Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

wannabe · 2014-10-17 07:17:54

I have windows 8.1 installed
Had ubuntu 14.04 and replaced it with arch
I did what the guides/wiki suggest in order to work with UEFI all the steps were made successfully... but I don't see grub on boot OR a boot path in the bios like it has for windows.
What am I missing?

Here are the steps I followed in the end and worked (means without errors)

http://wood1978.techarea.org/~wood/word … ent-page-1

olive · 2014-10-17 07:38:04

What is the output of

efibootmgr -v

note: you must boot in EFI mode, if you cannot boot your intallation, boot from the CD/USB key you used to install the system.

wannabe · 2014-10-17 08:08:51

BootCurrent: 0002
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,2001
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager HD(2,96800,31800,0ac9043a-9bcf-4edc-8b1c-2b5eee7a936b)File(\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi)WINDOWS.........x...B.C.D.O.B.J.E.C.T.=.{.9.d.e.a.8.6.2.c.-.5.c.d.d.-.4.e.7.0.-.a.c.c.1.-.f.3.2.b.3.4.4.d.4.7.9.5.}...a................
Boot0001* UEFI Onboard LAN IPv6 ACPI(a0341d0,0)PCI(1c,0)PCI(0,0)MAC(MAC(b8ca3acadfd3,0)030d3c000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000004000000000000000000000000000000000RC
Boot0002* EFI USB1 PATH1 (Sony MSAC-UAM2) ACPI(a0341d0,0)PCI(1d,0)USB(0,0)USB(2,0)HD(1,2f,3c1fd1,00000000)RC
Boot0003* UEFI Onboard LAN IPv4 ACPI(a0341d0,0)PCI(1c,0)PCI(0,0)MAC(MAC(b8ca3acadfd3,0)RC
Boot0004* arch_grub HD(2,96800,31800,0ac9043a-9bcf-4edc-8b1c-2b5eee7a936b)File(\EFI\arch_grub\grubx64.efi)
Boot2001* EFI USB Device RC

olive · 2014-10-17 08:34:40

Ok, I am assuming that \EFI\arch_grub\grubx64.efi is the correct path relative to the efi partition. (The directory EFI should thus resides on the root of the efi partition). Your system is configured to boot Windows right away unless you select a different boot media from the boot manager of your motherboard. You can acces this menu by pressing a key while the system boot (F8 in my case but it may vary). You should then see an option to boot to grub (as well as other entries, windows, etc.). Now I have read that some firmware doesn't offer such menu or boot the default entry unconditionally. Anyway it would be better to put grub as the default (which normally have an entry for Windows). Try:

efibootmgr -o 0004,0000,0001,0002,0003

You can also try to delete all the entries except the grub one (efibootmgr -b 000<n> -B), or to adjust the timeout (I see 0) (efibootmgr -t 5, for 5 seconds).

Warning: You can easily make your system unbootable with efibootmgr. Be sure to have a windows rescue disk from where you can repair your boot process in case something goes wrong. Some people have even bricked some computers. Normally you shouldn't damage your system by removing all boot entries (the system would revert to its default behavior) but UEFI implementations are not always consistent, I can give you no warranty.

Last edited by olive (2014-10-17 08:42:14)

wannabe · 2014-10-17 08:48:32

What I'm saying in the question is that I can't see GRUB in the boot menu, I can see windows, I can see all those PCI stuff or whatever, I can see the installation usb key, but no grub. Which makes me think that something is wrong with the installation, I don't know what tho

olive · 2014-10-17 09:04:49

As I was saying some motherboards may not be very consistent in respecting their boot configuration. I have read that some motherboards only offer one entry per physical disk (the other entries are probably auto-generated by your motherboard in your case). If your motherboard has the bad idea to do that you would indeed only see the first entry for your disk which is Windows. Anyway delete the grub boot entry and recreate it and post the exact command you have typed. Also tell us where you have mounted your efi partition and where grub.efi resides in your filesystem. The model of your computer and motherboard might be useful too.

