[SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

freijon · 2014-04-05 15:17:29

Hey there,

I'm new to Arch, I switched from Ubuntu and I'm willing to give Arch a fair try. My system is now more or less up and running and I'm very excited.
However, I can only boot with the CD inserted and by choosing "Boot existing OS". If I remove the CD, I cannot boot because no OS is found on the harddisk.
I tried running "grub-install /dev/sda" again, but that didn't work.

I installed using "gdisk". My main system partition is encrypted, but /boot is not encrypted. I used a simple partition layout with LUKS, no LVM. I tried to find my error on the Installation Guide and the Beginners Guide, but I can't figure out what I did wrong...
Help would be much appreciated. Let me know if you use further information.

Thanks in advance
Jonas

Last edited by freijon (2014-04-06 14:04:36)

teateawhy · 2014-04-05 15:48:30

Welcome.
Have you created a BIOS boot partition?

freijon · 2014-04-05 16:00:01

yes I have, I set it to be 2MB. When I first tried the installation on Virtualbox, I forgot about that, but that results in "grub-install" returning errors. But on this system, grub-install exits with no errors.

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 6143 2.0 MiB EF02 BIOS boot partition
2 6144 415743 200.0 MiB 8300 ArchLinux boot part...
3 415744 17192959 8.0 GiB 8200 Linux swap
4 17192960 500118158 230.3 GiB 8300 ArchLinux root part...

Last edited by freijon (2014-04-05 16:21:43)

ewaller · 2014-04-05 17:24:11

Is this a BIOS or an EFI system?

freijon · 2014-04-05 17:49:20

ewaller wrote:

Is this a BIOS or an EFI system?

how can I find this out?

ewaller · 2014-04-05 18:28:13

To be brutally honest, I've no idea. Do read this
What kind of system is it (Make/Model). How old is it? What OS did it originally ship with?

freijon · 2014-04-05 22:50:54

ewaller wrote:

What kind of system is it (Make/Model). How old is it? What OS did it originally ship with?

Its a HP Elitebook 8570w, announced on May 9, 2012. I ordered it without any OS preinstalled, but Windows 7 was the usual.

ewaller · 2014-04-06 00:33:39

Nice machine. The specs don't come out and say it, but I am pretty certain that it is a UEFI system. I base that upon the age of the system, and that it has "Pre-boot security"

Did you follow the wiki for a UEFI system? Did you turn off secure boot? I have never done this, but it is critical you follow the UEFI process. I will definitely differ to anyone who has set up a UEFI system.

Be sure you read https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … _Interface

Last edited by ewaller (2014-04-06 01:26:28)

Oxyd · 2014-04-06 01:18:38

For UEFI, you need an EFI System Partition. You don't need the BIOS boot partition.

Also be sure to set up GRUB for UEFI booting rather than BIOS booting.

Secure boot is most likely already disabled, since you were able to boot from the CD. And if it weren't, it'd shout something about invalid signature, rather than complaining about not being able to find an OS.

Oh, and the installation CD needs to have been booted in UEFI mode as well. UEFI systems generally support both UEFI booting and legacy BIOS emulation. If you boot in BIOS mode, GRUB won't be able to install properly. You can run your whole setup in BIOS emulation mode if you don't particularly care for UEFI, but then using a legacy MSDOS partition table would perhaps be preferrable over GPT. (Or so the Wiki says.)

As for "booting in UEFI mode" -- when I start my system up, I can press F11 to bring up a selection of where to boot from. Your key is likely going to vary, but the important bit is that -- on my computer at least -- it shows me two very similar entries for the Arch CD -- except one has "UEFI: " prepended to it -- that's the one I use to boot in UEFI mode. Your mileage is going to vary, but hopefully it'll be somewhat similar.

Last edited by Oxyd (2014-04-06 01:28:55)

freijon · 2014-04-06 06:50:26

Oxyd wrote:

For UEFI, you need an EFI System Partition. You don't need the BIOS boot partition.
Oh, and the installation CD needs to have been booted in UEFI mode as well. UEFI systems generally support both UEFI booting and legacy BIOS emulation. If you boot in BIOS mode, GRUB won't be able to install properly. You can run your whole setup in BIOS emulation mode if you don't particularly care for UEFI, but then using a legacy MSDOS partition table would perhaps be preferrable over GPT. (Or so the Wiki says.)
As for "booting in UEFI mode" -- when I start my system up, I can press F11 to bring up a selection of where to boot from. Your key is likely going to vary, but the important bit is that -- on my computer at least -- it shows me two very similar entries for the Arch CD -- except one has "UEFI: " prepended to it -- that's the one I use to boot in UEFI mode. Your mileage is going to vary, but hopefully it'll be somewhat similar.

