfr · 2013-10-26 19:32:40

No. When you install your boot loader or manager, it will write an .efi file to your EFI partition e.g. grub would write grubx64.efi, rEFInd would write refind_x64.efi and so on. You copy that file to EFI/boot/bootx64.efi, together with any necessary files. For grub, you'd just copy the grubx64.efi to bootx64.efi. For rEFInd, you'd copy everything in the rEFInd directory to EFI/boot/ and rename refind_x64.efi to bootx64.efi, and so on. Whatever your chosen boot loader or manager needs, you copy it to that directory and rename the copy of the main EFI application to bootx64.efi.

Last edited by cfr (2013-10-26 19:33:19)

FerretBuster · 2013-10-26 23:10:54

As gummiboot is the boot manager used in the beginners guide, I assume this method would work with that too? Or do I have to use grub or rEFInd

WonderWoofy · 2013-10-26 23:21:48

I use all of them, and they all work fine. I personally really like gummiboot because of its simplicity, both in its interface and in its configuration. But I know there are others out there who like the autocreation of the grub configuration and also the pretty interface that rEFInd has.

Gummiboot uses a simple directory structure for configuration, which IMO makes things amazingly straight forward. But UEFI also allows for as many bootloaders as you want, so you can set one up and try another as you please. If you find a different one tha you like, you can just set that as the default.

cfr · 2013-10-26 23:36:52

FerretBuster wrote:

As gummiboot is the boot manager used in the beginners guide, I assume this method would work with that too? Or do I have to use grub or rEFInd

gummiboot is fine. I just gave grub and rEFInd as examples as those are what I happen to have installed so I know exactly what you'd copy where. If you're using gummiboot, just copy the relevant stuff to /boot/EFI/boot/ and the gummiboot .efi application to /boot/EFI/boot/bootx64.efi. (I don't know if gummiboot has extra files you need to copy so you'll have to figure that out - or just copy whatever it installs as it won't really matter if they are unnecessary.)

WonderWoofy · 2013-10-27 00:12:38

See here for gummiboot setup. It is really very easy.
http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/gummiboot

FerretBuster · 2013-10-27 00:20:00

ok noob question. I didn't initially connect my ethernet cable when I started archiso, but now if I connect it how do I bring the service up to use it?

Arch Linux

#1 2013-10-26 14:39:50

[SOLVED] UEFI woes

#2 2013-10-26 14:51:47

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#3 2013-10-26 14:56:41

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#4 2013-10-26 14:58:25

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#5 2013-10-26 15:11:28

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#6 2013-10-26 15:47:28

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#7 2013-10-26 15:52:00

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#8 2013-10-26 15:57:10

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#9 2013-10-26 16:12:32

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#10 2013-10-26 16:17:51

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#11 2013-10-26 16:20:37

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#12 2013-10-26 16:21:38

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#13 2013-10-26 16:30:27

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#14 2013-10-26 17:14:10

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#15 2013-10-26 18:08:45

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#16 2013-10-26 18:25:14

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#17 2013-10-26 18:28:20

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#18 2013-10-26 18:37:56

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#19 2013-10-26 19:21:46

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#20 2013-10-26 19:32:40

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#21 2013-10-26 23:10:54

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#22 2013-10-26 23:21:48

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#23 2013-10-26 23:36:52

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#24 2013-10-27 00:12:38

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

#25 2013-10-27 00:20:00

Re: [SOLVED] UEFI woes

Board footer