no grub after installing arch alongside windows 8 ( almost solved !! )

dotamin · 2014-09-03 17:07:47

Hi, three days ago i bought Vaio Pro ultrabook. i decided to install arch as the first Gnu/Linux operating system
i followed "Beginners guide", The first and only problem that i faced was Grub !! two times installing with no success.

here is the screenshot of Gparted : http://s.dotamin.ir/amin/permanent/1.png

and result of efibootmgr command : http://s.dotamin.ir/amin/permanent/2.png

as you can see in partition table, there is 3 FAT32 partitions, and two of them are "bootable" !!
when i bought this ultrabook, default boot partition was sda3 ( so it means sda3 was ESP, am i wrong ? ). in beginners guide mentioned: "if you have a UEFI motherboard, mount the EFI System Partition to /boot" , so i entered this command : "mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/boot"
later, install grub with this commands :

pacman -S grub efibootmgr
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=arch_grub --recheck
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

after restarting, it booted to windows 8 and there was no grub !

so i thought sda3 wasn't the ESP partition . for the second time, i created sda7 for "/boot" , sda8 for "/" and sda8 for "/home" ! ( as you can see, sda7 has a boot flag !). still can't figure out why there is no grub!
something that i really can't understand is what program is responsible for calling the "bootloader"? entering "efibootmgr" command says :

efibootmgr

BootNext: 0008
BootCurrent: 000D
.
.
BootOrder: 000D,0005,0008, ....

i guess BootOrder means the first partition is going to boot is 000D (which is my 8 GigB flash sotrage), the second one is 0005 ...
but efibootmgr says -> BootNext : 0008

i'm confused ! which one is my ESP ? where should i install grub ? and why installing grub doesn't bring grub menu ?

p.s: check this : http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/27418512 , maybe this link tell you something that i couldn't understand

thanks

Last edited by dotamin (2014-09-12 16:02:37)

mrunion · 2014-09-04 14:04:44

So have you actually SET your boot partition using efibootmgr to where you installed GRUB? You should install grub to the exiting EFI partition (if possible). You can create another one if you want, but sometimes this can cause issues. (I personally have two efi boot partitions, but I use rEFInd and it doesn't have issues with more than one EFI partition.)

It appears that you've never put your GRUB boot entry into the EFI information contained in the firmware. you do this using efibootmgr, and the info is in the Wiki where it tells you how to set up the boot partition(s).

Last edited by mrunion (2014-09-04 14:05:22)

dotamin · 2014-09-07 17:36:36

mrunion wrote:

So have you actually SET your boot partition using efibootmgr to where you installed GRUB? You should install grub to the exiting EFI partition (if possible). You can create another one if you want, but sometimes this can cause issues. (I personally have two efi boot partitions, but I use rEFInd and it doesn't have issues with more than one EFI partition.)
It appears that you've never put your GRUB boot entry into the EFI information contained in the firmware. you do this using efibootmgr, and the info is in the Wiki where it tells you how to set up the boot partition(s).

thanks mrunion i solved this problem after posting the problem in this forum . actualy i replaced microsof's "bootmgfw.efi" file with rEFInd "efi" file . so my laptop actually execute this file : EFI\Microsoft\Boot\< rEFInd-efi-file ! >.efi
this is a trick not a perfect solution, but it works fine.

you told SET your boot partition using efibootmgr ! what does that mean ?

no, i didn't put GRUB boot entry into firmware, i didn't know that. thanks

jasonwryan · 2014-09-07 18:22:21

Please remember to mark your thread as [Solved] by editing your first post and prepending it to the title.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-09-03 17:07:47

no grub after installing arch alongside windows 8 ( almost solved !! )

#2 2014-09-04 14:04:44

Re: no grub after installing arch alongside windows 8 ( almost solved !! )

#3 2014-09-07 17:36:36

Re: no grub after installing arch alongside windows 8 ( almost solved !! )

#4 2014-09-07 18:22:21

Re: no grub after installing arch alongside windows 8 ( almost solved !! )

Board footer