Cannot make UEFI work

rabcor · 2014-05-26 21:35:49

I followed a load of guides to try and make UEFI work, took me long enough to find out that I have to boot from UEFI to install UEFI. Either way here's my scenario.

I have /sys/firmware/efi/efivars present on both my USB flash installation media, and my chrooted machine, however the efivars module seems to be inactive on both as well (lsmod does not show it)

On my chroot simply nothing happens when I run "modprobe efivars" but on the installation USB I get

modprobe: FATAL: Module efivars not found.

On both my installation media and my chroot environment kernel parameters seem to be like so:

CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y
CONFIG_EFI=y
CONFIG_EFI_STUB=y
# CONFIG_EFI_VARS is not set #<- guess this is the problem
CONFIG_EFI_RUNTIME_MAP=y
CONFIG_EFIVAR_FS=y

Likewise of course I cannot install a boot manager successfully either.
What do I do?

Last edited by rabcor (2014-05-26 21:41:03)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2014-05-26 22:36:51

As long as the USB installation media has booted up in EFI-mode it can write the variables to your motherboard's NVRAM & set up your system to boot in EFI-mode.
Do you have any output if you run

efivar -l

If so, the system is booted in EFI-mode (you need to install the efivar package first) and you can now install the boot-manager...
I would recommend using efibootmgr alone, as it is the simplest to set up

the.ridikulus.rat · 2014-05-27 00:07:18

rabcor wrote:

I followed a load of guides to try and make UEFI work, took me long enough to find out that I have to boot from UEFI to install UEFI. Either way here's my scenario.
I have /sys/firmware/efi/efivars present on both my USB flash installation media, and my chrooted machine, however the efivars module seems to be inactive on both as well (lsmod does not show it)
On my chroot simply nothing happens when I run "modprobe efivars" but on the installation USB I get
modprobe: FATAL: Module efivars not found.
On both my installation media and my chroot environment kernel parameters seem to be like so:
CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y
CONFIG_EFI=y
CONFIG_EFI_STUB=y
# CONFIG_EFI_VARS is not set #<- guess this is the problem
CONFIG_EFI_RUNTIME_MAP=y
CONFIG_EFIVAR_FS=y
Likewise of course I cannot install a boot manager successfully either.
What do I do?

Read https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … _Variables

rabcor · 2014-05-27 17:06:37

I do get output from efivar -l, a bunch of what seems to be UIDs. When I do it from the chroot though I get nothing, and I just realized that the gentoo I'm installing from the chroot (using arch for the easy uefi boot) makes me do

# mount -t proc proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
# mount --rbind /sys /mnt/gentoo/sys
# mount --rbind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev

Which may be part of the problem. Either way I tried to run

efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sda -p 1 -L Gentoo -l "\efi\boot\bootx64.efi"

From the installation medium rather than the chroot, and this certainly does show up in my UEFI boot menu, but it does not boot properly (although I did, of course have the kernel image in there)

running efibootmgr as chroot says couldn't open either sysfs or procfs directories for accessing EFI variables

Edit: I fixed the command, I ran

efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sda -p 1 -L Gentoo -l "\boot\bootx64.efi"

Now it detected my kernel but it won't boot properly (won't load USB or GPU or anything)

Last edited by rabcor (2014-05-27 17:59:31)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2014-05-27 22:07:30

What has Gentoo got to do with this?
You said you were booting from "my USB flash installation media" --- is this not an Arch live USB or Arch install?
I cannot answer any questions regarding Gentoo: I do not use it...
Have you read the link provided by @the.ridikulus.rat? He is a real expert --- I think you should follow his advice

rabcor · 2014-05-27 23:19:30

I'm booting from my arch linux usb flash installation media, because it's easier to make a UEFI usb from archlinux than gentoo,

But my chroot is a gentoo installation.

I have spent hours reading pages like that wiki (including that wiki) still didn't find a solution to my black screen, eventually I decided UEFI can go fuck itself i'm back with MBR, it shouldn't be THIS hard to set linux up to boot from UEFI, it's a nightmare! (I did manage to successfully get linux to boot from UEFI it's just that my kernel, gentoo kernel in this case wouldn't work from UEFI, so I changed back to MBR giving up on this whole UEFI thing, its not like I need it anyways)

Arch Linux

#1 2014-05-26 21:35:49

Cannot make UEFI work

#2 2014-05-26 22:36:51

Re: Cannot make UEFI work

#3 2014-05-27 00:07:18

Re: Cannot make UEFI work

#4 2014-05-27 17:06:37

Re: Cannot make UEFI work

#5 2014-05-27 22:07:30

Re: Cannot make UEFI work

#6 2014-05-27 23:19:30

Re: Cannot make UEFI work

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