[SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

15goudreau · 2014-06-26 10:41:15

I don't know, as I switched to grub. But how does the boot loader know where the root partition is if you give it the boot partition? Maybe I'm confused. I can't install from another Linux system either because when I try to extract the boot strap tar, I get an error saying it can't. I'll get the exact wording after I retry with refind since I haven't tried with it yet.

Last edited by 15goudreau (2014-06-26 12:38:54)

15goudreau · 2014-06-26 10:44:26

Also do you have any idea why shell v2 won't load so I can try booting the kernal straight from there?

mcloaked · 2014-06-26 20:36:03

15goudreau wrote:

I don't know, as I switched to grub. But how does the boot loader know where the root partition is if you give it the boot partition? Maybe I'm confused. I can't install from another Linux system either because when I try to extract the boot strap tar, I get an error saying it can't. I'll get the exact wording after I retry with refind since I haven't tried with it yet.

In the case of the rEFInd boot manager the root partition is defined when your prepare the config files for rEFInd for loading the kernel. In the case of grub, under uefi, when you run the grub configure it finds the kernels automatically if they are in the standard directories when it generates its config config files. So all that is necessary for uefi is to write the nvram entry so it can find the boot loader or boot manager.

Under legacy mbr boot you will write the grub config files using

# grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck --debug /dev/sdx
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

where the first command writes grub to the mbr, and the second command will find the kernel for you as it searches for kernel files. If you have os-prober installed then it will also find Windows boot files if they are up to Windows 7. Windows 8 requires uefi.

Note that rEFInd can only bot via uefi so if you are now going to change your boot method to use mbr boot then you can't use rEFInd but will have to use a bootloader that will work with mbr boot such as grub. Grub will work with either uefi or mbr boot. Note that for mbr you will have a different disc partitioning scheme than for uefi boot - in uefi you don't normally have a master boot record. For mbr boot you don't have an ESP.

mcloaked · 2014-06-26 20:37:44

15goudreau wrote:

Also do you have any idea why shell v2 won't load so I can try booting the kernal straight from there?

It isn't clear how you are getting to the uefi shell v2 - it is usually an option on the install usbkey that you can boot. On the other hand you can also put it into your options for booting on the hard drive once the system is installed. See the arch wiki on uefi shell.

15goudreau · 2014-06-27 14:55:50

I was trying to do it from my live CD. I will try refind and then if that doesn't work, I'll try to use the v2 to load the kernel

mcloaked · 2014-06-27 15:04:53

15goudreau wrote:

I was trying to do it from my live CD. I will try refind and then if that doesn't work, I'll try to use the v2 to load the kernel

Presumably you are still pursuing uefi boot at the moment? I guess that if you decide to change to using legacy boot that you will reformat your hard drive to be consistent with mbr before then doing an install with legacy mbr boot but not using rEFInd?

15goudreau · 2014-06-27 15:19:47

When I try to install refind, I get an error after refind-install

Installing refind on Linux....
The ESP doesn't seem to be mounted! Trying to find it....
///boot doesn't seem to be on a VFAT filesystem. The ESP must be mounted at //boot or //boot/efi and it must be VFAT! Aborting!

So I could try manually finding it. Maybe I'm doing something wrong

15goudreau · 2014-06-27 15:20:36

mcloaked wrote:

15goudreau wrote:
I was trying to do it from my live CD. I will try refind and then if that doesn't work, I'll try to use the v2 to load the kernel
Presumably you are still pursuing uefi boot at the moment? I guess that if you decide to change to using legacy boot that you will reformat your hard drive to be consistent with mbr before then doing an install with legacy mbr boot but not using rEFInd?

Yes I'm still trying to get UEFI to work. I'm stubborn haha

mcloaked · 2014-06-27 15:47:49

15goudreau wrote:

When I try to install refind, I get an error after refind-install
Installing refind on Linux....
The ESP doesn't seem to be mounted! Trying to find it....
///boot doesn't seem to be on a VFAT filesystem. The ESP must be mounted at //boot or //boot/efi and it must be VFAT! Aborting!
So I could try manually finding it. Maybe I'm doing something wrong

Is your ESP mounted at /boot or /boot/efi at the time you ran the command, and is the EFI partition formatted as a fat32 partition? It needs to be and the output is quite clear about that!

I mount my EFI as /boot/efi on /dev/sdXY and is fat32 (formatted as EF00). Though my /boot is a subdirectory in the root (/) partition and is ext4 - that works fine and rEFInd sees the kernel in the ext4 /boot directory using the ext4 rEFInd driver in the ESP. So my directory structure is:

$ ls /boot
efi   initramfs-linux-fallback.img  refind_linux.conf  vmlinuz-linux
grub  initramfs-linux.img           syslinux
$ ls /boot/efi/
EFI
$ ls /boot/efi/EFI/
boot  fonts  icons  refind  tools
$ ls /boot/efi/EFI/refind/
drivers_x64  fonts  icons  refind.conf  refind.conf.bak  refind_x64.efi

Here /boot is a subdirectory of / and / is an ext4 partition, whereas /boot/efi is a separately mounted fat32 partition (i.e. the mount point is /boot/efi), and has the EFI partition as a subdirectory.

It is possible to have your ESP as a fat32 partition mounted as /boot and then within that the /boot/EFI is a directory under /boot with your kernel and initrd files in the fat32 /boot directory.

So it depends on how you want to prepare your system as there is more than one way to do so and have success with either.

Hope this helps.

