Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

xan1242 · 2014-04-13 01:03:45

I'm not really asking for help here (can't find an appropriate place to put this post), but more to show off my accomplishment with this tablet.

As the thread title says, I've gotten Arch Linux to run on the Asus T100TA which is a quite annoying little thing. I haven't documented the steps myself, however, I remember exactly what I have done, and in order to get the live image to at least run on this tablet, here are the steps I did:

(you'll maybe need 2 USB drives, seems to be the easiest way)

1. Create an ISO using the archiso set as you normally would (except you won't really need the ISO itself) OR if you can figure it out yourself, install the base image to the USB drive (either architecture will do, but I recommend i686 since the processor is 32 bit as well)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archiso

This step will be unnecessary as of May, as the live images onwards on the main download site will already contain the 3.14 or newer kernels.

2. After the image building successfully finishes, copy all the contents from (PROFILE)/work/iso/ (except root-image squashfs files) to a FAT32 formatted USB drive (1). This is to simply create a bootloader drive that will allow us for later swapping the USB drives.

3. Download an ia32 version of grub. Any will do as long as it can boot up on the tablet.

http://www.supergrubdisk.org/category/download/supergrub2diskdownload/

This one works, download the standalone IA-32/i386 EFI and paste it in (USB Drive (1))/EFI/boot/bootia32.efi .
(use latest versions, no matter if it's unstable)

4. Now you need to make a grub.cfg. The one I made looks like this

menuentry 'Arch Linux i686'{
echo 'Loading Linux core repo kernel ...'
linux /arch/boot/i686/vmlinuz noefi nomodeset archisobasedir=arch archisolabel=ARCH_201404
echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
initrd /arch/boot/i686/archiso.img
}
menuentry 'Arch Linux x86_64'{
echo 'Loading Linux core repo kernel ...'
linux /arch/boot/x86_64/vmlinuz noefi nomodeset archisobasedir=arch archisolabel=ARCH_201404
echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
initrd /arch/boot/x86_64/archiso.img
}

NOTE: If you're using a later live image build, I advise to change the date accordingly. It's not necessary to do so, since the mount by label doesn't work, however, I like to keep everything intact.

noefi flag seems unnecessary as well, though I have added it to prevent some kernel panics from happening, for just in case. It works without it, still, however you need the nomodeset flag or else you'll get a black screen!

I'm not entirely sure where the grub.cfg goes, but I've put it in USB Drive(1)/boot/grub/ , /EFI/grub/ and in /EFI/boot/grub/ just to make it sure that it works.

5. Create an ext2/3/4 (recommended ext2 for flash drives, not to wear it out) USB drive (2) and copy the arch folder to the root of the USB drive (2)

---- BOOT PROCESS ----

Before this step, ensure that Secure Boot is set to OFF in the Aptio setup. Otherwise it will throw up an error in a red box crying it's not signed.

6. Plug in the USB drive (1) into a USB port and while powering on the tablet, tilt the escape key to pop up a boot menu.

7. Select UEFI: (your USB drive (1))

8. GRUB 2 will pop up. If you're running the SuperGrubDisk version, you're gonna have to go to Everything and then scroll down until it says something like

(hd0, msdos1)/boot/grub/grub.cfg

and click on it to open the configuration data manually created.

9. Simply select your desired version of Arch Linux live distro to boot.

10. VOILAaa, not really... It'll pop up with a mount error saying it's a wrong FS to mount. This is where you plug in your USB drive (2) in place of the first one.

11. Type in:

# mount /dev/sda1 /run/archiso/bootmnt
# exit

12. Congratulations, you're running Arch Linux on your ASUS Transformer T100TA tablet!

This is as far as I have went into running it. Installing it on a HDD would require mounting the mmcblk partitions, which I haven't looked into yet. For a start, I'd just recommend installing it on a USB drive, though you'd have to own one of the USB OTG converters or a USB hub. The screen is spammed with the mmcblk0rpmb timeout errors though and that is annoying. It stops after a while when it stops trying. Reboot doesn't work either, seems like acpi is broken.

You could do it with a single usb drive, though it requires some knowledge of this tablet's EFI because it disallowed me from running a kernel on another partition other than FAT32. Grub pops up with an error:

can't unload EFI services

or something like that.

I've also tried putting the USB Drive (2) in during grub and it pops up with an error with invalid sector sizes. That was to be expected.

btw I know it's my first post, I'm just here to share this with you. I never had the need to ask for help but when absolutely necessary.

