[Solved] Boot only from SSD

ubunchu · 2014-02-18 14:12:56

Hello
I have installed arch about 10 months ago (on a HP laptop), and the idea was like so:

- SSD - kernel, home, and stuff
- HDD - stuff (and some bindings)

I got it working,but if I remove the HDD, I can't boot. I get the message "no drives detected" (or something like that)
So I'd like to boot from the SSD only.

Both drives are GPT, ext4 partitions (no swap), see:
http://imgur.com/8C6UPGk

Any hints on what I can do to fix that?

Also, afaik I'm not using UEFI, i'll upload a pic of the bios in a minute.
EDIT:
http://imgur.com/lCsvBib

Thank you all.
Cheers.

EDIT-SOLUTION:
This is a Pavilion Ultrabook 14-b006sa
2 hard drives (ssd and hdd), they're united if they are under secure boot (if i'm not mistaken), but it CAN run only on SSD. It was a tricky thing, but got it working with Gummiboot, EFI. the partitionning scheme was not the best one for grub, so I settled with a 512 MiB space for FAT32, and do the thing.

Last edited by ubunchu (2014-02-20 15:34:11)

alphaniner · 2014-02-18 14:35:21

Depending on your configuration, you may be able to prevent boot failure if you use the nofail option in the HDD fstab entries eg:

/dev/VG1/lv_bucket		/mnt/bucket	xfs	defaults,noatime,logbufs=8,nofail	0 2
/mnt/bucket/Downloads/isos	/srv/nfs3/isos	none	defaults,bind,nofail			0 0

I use nofail in all my auto-mounted non-system entries.

Last edited by alphaniner (2014-02-18 14:36:31)

ANOKNUSA · 2014-02-18 14:37:16

Obviously, there's something on the HDD that the system needs to boot. How your disks are partitioned doesn't matter if we don't know how those partitions are mounted. Check the output of lsblk, blkid, and mount to figure out where the partitions are mounted; that will tell you what's missing that the boot process needs.

ubunchu · 2014-02-18 14:49:11

alphaniner wrote:

Depending on your configuration, you may be able to prevent boot failure if you use the nofail option in the HDD fstab entries eg:
/dev/VG1/lv_bucket		/mnt/bucket	xfs	defaults,noatime,logbufs=8,nofail	0 2
/mnt/bucket/Downloads/isos	/srv/nfs3/isos	none	defaults,bind,nofail			0 0
I use nofail in all my auto-mounted non-system entries.

Thanks, though that's not the problem. It's simply that the bios (computer) itself doesn't see the SSD drive alone. If the other HDD is present, no problems.

ANOKNUSA wrote:

Obviously, there's something on the HDD that the system needs to boot. How your disks are partitioned doesn't matter if we don't know how those partitions are mounted. Check the output of lsblk, blkid, and mount to figure out where the partitions are mounted; that will tell you what's missing that the boot process needs.

The whole SSD drive is missing in the boot process without the HDD. I think it's the thing with GPT-grub and such, but I'm unsure what exactly is missing.

alphaniner · 2014-02-18 15:02:28

It's simply that the bios (computer) itself doesn't see the SSD drive alone. If the other HDD is present, no problems.

You're saying the SSD doesn't show up at all if the HDD isn't present? Are you sure about this? It's not a matter of having installed your bootloader on the HDD or something?

Neburski · 2014-02-18 15:06:26

ubunchu wrote:

I got it working,but if I remove the HDD, I can't boot. I get the message "no drives detected" (or something like that)

Maybe a stupid question but are you sure that you don't have a hybrid drive (SSD + HDD) and thus when you disconnect the HDD you actually also disconnected the SSD?
I'm going of the fact that you seem to be using a laptop and to me it makes sense that laptops would be using a hybrid drive to preserve space.

Anyway in case I'm wrong. You should post the output that ANOKNUSA asked for.