Last edited by mcloaked (2014-06-27 15:58:22)

15goudreau · 2014-06-27 15:57:19

So I didn't have a boot/efi directory. So I made one and mounted my sda3 there and it said it was installing. Then I got two errors. I was mounting /Dev/sda3 to /mnt/boot but I think it needs to be mounted to /boot/efi which maybe has been my problem this entire time!

mcloaked · 2014-06-27 16:10:30

15goudreau wrote:

So I didn't have a boot/efi directory. So I made one and mounted my sda3 there and it said it was installing. Then I got two errors. I was mounting /Dev/sda3 to /mnt/boot but I think it needs to be mounted to /boot/efi which maybe has been my problem this entire time!

Just to clarify whether it is /mnt/boot or /boot/efi it depends on where you are when you do it!

What I mean is if you have not yet chrooted into the mount point /mnt ( or if you have exited the chroot), then you would have mounted your root partition to /mnt and your /dev/sda3 to /mnt/boot which is fine.

Once you have chrooted into the root partition at /mnt then in a bash shell inside the chroot you would see a structure where the boot partition is seen as /boot

You can check that by doing say ls -l inside the chroot and you will see /boot as one of the directories. Inside the chroot you can certainly then do

# mkdir /boot/efi

whereas if you have not yet chrooted, or exited the chroot, then you would do

# mkdir /mnt/boot/efi

Maybe that is clearer?

15goudreau · 2014-06-27 16:41:29

See, refind complained about the install until I while not in chroot I did mkdir /mnt/boot/efi and I mounted sda3 there and it sort of installed after that. I'll post the error I ran into after

mcloaked · 2014-06-27 17:30:53

15goudreau wrote:

See, refind complained about the install until I while not in chroot I did mkdir /mnt/boot/efi and I mounted sda3 there and it sort of installed after that. I'll post the error I ran into after

OK if I understand correctly you plan to have your root partition (ext4) and the ESP (fat32) as /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda3 respectively.

If that is the case then when you are running the install from the usbkey, and before you have chrooted, then your mount sequence is?

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
# mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi
# mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/boot/efi

In addition you have other mount points for /var /etc and /home which should all be fine.

This is all before you do the chroot using arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash, and before you have run the pacstrap command?

Then once you have run the pacstrap command you then arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash and once inside the chroot you should be able to check that /boot exists and will contain the kernel and initrd files, and /boot/efi exists here inside the chroot?

If you have refind-efi installed, and you are now inside the chroot and now want to install the relevant files for rEFInd into the /boot/efi area. So one way is that you now run the refind-install script from the rEFInd package - some info about that is at http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/install … #installsh and at http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/installing.html

The output from the refind-install script would be useful to see if you have errors in the output.

As you indicate you can copy across the necessary files from /usr/share/refind/ to /boot/efi/EFI manually instead of running refind-install, and then in addition you will need to copy across the sample file refind.conf-sample to refind.conf, and edit the file at /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf to customise for your own system, as well as copying the sample refind_linux.conf-sample from /usr/share/refind/ which should be in /boot/refind_linux.conf in the same directory as the kernel. You will need to edit the refind_linux.conf file to suit your system too. Only then will the system be ready to try to boot.

Last edited by mcloaked (2014-06-27 20:22:17)

15goudreau · 2014-06-28 15:00:05

What I wasn't doing right was mounting /dev/sda3 to /mnt/boot/efi, I was just mounting it to /mnt/boot. So I'm going to do a fresh install with that configuration and try refind and see if it installs properly. That is if I understood your above post correctly.

15goudreau · 2014-06-28 15:38:17

IT WORKED!!!!!! Wow. What a rush. I finally got to the arch login. However I didn't partition it the way I normally do. I skipped the /var and /etc and made /boot sda1. But it finally boots. I do get an error in regards to my / partition being read only? That should be read/write correct? Does that mean I need to edit something in refind to allow for read/write?

Last edited by 15goudreau (2014-06-28 15:40:34)

mcloaked · 2014-06-28 19:08:35

Excellent and congratulations on a successful install - I think that you won't need to worry about the "/" partition being read only - it should be remounted by the time you get to the login and it should just work. Simply test it by editing a new file in the /root/ home directory when you are logged in as root. If you can save a file then it is read/write. Anyway good to hear that you finally resolved the boot process. Good luck with the rest of your setting up arch, and hope you enjoy archlinux. However I do mount the root partition as read/write in the config in my /boot/refind_linux.conf so here is mine for comparison:

"Boot to X" "root=PARTUUID=f4b79029-10cc-4272-8d57-7e491ccd28a1 rw rootfstype=ext4 add_efi_memmap systemd.unit=graphical.target"
"Boot to console" "root=PARTUUID=f4b79029-10cc-4272-8d57-7e491ccd28a1 rw rootfstype=ext4 add_efi_memmap systemd.unit=multi-user.target"
"Boot Fallback to console" "root=PARTUUID=f4b79029-10cc-4272-8d57-7e491ccd28a1 rw rootfstype=ext4 add_efi_memmap initrd=/boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img systemd.unit=multi-user.target"

Last edited by mcloaked (2014-06-28 19:11:38)

Arch Linux

#51 2014-06-26 10:41:15

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#52 2014-06-26 10:44:26

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#53 2014-06-26 20:36:03

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#54 2014-06-26 20:37:44

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#55 2014-06-27 14:55:50

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#56 2014-06-27 15:04:53

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#57 2014-06-27 15:19:47

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#58 2014-06-27 15:20:36

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#59 2014-06-27 15:47:49

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#60 2014-06-27 15:57:19

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#61 2014-06-27 16:10:30

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#62 2014-06-27 16:41:29

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#63 2014-06-27 17:30:53

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#64 2014-06-28 15:00:05

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#65 2014-06-28 15:38:17

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

#66 2014-06-28 19:08:35

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh install, Two failures and hang

Board footer