Last edited by olive (2014-10-17 09:17:12)

wannabe · 2014-10-17 09:53:14

I'm def getting punished for some reason, wrote a big reply with the whole process click submit and it discarded it cause it logged me out????

Anyway, here we go again

My laptop is Dell Inspirion 3521

About the boot menu showing only one entry, not sure if I got that right or not, but I don't think it does... it showed entry for the ubuntu 14.04 or 13.04 or 12.04 and for windows. Not a single entry.

I deleted the arch_grub file from EFI partition and started over.

mounted the filesystem in /mnt
mounted sda2 (The Efi partition) to /mnt/boot/efi

and ran the following commands without errors

mkinitcpio -p linux

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=arch_grub --recheck --debug

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

and that was it then i did

exit
umount /mnt/boot/efi
umount /mnt
reboot

When it restarted it went directly into windows again AND "automatic repair mode"
I interrupted it by turning the laptop off fast enough, then turned it on again and went directly in the boot menu... still no arch/grub entry.

I guess it's not my day, I'm stack on this for more than 5 hours

grab.efi from what "find . | grep .efi" shows is located under /boot/grub/x86_64-efi/
grab

another file named grubx64.efi is located under /boot/efi/EFI/arch_grub/

Last edited by wannabe (2014-10-17 10:04:55)

olive · 2014-10-17 10:08:40

The boot menu that displayed Ubuntu and Windows was the firmware boot menu or the grub boot menu? Just to be sure, are you really sure you do not mistake these two boot menus? I think Ubuntu only add one entry in the firmware boot menu pointing to grub. Grub offer then a menu that include Windows.

I am not a specialist of grub, but am I right to assume that you have mounted your efi system partition at /mnt/boot/efi while you pass "--efi-directory=/boot/efi" to grub? That seems bogus. Where grub.efi resides on your filesystem now? Try to add the entry manually using efibootmanager (see the entry about efibootmgr in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … _Interface ).

Last edited by olive (2014-10-17 10:16:21)

wannabe · 2014-10-17 10:42:59

Nope, I don't confuse the 2 menus, grab is one thing EFI boot options is another.. I have to hit F12 to get there.

As about the /mnt/boot/efi and the /boot/efi that you mentioned...
After I run arch-chroot the root becomes /mnt so I thought I was right to assume that I shouldn't include the /mnt in the command. (Hope that made sense)

Am I wrong?

p.s

I think I'm done for today, haven't slept for 24 hours. I already tried the link you sent me but I could have done something wrong. I'll try that later and update this.

Last edited by wannabe (2014-10-17 10:58:21)

olive · 2014-10-17 11:32:22

Yes that make sense if you chroot to /mnt before running the grub command (but you didn't mentioned you chrooted). To be able to help you, we need to know exactly what you have done. I believe there is a problem with the path of the efi application somewhere but I have not enough information to give you a better answer. In order to hope some valuable help, you should:

1) Post the content of the mount command, so that we know exactly where the efi directory is mounted.
2) the ouput of efibootmgr -v
3) the Full path of grubx64.efi according to your system (I keep asking you but you didn't give me an answer).

I would try to add an entry for grub outside the chroot directly from the boot CD.

wannabe · 2014-10-18 01:59:38

The mount command before chroot is

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot/efi

After chroot the path of grubx64.efi is

/boot/efi/EFI/arch_grub/grubx64.efi

the output of efibootmgr -v is

BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,2001
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager HD(2,96800,31800,0ac9043a-9bcf-4edc-8b1c-2b5eee7a936b)File(\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi)WINDOWS.........x...B.C.D.O.B.J.E.C.T.=.{.9.d.e.a.8.6.2.c.-.5.c.d.d.-.4.e.7.0.-.a.c.c.1.-.f.3.2.b.3.4.4.d.4.7.9.5.}...a................
Boot0001* EFI USB1 PATH1 (Sony MSAC-UAM2) ACPI(a0341d0,0)PCI(14,0)USB(0,0)HD(1,2f,3c1fd1,00000000)RC
Boot0002* UEFI Onboard LAN IPv6 ACPI(a0341d0,0)PCI(1c,0)PCI(0,0)MAC(MAC(b8ca3acadfd3,0)030d3c000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000004000000000000000000000000000000000RC
Boot0003* UEFI Onboard LAN IPv4 ACPI(a0341d0,0)PCI(1c,0)PCI(0,0)MAC(MAC(b8ca3acadfd3,0)RC
Boot0004* arch_grub HD(2,96800,31800,0ac9043a-9bcf-4edc-8b1c-2b5eee7a936b)File(\EFI\arch_grub\grubx64.efi)
Boot2001* EFI USB Device RC