Last edited by Neburski (2014-02-18 15:06:51)

WonderWoofy · 2014-02-18 15:20:55

I am thinking that this is an mSATA SSD that the windows environment would have used as a cache for the HDD. If that is the case, there may be no way around it. I too have one of these mSATA slots, though I have never tried to boot with that as the only thing in the machine.

I think this may just be in the firmware design.

Edit: On second thought... if you aren't using that ~30GB ESP to boot the machine, are you sure that grub is actually installed to the SSD? If it is, then the machine should at least be able to get to the grub prompt I would think. Even then though, you still don't have anything on the SSD to get yourself any further, so I'm not entirely sure what the point of this excercise is.

Last edited by WonderWoofy (2014-02-18 15:22:45)

ubunchu · 2014-02-18 15:49:56

alphaniner wrote:

It's simply that the bios (computer) itself doesn't see the SSD drive alone. If the other HDD is present, no problems.
You're saying the SSD doesn't show up at all if the HDD isn't present? Are you sure about this? It's not a matter of having installed your bootloader on the HDD or something?

I have grub installed on the SSD. And yes, I just removed the HDD again, went into the boot menu, and I only had "boot from EFI file" and the live usb i inserted.

Neburski wrote:

ubunchu wrote:
I got it working,but if I remove the HDD, I can't boot. I get the message "no drives detected" (or something like that)
Maybe a stupid question but are you sure that you don't have a hybrid drive (SSD + HDD) and thus when you disconnect the HDD you actually also disconnected the SSD?
I'm going of the fact that you seem to be using a laptop and to me it makes sense that laptops would be using a hybrid drive to preserve space.
Anyway in case I'm wrong. You should post the output that ANOKNUSA asked for.

I just re-checked, it's "boot device not found, please install an operating system on your hard disk. gard disk <3F0>
The SSD isn't being detected, so it might be a hybrid thing... Or maybe it's just a wrong partitioning for grub.

WonderWoofy wrote:

I am thinking that this is an mSATA SSD that the windows environment would have used as a cache for the HDD. If that is the case, there may be no way around it. I too have one of these mSATA slots, though I have never tried to boot with that as the only thing in the machine.
I think this may just be in the firmware design.
Edit: On second thought... if you aren't using that ~30GB ESP to boot the machine, are you sure that grub is actually installed to the SSD? If it is, then the machine should at least be able to get to the grub prompt I would think. Even then though, you still don't have anything on the SSD to get yourself any further, so I'm not entirely sure what the point of this excercise is.

When I got this laptop, it merged both HDD's into RAID.
It is installed on the SSD, I just re-checked from a live environment, mounted it, and /boot is there.
I'm quite sure there is a problem with the grub-mbr-gpt setup....

What info would be relevant to post?

jasonwryan · 2014-02-18 16:00:43

ubunchu wrote:

What info would be relevant to post?

ANOKNUSA wrote:

Check the output of lsblk, blkid, and mount to figure out where the partitions are mounted; that will tell you what's missing that the boot process needs.

Neburski · 2014-02-18 16:05:02

ubunchu wrote:

I just re-checked, it's "boot device not found, please install an operating system on your hard disk. gard disk <3F0>
The SSD isn't being detected, so it might be a hybrid thing... Or maybe it's just a wrong partitioning for grub.

That doesn't mean that the SSD is not being recognized. It just means that the computer can't find a boot sector so it doesn't know what to do.
For the hybrid thing, you can figure it out quite easily by looking it up.

