Arch Linux

Shahab

Member

Registered: 2011-10-15

Posts: 30

[SOLVED] Creating USB Media ONLY Supporting BIOS/Legacy (and not UEFI)

Hi,

This may seem ridiculous, but please let me explain:

I have an Asus K55VM laptop. Recently, I have deleted its System Reserved GPT partition and installed Windows 7 on it. Everything works fine in this legacy BIOS environment. Now, I want to install my beloved Arch on it. The problem is:

- BIOS setup does not give you an option to explicitly disable UEFI, it only allows you to enable support for USB's in Legacy/BIOS
- My Arch USB installation media created from "archlinux-2015.01.01-dual.iso" has UEFI data
- Now the motherboard detects this USB as UEFI and boots it that way
- I want to be able to boot it in BIOS/Legacy mode

I believe if I remove UEFI support from the USB media, then maybe I can trick the motherboard to boot from USB in Legacy mode. I know this is lame, but I need to know how one can create a USB installtion media without any UEFI support.

If you think there is a better approach, please also share it with me. Thanks in advance!

Last edited by Shahab (2015-01-11 15:24:13)

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 8,778

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Creating USB Media ONLY Supporting BIOS/Legacy (and not UEFI)

Even if the Arch .iso is booted up in EFI-mode, it is still possible to install a system in non-EFI mode.

When you are creating the partitions, do not create an EFI system partition and install GRUB using the non-EFI command:

# grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck /dev/sda

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Be … therboards

Do you still have a GPT disk?

From the Arch live .iso, post the output of:

# parted -l

The Arch .iso has elinks on it, so you can use that

---

Jin, Jîyan, Azadî

Shahab

Member

Registered: 2011-10-15

Posts: 30

Re: [SOLVED] Creating USB Media ONLY Supporting BIOS/Legacy (and not UEFI)

You are absolutely correct. I just finished reading the Beginners' guide and noticed that.

The GPT disk is gone

Model: ATA ST1000LM024 HN-M (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number  Start    End      Size     Type      File system  Flags
 1      1049kB   476GB    476GB    primary   ntfs         boot
 2      476GB    911GB    436GB    primary   ntfs
 3      911GB    946GB    34.7GB   primary   extf4
 4      946GB    476GB    54.0GB   primary   extf4

However, GRUB and os-prober did not detect the Windows (/boot/grub/grub.cfg)

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###

EDIT: When I execute "os-prober" separately (I do not know if you are supposed to that), I end up with:

  /run/lvm/lvmetad.socket: connect failed: No such file or directory
  WARNING: Failed to connect to lvmetad: No such file or directory. Falling back to internal scanning.

Last edited by Shahab (2015-01-11 14:37:22)

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 8,778

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Creating USB Media ONLY Supporting BIOS/Legacy (and not UEFI)

The GPT disk is gone

How did you do that?

Those error messages are nothing to worry about.

EDIT: Have you run `grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg`?

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2015-01-11 14:58:51)

---

Jin, Jîyan, Azadî

Shahab

Member

Registered: 2011-10-15

Posts: 30

Re: [SOLVED] Creating USB Media ONLY Supporting BIOS/Legacy (and not UEFI)

How did you do that?

I used GParted to delete the reserved system space and then repartitioned everything.

Have you run 'grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg'?

Yes, I did. That is how I ended up with a "grub.cfg" without any Windows detected.

Thank you for giving me clues. I am going to tag this topic as solved. For future reference about the Windows not being detected: I followed the GRUB -> Windows installed in BIOS-MBR mode page and it worked like a charm.