Arch Linux

LHulk

Member

Registered: 2013-11-14

Posts: 3

Re: Booting from UEFI = blank screen [SOLVED]

so is there a way to get arch booted, after it was installed in legacy-mode or via bootstrap from another distro? and does anyone one, if someone is working on fixing this problem?

dejy

Member

Registered: 2014-03-18

Posts: 67

Re: Booting from UEFI = blank screen [SOLVED]

Any updates on this? I am having issues install Arch as dual boot UEFI on an SSD (lenovo x1). The UEFI booting from live usb produces the selection menu (UEFI shell works) but starting Arch produces a blank screen. Is my only option to install in legacy mode and than load UEFI shell to finish configuring the boot loader?
Is there a way around the initial blank screen problem?

zAo

Member

Registered: 2012-11-01

Posts: 26

Re: Booting from UEFI = blank screen [SOLVED]

Any updates on this? I am having issues install Arch as dual boot UEFI on an SSD (lenovo x1). The UEFI booting from live usb produces the selection menu (UEFI shell works) but starting Arch produces a blank screen. Is my only option to install in legacy mode and than load UEFI shell to finish configuring the boot loader?
Is there a way around the initial blank screen problem?

I'd like to know this too: booting UEFI with a Samsung 840, will halt the boot process when 'nomodeset debug' flags are passed to the kernel.
The last messages are related to the Samsung SSD begin detected and systemd mapping it.

mcloaked

Member

From: Yorkshire, UK

Registered: 2012-02-02

Posts: 1,279

Re: Booting from UEFI = blank screen [SOLVED]

Any updates on this? I am having issues install Arch as dual boot UEFI on an SSD (lenovo x1). The UEFI booting from live usb produces the selection menu (UEFI shell works) but starting Arch produces a blank screen. Is my only option to install in legacy mode and than load UEFI shell to finish configuring the boot loader?
Is there a way around the initial blank screen problem?

Is there a possibility that the blank screen issue is a graphics issue?  For some systems particularly with hybrid graphics it may be necessary to load relevant modules in the initialramdisk - if the arch install usbkey boots then this indicates that the system does work, but once a system is installed on the hard drive (or ssd) then the graphics drivers may not be the same as on the usbkey.  In my case I installed on a Lenovo laptop, and could successfully boot to a console after the install (via rEFInd, not grub or gummiboot), but trying to boot to a graphical login gave me a blank screen apart from a small cursor if I remember correctly. Eventually I resolved this by writing i915 and radeon into the modules section of mkinitcpio.conf and regenerating the initialramdisk.  Depending on the graphics hardware it is possible a corresponding fix may be necessary.  Also I have seen various postings across other forums where it has been necessary to ensure that kms is on for radeon cards and also various kernel boot parameter settings depending on the hardware.

Although this may not be the precise solution in an individual case googling for blank screen on boot for a particular hardware set may yield some clues or answers that will get the system booted successfully.

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Mike C

zAo

Member

Registered: 2012-11-01

Posts: 26

Re: Booting from UEFI = blank screen [SOLVED]

For the record: I worked around it by booting an old bootcd (201302) with nomodeset & debug flags. Installed the base system with linux-mainline kernel from AUR.

tsagas

Member

Registered: 2009-04-19

Posts: 17

Re: Booting from UEFI = blank screen [SOLVED]

Since I started the thread, I thought I should mention the latest image (2014.03.01, linux-3.13.x) works for me.

Silex89

Member

From: Osorno, Los Lagos - Chile

Registered: 2011-10-16

Posts: 179

Re: Booting from UEFI = blank screen [SOLVED]

I got my Arch system running in UEFI mode very easily; however this could be related to the firmware of my machine (a Sony VAIO SVF laptop). If I'm understanding your issue right, you want to run Arch as the only OS for you PC. In that case, what I did was this:

1.- I ran the gdisk utility to wipe all the partitions and start from scratch
2.- Create a new partition (with the same utility, gdisk) of 512MB labeled as an EFI partition (the code for that is EF00 in gdisk) which was what I used for /boot
3.- Create a second partition for the root filesystem (/).
4.- Create a third partition for /home and maybe a swap if you really need it.
5.- The EFI partition I made first (/dev/sda1 for my case) has to be FAT32, I used this command

# mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1

6.- Create a filesystem for the other partitions as you need or wish.
7.- Mount the parititions starting with the root (which in my case was /dev/sda2) to /mnt
8.- Create manually the /boot directory and mount the EFI partition there (/dev/sda1)
9.- Once you have all your remaining partitions mounted, proceed to call pacstrap and follow the installation as usual.
10.- Before you use gummiboot, you have to verify that the proper efivars are mounted (if you get an output saying that the device is busy, it means that is mounted already)

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

11.- Install gummiboot with pacman, then run

# gummiboot install

12.- Create a .conf entry manually in /boot/loader/entries/ with this content

    title Arch Linux
    linux /vmlinuz-linux
    initrd /initramfs-linux.img
    options root=/dev/sda2 rw

And you're done. Reboot your system in UEFI mode and everything should be ok. This method worked for me at least.

Best of luck!

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"The way your heart sounds makes all the difference" John Myung

I love Dream Theater! ImL
Best Guitar Solo Ever

phignuton

Member

Registered: 2008-02-07

Posts: 6

Re: Booting from UEFI = blank screen [SOLVED]

Many thanks to Silex89! Your procedure worked flawlessly!

dejy

Member

Registered: 2014-03-18

Posts: 67

Re: Booting from UEFI = blank screen [SOLVED]

I forgot about making this post, but since I got it fixed and other people have the same issue, here is how I fixed it (when wiping the entire drive is not an option).
Laptop: Lenovo x1 Carbon
Came with an SSD with a Windows 8 partition (I didn't want to delete Windows 8 since the computer doesn't come with a disk, so I simply shrunk the partition to 45gb).

Blank Screen happened every time, even with the UEFI boot disk. What actually fixed it was loading the BootCFG shell and deleting the Windows 8 boot entry. After this you can add the entry for Windows 8 through the Grub boot loader after you have installed Arch - and both should work.