Reread ANOKNUSA's post to see how to figure out how your system is partitioned and where each partition is being mounted.

ubunchu · 2014-02-18 16:48:35

With both SSD and HDD:

[root@ubunchu ~]# lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 698.7G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0     4M  0 part 
└─sda2   8:2    0 698.6G  0 part /Ubunchu
sdb      8:16   0  29.8G  0 disk 
├─sdb1   8:17   0  29.8G  0 part /
└─sdb2   8:18   0     4M  0 part

[root@ubunchu ~]# blkid
/dev/sda1: PARTUUID="e7ae7bf3-a7aa-4c38-8530-a850087bbfa8" 
/dev/sda2: LABEL="ubunchu" UUID="1d2217bf-950c-48c2-a6ad-1afa167e67b8" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="00c71fd6-64b1-46d5-8d44-27924f6db08f" 
/dev/sdb1: UUID="6fe9cb1d-5b21-489e-aada-0deb0bc6fe0c" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="root" PARTUUID="0f9de560-3366-471e-b9b6-5d1faa3e08b0" 
/dev/sdb2: PARTUUID="d67dda48-cb58-45ff-8930-a6f38cf42ef1"

WonderWoofy · 2014-02-18 16:56:50

Ah, so /dev/sdb1 is your rootfs and it isn't the EFI System Partition? This would have been good to have shared in the first place...

I know that Linux doesn't care what GUID your partition is given, so long as it isn't the special swap or /home GUIDs (and really that is systemd that makes use of those). But your firmware may very well be seeing that ESP GUID and thinking that it wants to use that. Though that still wouldn't explain why it wouldn't then fall back to legacy bios. Still it wouldn't hurt to try changing the GUID to something more sane.

ubunchu · 2014-02-18 17:03:39

WonderWoofy wrote:

Ah, so /dev/sdb1 is your rootfs and it isn't the EFI System Partition? This would have been good to have shared in the first place...
I know that Linux doesn't care what GUID your partition is given, so long as it isn't the special swap or /home GUIDs (and really that is systemd that makes use of those). But your firmware may very well be seeing that ESP GUID and thinking that it wants to use that. Though that still wouldn't explain why it wouldn't then fall back to legacy bios. Still it wouldn't hurt to try changing the GUID to something more sane.

Uhm... okay? I think?
I didn't understand you as much I would have wanted, you mean I should delete the whole SSD, change it to MBR and then remove the HDD?

WonderWoofy · 2014-02-18 17:17:22

No just change the partition type code (which ultimately just gives it a certain GUID). You have it set to ef00 for /dev/sdb1, which is the type code (GUID) for an EFI System Partition. While this should not matter for Linux, it just might have some significance to the firmware.

ubunchu · 2014-02-18 17:20:57

WonderWoofy wrote:

You have it set to ef00 for /dev/sdb1, which is the type code (GUID) for an EFI System Partition. While this should not matter for Linux, it just might have some significance to the firmware.

Oh Ok, though now that you say, about 30 mins ago, I changed that partition form ef00, because it wouldn't boot to 8300. Same result.

Isn't it the other partition that is the most important? The little space assigned for bios_grub (ef02)?

Arch Linux

#1 2014-02-18 14:12:56

[Solved] Boot only from SSD

#2 2014-02-18 14:35:21

Re: [Solved] Boot only from SSD

#3 2014-02-18 14:37:16

Re: [Solved] Boot only from SSD

#4 2014-02-18 14:49:11

Re: [Solved] Boot only from SSD

#5 2014-02-18 15:02:28

Re: [Solved] Boot only from SSD

#6 2014-02-18 15:06:26

Re: [Solved] Boot only from SSD

#7 2014-02-18 15:20:55

Re: [Solved] Boot only from SSD

#8 2014-02-18 15:49:56

Re: [Solved] Boot only from SSD

#9 2014-02-18 16:00:43

Re: [Solved] Boot only from SSD

#10 2014-02-18 16:05:02

Re: [Solved] Boot only from SSD

#11 2014-02-18 16:48:35

Re: [Solved] Boot only from SSD

#12 2014-02-18 16:56:50

Re: [Solved] Boot only from SSD

#13 2014-02-18 17:03:39

Re: [Solved] Boot only from SSD

#14 2014-02-18 17:17:22

Re: [Solved] Boot only from SSD

#15 2014-02-18 17:20:57

Re: [Solved] Boot only from SSD

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