PICS OF IT RUNNING

1024x768

Some USB devices aren't visible, like the camera.

1024x768

A custom partition layout without the recovery partitions. Yours may differ.

Last edited by xan1242 (2014-04-13 22:54:46)

olive · 2014-04-13 09:23:30

I am tempted buying this machine. I believe I will be able to instal archlinux on it but what scare me is the hardware support. I have found the following informations:

http://tinyurl.com/m3tzw4g

which basically say that sound do not work well, same for wifi, machine get hot, etc. I am very interested by what you can get. Have you been able to have it running well. I mean wifi, 3D acceleration (with the native resolution), sound, etc.

xan1242 · 2014-04-13 13:47:18

I haven't tried much other than getting this live image to run on this machine. I'll attempt to install the base image using my desktop computer with the appropriate drivers and see how that goes. (or just install the wifi driver)

That guy really made it to work much better than I imagined it to work at all! I'll see what can be done using the same drivers, though running Ubuntu seems tempting as well. He even got the touchscreen to work, which is really awesome. It seems that he also merged the drivers into the kernel image, which is going to be a challenge in Arch.

Since he's using the 64 bit build of Ubuntu, I'll try it with x86_64 Arch as well to try and use his guide to make the drivers to work.

EDIT: I have successully installed the base to an external drive and booted it on the tablet, however since the base was installed externally on another machine, I need to regenerate initrd. It boots on the fallback ramdisk, but still no wifi and the screen is spammed even more with the timeout errors. I've seen topics on Raspberry Pi having a similar issue and that it was repaired using some kernel flags, but I am not sure if those will work with the tablet. Also, using the bootflags jfwells used on Ubuntu work here as well, and gives full resolution output now. Wifi doesn't work. ip link doesn't give any signs of a wifi card present.

EDIT2: Got Arch up and running relatively nicely on the tablet now. Though it is in the same state as the last edit in terms of functionality, it works I'd say well enough to be considered usable. I couldn't make the wireless card to work, for some strange reason, so I got a RT73 USB card (Edimax EW-7318USg to be precise, had to use 2 USB ports) and installed stuff on to the tablet. I ran X without a desktop manager, and the X apps worked fine, even with the touch screen (emulating a mouse, no right click) and I ran XFCE4 on it without a problem (with compositing).

It simply needs more developed drivers on it, that's mostly it. The state is exactly the same as Ubuntu 14.04 that jfwells made to work (minus the wifi). I haven't played with the sound, either, due to the warning he posted, but I believe it works as it does in Ubuntu.

The steps I made are as follows:

1. Simply made another live ISO with the archiso set
2. dd'd the image to a USB drive
3. On the second USB drive I created two GPT partitions (200 - 300 MB for ESP, everything else ext2)
4. Booted the live archiso USB drive
5. Installed the base to the second USB drive while being mounted like this: ext2 partition -> /mnt and ESP -> /mnt/boot
6. Installed GRUB x86_64-efi to simply generate a configuration
7. Installed wireless utilities as well as everything else needed to make it to work
8. To ensure bootability on the tablet, again, I put the IA32 GRUB to the ESP in /EFI/boot/bootia32.efi
9. I have edited the grub.cfg, can't exactly remember with what, but this is what it looks like

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
menuentry 'Arch Linux, with Linux core repo kernel' --class arch --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-core repo kernel-true-(hd0,gpt2)' {
	set gfxpayload=keep
	insmod gzio
	insmod part_msdos
	insmod ext2
	set root='hd0,gpt1'
	echo	'Loading Linux core repo kernel ...'
	linux	/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda2 video=VGA-1:1368x768e reboot=pci,force sdhci.debug_quirks=0x8000 rw  quiet
	echo	'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
	initrd	/initramfs-linux.img
}
menuentry 'Arch Linux, with Linux core repo kernel (Fallback initramfs)' --class arch --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-core repo kernel-fallback-(hd0,gpt2)' {
	set gfxpayload=keep
	insmod gzio
	insmod part_msdos
	insmod ext2
	set root='hd0,gpt1'
	echo	'Loading Linux core repo kernel ...'
	linux	/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda2 video=VGA-1:1368x768e reboot=pci,force sdhci.debug_quirks=0x8000 rw  quiet
	echo	'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
	initrd	/boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
}

### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###

I simply added the kernel flags jfwells added. It needs that root flag, or else it will not boot. I can't figure out the UUIDs though. It will reboot, but it will not shut down.

