[SOLVED]How to maintain gummiboot with two hard disks?

hcra · 2014-11-15 14:29:33

Thanks to the help of forum member Head-on-a-Stick, I successfully dual boot Arch and Windows. My setup follows:

$ lsblk -f
NAME   FSTYPE LABEL    UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
sda                                                         
├─sda1 ntfs            Recovery A86EF4AF6EF47780                     
├─sda2 vfat            2AF5-8D08                            
├─sda3                                                      
├─sda4 ntfs            6818F75118F71D2E                     
└─sda5 ntfs            64827D4E827D25A8                     
sdb                                                         
├─sdb1 ext4            c25b8f5b-40b4-4e46-bca9-27c0195cd46c /
└─sdb2 ext4            fcaf4686-f55a-41ff-82ad-86fe87326a65 /home

sda2 serves as the gummiboot $ESP. When I configured gummiboot, I had to manually copy all of the files from /boot to $ESP.

Two Questions

1) Maintenance. Since the $ESP resides on one disk (sda2) and Arch on another (sdb), how do I maintain my system? For example, if there is an update to gummiboot or any of the files I manually copied to the $ESP, does this mean that I'll have to continue manually copying them? More specifically, if this is the case, what file/package updates should I watch for?

2) fstab. In the technical documentation for gummiboot at freedesktop.org it states:

An fstab entry for it [i.e., the $ESP] shall be created mounting it to /boot.

My question: what if I created an entry in my fstab that mounted /boot to my $ESP? Would this mitigate manually maintaining my $ESP?

Thanks!!

Last edited by hcra (2014-11-15 15:29:58)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2014-11-15 14:40:52

1) As long as the ESP is mounted at /boot, all updates will proceed normally.

2) You should have an fstab entry for your ESP already; here is mine:

UUID=9669-102D  /boot  vfat  ro,relatime,nodev,nosuid,noexec,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,discard  0  2

However, I think systemd will mount the ESP automatically even without this entry.

hcra · 2014-11-15 15:17:54

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

You should have an fstab entry for your ESP already ...

My fstab reads:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system>	<dir>	<type>	<options>	<dump>	<pass>
# /dev/sda1
UUID=c25b8f5b-40b4-4e46-bca9-27c0195cd46c	/         	ext4      	defaults,noatime,discard	0 1

# /dev/sda2
UUID=fcaf4686-f55a-41ff-82ad-86fe87326a65	/home     	ext4      	defaults,noatime,discard	0 2

As you can see, there is not an entry for my ESP.

I think systemd will mount the ESP automatically even without this entry.

In terminal, ls /boot returns the contents of /boot on sdb1, not the $ESP sda2, which leads me to believe that systemd isn't automatically mounting my $ESP.

According to the Wiki efistub-update.path can be enabled to "detect a change in path is used to sync the EFISTUB kernel and initramfs files when they are updated in /boot."

In my installation,

$ systemctl is-enabled efistub-update.path
bash: $: command not found

What would you recommend? Should I edit the fstab and add

UUID=A86EF4AF6EF47780 /boot vfat  rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro, discard 0      2

I'm unsure of the <options>. I copied the Wiki and added discard (since I'm using an SSD). The only variance from your fstab appears to be the addition of "errors=remount-ro." Maybe you wrote the Wiki

Head_on_a_Stick · 2014-11-15 15:19:08

What is the output of:

mount

hcra · 2014-11-15 15:22:31

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

What is the output of:
mount

Please see this pastebin.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2014-11-15 15:27:06

From that output, /boot is not mounted -- I think you should add it to your fstab.

The options on my entry are copied from those generated by gen-fstab in another installation (I believe it sources the options from /sys).

hcra · 2014-11-15 15:29:37

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

I think you should add it to your fstab.

Great. Thanks, Head_on_a_Stick! You're absolutely amazing. I really appreciate your help. I'll mark this solved and get to work. Thanks again!!

Head_on_a_Stick · 2014-11-15 15:32:51

Anytime

hcra · 2014-11-15 15:42:26

Head_on_a_Stick, one thing I noticed, which may be important, is that one of your fstab <Options> is ro, which means "read-only." The examples at the Wiki all use rw, or "read-write."

Head_on_a_Stick · 2014-11-15 15:46:03

Yeah I use that to prevent damage to the FAT32 filesystem -- it's a bit of a PITA 'cos I have to re-mount it rw every time the kernel is upgraded...

hcra · 2014-11-15 15:48:12

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Yeah I use that to prevent damage to the FAT32 filesystem ...

It's hard to get ahead of you, no, impossible! Like I said, you're amazing. Thanks for teaching me

Arch Linux

#1 2014-11-15 14:29:33

[SOLVED]How to maintain gummiboot with two hard disks?

#2 2014-11-15 14:40:52

Re: [SOLVED]How to maintain gummiboot with two hard disks?

#3 2014-11-15 15:17:54

Re: [SOLVED]How to maintain gummiboot with two hard disks?

#4 2014-11-15 15:19:08

Re: [SOLVED]How to maintain gummiboot with two hard disks?

#5 2014-11-15 15:22:31

Re: [SOLVED]How to maintain gummiboot with two hard disks?

#6 2014-11-15 15:27:06

Re: [SOLVED]How to maintain gummiboot with two hard disks?

#7 2014-11-15 15:29:37

Re: [SOLVED]How to maintain gummiboot with two hard disks?

#8 2014-11-15 15:32:51

Re: [SOLVED]How to maintain gummiboot with two hard disks?

#9 2014-11-15 15:42:26

Re: [SOLVED]How to maintain gummiboot with two hard disks?

#10 2014-11-15 15:46:03

Re: [SOLVED]How to maintain gummiboot with two hard disks?

#11 2014-11-15 15:48:12

Re: [SOLVED]How to maintain gummiboot with two hard disks?

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