I found an option in my BIOS to enable UEFI, but it is disabled by default. I find it quite strange that I have to enable this in order to make my installation work, as I never did this with Ubuntu. If I enable the third option (see pic), then I can boot the CD in UEFI mode. So that works. My question now is: Can I fix my installation or do I have to reinstall the entire system? I read in the wiki that the UEFI system partition has to be FAT32 and there is a minimal size of 256MB. However, my current boot partition is only 200MB. So I cant just reformat my old boot partition, or am I wrong?

http://i.imgur.com/LS6x1VBl.jpg

-- mod edit: read the Forum Etiquette and only post thumbnails http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/For … s_and_Code [jwr] --

jasonwryan · 2014-04-06 06:53:07

200MB is fine.

Oxyd · 2014-04-06 13:15:50

freijon wrote:

I find it quite strange that I have to enable this in order to make my installation work, as I never did this with Ubuntu.

Did you install Ubuntu to a GPT-partitioned disk, though? Or did you use traditional MSDOS-style partitions?

You don't have to use UEFI, but if you want GPT, it's recommended.

My question now is: Can I fix my installation or do I have to reinstall the entire system? I read in the wiki that the UEFI system partition has to be FAT32 and there is a minimal size of 256MB. However, my current boot partition is only 200MB. So I cant just reformat my old boot partition, or am I wrong?

My UEFI System Partition is 100 MB, and only18 MB is used. So I'd say 200 MB should work fine.

freijon · 2014-04-06 13:31:04

I have no idea what tool the Ubuntu graphical installer uses to boot... I now created an UEFI system partition. I did it according to the wiki, except for one slight change. Anyway, now when I boot the system I get to a "minimal bash-like line editing" screen from GRUB. Not much I can do there.. Also, booting from CD does now not work anymore. Please help.

I also tried this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HP … UEFI_Setup

Oxyd · 2014-04-06 13:36:13

How does booting from CD “not work” any more? In that screenshot of yours, there is a setting for boot order – is the CD listed as first?

It sounds like you don't have any grub.cfg file. You need to boot from the CD, chroot back into your system with all partitions mounted, and run grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Head_on_a_Stick · 2014-04-06 14:00:39

jasonwryan wrote:

200MB is fine.

UEFI works best with an ESP size of 512MiB; I have had success on my main laptop (an UltaBook II) using a smaller size (200MB), but it failed to boot on another machine --- it would only accept an ESP size of ~512MiB.
Rod Smith (@srs5694) has posted on this in the forums...

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2014-04-06 14:03:33)

freijon · 2014-04-06 14:04:02

Problem solved!

What I had to do was the following:

# mkdir /mnt/boot
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
# arch-chroot /mnt
# pacman -S linux #for reinstalling kernel and initramfs on the newly built boot partitoin
# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --boot-directory=/boot/EFI --recheck
# vi /etc/default grub #modifing following line: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="cryptdevice=/dev/sda4:root"
# mkinitcpio -p linux
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/EFI/grub/grub.cfg

First I didn't reinstall the "linux" package, and I didn't execute mkinitcpio. Thats why I ended up in GRUBs minimal bash. I'd also like to note that selecting --efi-directory=/boot/efi as described in the wiki did NOT work. I had to use /boot directly as described above.

Thanks for anyones help!

Last edited by freijon (2014-04-06 14:07:31)

Arch Linux

#1 2014-04-05 15:17:29

[SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#2 2014-04-05 15:48:30

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#3 2014-04-05 16:00:01

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#4 2014-04-05 17:24:11

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#5 2014-04-05 17:49:20

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#6 2014-04-05 18:28:13

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#7 2014-04-05 22:50:54

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#8 2014-04-06 00:33:39

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#9 2014-04-06 01:18:38

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#10 2014-04-06 06:50:26

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#11 2014-04-06 06:53:07

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#12 2014-04-06 13:15:50

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#13 2014-04-06 13:31:04

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#14 2014-04-06 13:36:13

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#15 2014-04-06 14:00:39

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

#16 2014-04-06 14:04:02

Re: [SOLVED] No operating system found after installation

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