10. Boot up your second USB drive on the tablet and... IMPORTANT - Boot with the fallback ramdisk - or else you're going to experience non functional input

11. After booting it, you'll get the annoying mmcblk timeout spamming the screen. I haven't figured out how to fix it, but to hide it, type in

# dmesg -n 1

12. Generate another ramdisk (forgot the command, but search function should serve you)

13. Reboot with the normal ramdisk now.

14. After setting up the wireless connection, rock on with the pacman!

At this point I installed a bunch of stuff, like Intel GPU drivers, xorg, xfce4, ntfs-3g, gparted, and among other stuff I personally test stuff with.

I couldn't mount the mmcblk partitions to at least somehow be able to edit data on the Windows partitions or the disk as a whole.

Anybody willing to help getting Arch to run on this tablet is welcome.

EDIT3: Internal WiFi working! Simply added "sdhci.debug_quirks=0x8000" flag.

Last edited by xan1242 (2014-04-13 23:35:26)

xan1242 · 2014-04-13 22:58:45

bumpy because of a big edit, sorry moderators if it annoys you

the.ridikulus.rat · 2014-04-13 23:14:01

I also suggest looking into https://www.happyassassin.net/fedlet-a- … l-tablets/ . I haven't tried it because I do not have any Intel Atom tablet (clover or bay trail), but it should be easy to setup a VM to test the image, specifically the 32-bit UEFI booting part.

EDIT: This should be posted in a wiki page as thats the appropriate place for instruction manual like this.

Last edited by the.ridikulus.rat (2014-04-14 00:23:07)

xan1242 · 2014-04-13 23:37:25

Oh ok, thank you. Didn't know that a fedora tablet distro existed.

I didn't even think that this qualifies as wiki material. I will post it there tomorrow.

brenton5 · 2014-04-29 01:51:17

Hello I bought a ASUS T100 and I have gotten to the point that I can load a desktop environment without the screen going blank or X not detecting the screen. Turns out we need a special kernel that conatins patches for the i915 backlight "linux-ak" from AUR.

I have created my own Tutorial on how to get a USB to boot arch on the ASUS T100:
http://www.taylorbyte.com/docs/wiki/arc … fi-gpt-usb

I just can't see how you got the WiFi to work by simply adding "sdhci.debug_quirks=0x8000" to the linux line, my lspci and lsusb and ifconfig still don't show a WiFi adapter. Neither does it show a touch device.

Can you explain what packages / modules / firmware were required to get WiFi and touch working.

Regards,

brenton5 · 2014-04-29 13:42:19

I found out why "sdhci.debug_quirks=0x8000" wasn't making my WiFi work. The linux-ak kernel from AUR that I was using must have something missing in the .config that archlinux core linux package has.

There are 2 options I can think of:
1. Find out whats missing in linux-ak .config and recompile it
2. Find out how to patch the archlinux core linux package with the i915 backlight fix.

I prefer option 2 because it seems neater and is a more recent version of the kernel.

huvber · 2014-08-06 16:54:43

m interested to buy it there were some improvements to it? could i hope to install fully functional arch on it maybe not exactly now but in the early future?

tijl · 2014-12-06 10:53:38

xan1242 wrote:

8. GRUB 2 will pop up. If you're running the SuperGrubDisk version, you're gonna have to go to Everything and then scroll down until it says something like
(hd0, msdos1)/boot/grub/grub.cfg
and click on it to open the configuration data manually created.
9. Simply select your desired version of Arch Linux live distro to boot.

Hello, xan1242

I'm trying to boot with your method, but... after select menuentry and drop to rootfs shell my keyboard doesn't work! Can you help me?

manzdagratiano · 2014-12-07 04:48:18

Hi folks. I have managed to get Arch successfully (almost) installed on my T100 - I am using the stock Arch kernel and the xf86-video-intel driver, and display as well as touchscreen are working out of the box!

The only issue I have at the moment is that even though I have added "mmc_core mmc_block sdhci sdhci_acpi sdhci_pci" to my MODULES array and regenerated my initramfs, these modules do not load on boot and as a result my root partition (/dev/mmcblk0p3) does not get mounted and I get dropped to an emergency shell. I can then modprobe these modules, after which I can run "systemctl default" and boot proceeds as normal (thanks to @grawity on #archlinux for helping me with that). I am still investigating what is missing there, but aside from the annoying 1min30s wait for the root partition to time out, the tablet is usable.

WiFi was pathetic when I initially installed Arch, and I have not attempted to fix it since. I am currently using a USB to ethernet adapter and directly hooking this thing into my router to get on the net. My use case is limited to non-WiFi situations anyway for now, so I'll get to that later.

