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I'm having some troubles installing Arch on my main computer. Once I complete the installation steps the system tries to boot from the hard drive but fails silently and returns to the BIOS. I get a blinking cursor on a black screen for a few seconds before it drops back to BIOS. Here's what I've tried so far.
I'm installing from a USB which I have used in the past to install Arch.
I am chosing the 64bit option on the USB boot screen.
Following the beginners guide I have tried both creating a 512MB UEFI and a BIOS 1007K ef02 partition.
I also make a 30G root and *remaining space /home partition.
I've used GRUB each time, following the correct steps for UEFI and BIOS outlined on the beginners guide.
I tried to install to an SSD originally, but I've since removed it from the system and tried on a regular HDD.
My system spec
i7 4770k
Asus Sabertooth Z87
16GB ram
OCZ Vertex 3 SSD
Samsung genertic 1TB HDD
After failing to get Arch running I installed Ubuntu which acts very strangely. Windows keep locking up and mouse clicks consistently don't register. It could be totally unrelated but I thought I'd mention it.
Last edited by monkeypants (2014-10-19 16:30:46)
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Is Secure Boot disabled?
Also check the boot order for your EFI.
And you mentioned ubuntu acting strange. It is another distro but still it could give some hints whats going on if you described whate "strangely" means.
Edit: re-reading your post I think there is a confusion about EFI and BIOS. Do you try to boot/install in EFI or BIOS mode?
Last edited by dice (2014-08-23 08:38:37)
I put at button on it. Yes. I wish to press it, but I'm not sure what will happen if I do. (Gune | Titan A.E.)
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As dice pointed out, it is not clear whether you have a 'BIOS' computer or an 'EFI' one. An SSD suggests that you have a new computer, so the odds are you have an EFI-mode booted machine, not BIOS. I further assume you have EFI.
Here's my advice:
- Start by checking the secure boot option in EFI. I don't think it is enabled if you don't have windows installed, but disable it if it's enabled.
- Have a look at other EFI settings just to familiarize yourself with them.
- During installation, mount the EFI partition on /boot --it will save you a lot of time as you will not have to set special settings for kernel updates.
- Use gummiboot, not grub -- it has very simple configuration files and is generally very easy to install and configure. As a bonus your arch linux system will even survive installing windows. At least my son's laptop survived intact a windows 7 installation alongside arch linux, which had already been there.
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Following the beginners guide I have tried both creating a 512MB UEFI and a BIOS 1007K ef02 partition.
I also make a 30G root and *remaining space /home partition.
I've used GRUB each time, following the correct steps for UEFI and BIOS outlined on the beginners guide.
EFI or BIOS is an exclusive choice you should choose one or the other not follow the steps for both.
After failing to get Arch running I installed Ubuntu which acts very strangely. Windows keep locking up and mouse clicks consistently don't register. It could be totally unrelated but I thought I'd mention it.
Have switched to Ubuntu then?
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EFI or BIOS is an exclusive choice you should choose one or the other not follow the steps for both.
I run both EFI-mode and BIOS-mode ("Legacy" boot) on all my systems with no problems: it's fine as long as GPT is used with the BIOS boot partition (ef02) in sectors 34-2047 & the ESP (ef00) starting at sector 2048...
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Please give us the output of
fdisk -l
and tell us what you did exactly to install grub in BIOS and EFI mode.
When it fails to boot are you booting in BIOS("legacy") mode or EFI ? Or does it fail in both cases?
@Head_on_a_Stick: I don't think the instructions in the Beginners' guide are made for this rather complex setup. So in the Beginners' guide it is an exclusive choice
Last edited by dice (2014-08-24 09:25:32)
I put at button on it. Yes. I wish to press it, but I'm not sure what will happen if I do. (Gune | Titan A.E.)
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@dice --- I make the point because the OP specifies a "1007KiB ef02 partition" for BIOS which is sectors 34-2047: the method the OP is using can work with both EFI & BIOS booting setup.
@OP --- have you tried using gummiboot or efibootmgr as alternatives to GRUB in an EFI-booting system? I find them easier to configure.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Be … #Gummiboot
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EF … ot_manager
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Thanks for all the feedback, sorry I couldn't give any details because of the lack of error messages. The problem was that I wasn't booting into EFI mode from the USB stick. GRUB worked fine but I didn't realise that I don't need to make the 1007K BIOS partition - if I omit the BIOS partition should I still leave the ~2k space at the begning of the drive so the 512M EFI partition starts at 2048, or should I move the EFI partition to start at 0?
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@monkeypants --- leave the space at the beginning of the disk to allow correct alignment: your disk performance will suffer if the main partition does not align with the sector boundaries...
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@monkeypants --- leave the space at the beginning of the disk to allow correct alignment: your disk performance will suffer if the main partition does not align with the sector boundaries...
I will do. It seems to be running fine, thanks again for the help
Have switched to Ubuntu then?
Nope, I just wanted to see if the more automated install process would shed some light onto partition setup and settings, which it did not.
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