I still don't see an entry in uefi boot menu, when I had ubuntu installed there were entries for ubuntu and windows in there, so I know that it can display multiple entries.

Last edited by wannabe (2014-10-18 02:00:30)

wannabe · 2014-10-18 02:09:30

Update...

My UEFI has the option to add a boot option in the list manually I did it like that and it worked. I booted in arch linux through grab.

I'd still like to know how ubuntu did it tho, how did it put the entry there?

olive · 2014-10-18 06:10:48

The problem is apparently with grub which do not create the correct entry for some reason. The command efibootmgr can be used to add an entry by hand, maybe that is what ubuntu do. In my case, I didn't use grub but I was able to add an antry with efibootmgr. You can even add an entry that load the kernel directly without additional boot loader/manager.

Last edited by olive (2014-10-18 06:13:56)

Blasphemist · 2014-10-22 21:56:22

Was that a good learning experience? Have you noticed that most all distro's use /boot/efi as the mount point for the ESP? That has you end up with /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT as a directory on the ESP and seems less that well thought out to me. So Arch tells you to use /boot as the mount point instead of /boot/efi. But as you may imagine some of the documents for bootloaders and such expects /boot/efi. You just have to make sure all paths in your commands during installation match your ESP mount point. I thought this issue had been fixed in the wiki but I'll review that. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe this all resulted from the grub-mkconfig command putting grub's config file in a directory not on the ESP, /boot/grub/grub.cfg. When grub loads, prior to a choice being made to load Arch, how would it find it's config file on the Arch partition? Anyway I'll look through all of this on the wiki since I need to make sure I'm up to speed for a new install I need to do.

Grub doesn't create a UEFI NVRAM entry for Arch but a tool used in it's installation does. That is efibootmgr and it's not hard to use. man efibootmgr is all you need to see what you should use to tell it to make or change or delete entries. Olive is right about using efibootmgr. I would be careful with it but not scared of it.

Really just using rEFInd if your UEFI implementation doesn't present a bootmanager without manual intervention gives you a good bootmanager function if you desire it. Grub is a bootloader and while it can be helpful in some cases, there's really no need most often. The EFISTUB kernel boot is the option with the fewest moving parts but the least well understood. Should you choose to move on that, here is the link.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFISTUB

surfatwork · 2014-10-23 06:47:08

Blasphemist wrote:

Really just using rEFInd if your UEFI implementation doesn't present a bootmanager without manual intervention gives you a good bootmanager function if you desire it.

+1. refind is fast and very straightforward. easily to install or remove, and easy to bypass if you dont want to use the bootloader.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-10-17 07:17:54

Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

#2 2014-10-17 07:38:04

Re: Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

#3 2014-10-17 08:08:51

Re: Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

#4 2014-10-17 08:34:40

Re: Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

#5 2014-10-17 08:48:32

Re: Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

#6 2014-10-17 09:04:49

Re: Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

#7 2014-10-17 09:53:14

Re: Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

#8 2014-10-17 10:08:40

Re: Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

#9 2014-10-17 10:42:59

Re: Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

#10 2014-10-17 11:32:22

Re: Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

#11 2014-10-18 01:59:38

Re: Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

#12 2014-10-18 02:09:30

Re: Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

#13 2014-10-18 06:10:48

Re: Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

#14 2014-10-22 21:56:22

Re: Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

#15 2014-10-23 06:47:08

Re: Did the installation for UEFI but no grub

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