Arch Linux

timbeauhk

Member

Registered: 2014-03-31

Posts: 19

[SOLVED] Getting bootloader to be persistent: new mobo, SATA, GPT

Dear all,

I have been using and installing Arch under VMWare and VirtualBox for a number of years.

Now I am moving to bare metal and am experiencing a problem.

I have installed Arch. It reboots many times successfully as I go through incremental installation of my WMs etc.

However, if I fully shut down and walk away, when I come back, the drive appears to have no bootloader.
I have been using GPT and GRUB.

I create my ESP as FAT32, type EF00, 512M as the first partition

I have a separate swap partition and home partition, but not /usr.

I am performing the grub setup, mounting efivarfs, grub-install, grub-mkconfig

One question is I am asked to install efibootmgr, but, even though I have reviewed the installation and UEFI sections, I cannot see where this is used, so I may be word-blind, even though I have performed this a number of times.

Apologies if this is solved by pointing to a section of the excellent wiki, but I am rather stuck.

Further background info:

The motherboard happily boots a USB drive with CentOS or the LiveCD on SATA.
My mobo is an MSI Z87-G43 brand new - apart from the CentOS install, Arch is the only other thing I have installed..
If there is no LiveCD or USB CentOS image, I am deposited in the EFI Shell. EFI can definitely see my Arch HDD, as does the main mobo setup.
I have checked that the mobo is not in UEFI+Legacy, as per other suggestions.

Thanks in advance

Last edited by timbeauhk (2014-05-07 12:58:02)

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 8,776

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Getting bootloader to be persistent: new mobo, SATA, GPT

Then install the grub and efibootmgr packages and run grub-install to install the bootloader

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Jin, Jîyan, Azadî

timbeauhk

Member

Registered: 2014-03-31

Posts: 19

Re: [SOLVED] Getting bootloader to be persistent: new mobo, SATA, GPT

HoaS,

While I do not see where I run efibootmgr, that does not mean I did not install those packages each time.

timbeauhk

Member

Registered: 2014-03-31

Posts: 19

Re: [SOLVED] Getting bootloader to be persistent: new mobo, SATA, GPT

This is now [SOLVED]

Two steps were taken

1. To copy and rename the LiveCD's EFI image into a faux Windows/Boot folder: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bo … leshooting

2. To run efibootmgr to check and then set the boot order and then to check again to see if the change has taken.

I suspect the second step would have succeeded alone, to be honest.

As a suggestion, I think it would be a good idea to mention to check the bootloader status after the grub-install stage with

efibootmgr -v

and maybe in the UEFI section a grub-based example alongside the refind.

Clear instructions on how to check the state before moving on, especially in a beginner's guide, I think has merit.

I would be happy to propose the minor alteration.