I did very little to get Arch working (aside from all the time spent struggling) by way of configs and packages - I started from archiso Archboot since it supported mixed mode UEFI booting, and I installed grub as my bootloader. I would not have gotten anywhere without James Wells' original article (for kernel boot parameters), but the bleeding-edge nature of Arch seemed to be a no-brainer for me to choose it over Ubuntu for such a venture - so that newer features come in sooner as they stabilize. I am strengthened in this belief further by the fact that I got X/Gnome working with touchscreen without any custom changes.

I look forward to getting full Linux/Arch support on this machine.

Edit: I nuked the Windows partition as well as the Windows EFI folders from the EFI partition, and I installed grub (both with target x86_64-efi and i386-efi) when I finished the install from archiso, which didn't give me any trouble with being able to find a UEFI entry to boot from the install itself. My EFI partition is mounted at /boot - hope that helps with any issues.

Last edited by manzdagratiano (2014-12-09 03:28:04)

tijl · 2014-12-07 15:34:22

xan1242 wrote:

1. Simply made another live ISO with the archiso set
2. dd'd the image to a USB drive

Can you tell me plz how to build workable and bootable iso? I've built one with archiso and baseline profille.
It is booting (grub) but when i select x86_64 kernel menu item, it not founding rootfs and keyboard not working

manzdagratiano · 2014-12-09 03:34:47

tijl wrote:

Can you tell me plz how to build workable and bootable iso? I've built one with archiso and baseline profille.
It is booting (grub) but when i select x86_64 kernel menu item, it not founding rootfs and keyboard not working

@tjil take a loot at Archboot on the Arch wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/archboot - that's what I used (I mistakenly remembered archiso - I have edited my post to correct that). You can dd an image to the flash drive and it will be bootable on the T100 as it supports UEFI mixed mode.

tijl · 2014-12-09 20:45:25

manzdagratiano wrote:

@tjil take a loot at Archboot... You can dd an image to the flash drive and it will be bootable on the T100 as it supports UEFI mixed mode.

Ok, thanks, i will try it.

Now i booting up with ubuntu + supergrub2disk's bootia32.efi... It's working with graphics exclude wifi, bt, etc... out of the box (there are howto to get this working). But suspend not working at all.

Can anyone explain me plz about existing partitions on sdard?

mmcblk0p1 -- fat32             -- 100M -- EFI
mmcblk0p2 -- ntfs              -- 900M -- 'Recovery'
mmcblk0p3 -- ??                -- 128M -- 'MSRecovery'
mmcblk0p4 -- bitlocker (wtf??) --  49G -- 'Basic data' -- C:\
mmcblk0p5 -- ntfs              --   8G -- 'Restore'

What are there many recovery/restore partitions? (Each of them contain some bootloader and/or .efi files...) I'm don't very familiar with win booting process and laptop restoring systems... And what is 'bitlocker fs' (not mountable)?

I'm want to install arch to mmc (with saving windows too)... Which partition can i reduce safely? And in what configuration (partitions, boot, grub, efi...) should i install grub bootloder (safely to to windows booting, i mean)?

Last edited by tijl (2014-12-13 19:20:24)

tijl · 2014-12-13 19:15:43

manzdagratiano wrote:

@tjil take a loot at Archboot... You can dd an image to the flash drive and it will be bootable on the T100 as it supports UEFI mixed mode.

I'm trying to boot and install archlinux to my t100ta. I was succesfully booting up with default archboot image. That's unbelievable!

My questions are:

1 How to resolve problem this annoying blink of console?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq1cYpSL6Ik

This bug dissapers when booting with nomodeset kernel parameter, without KMS, so...

2 And what about with this message about mmcblk error?

mmc0: Got data interrupt 0x00000002 even though no data operation was in progress.
mmcblk0rpmb: error -110 tranferring data, sector 8064, nr8, cmd response 0x900, card status 0xb00
mmcblk0rpmb: timed out senfing r/w cmd, card status 0x400900
end_request: I/O error, dev mmcblk0rpmb:, sector 8064

Last edited by tijl (2014-12-13 21:59:48)

manzdagratiano · 2014-12-14 06:52:42

tijl wrote:

Can anyone explain me plz about existing partitions on sdard?
mmcblk0p1 -- fat32             -- 100M -- EFI
mmcblk0p2 -- ntfs              -- 900M -- 'Recovery'
mmcblk0p3 -- ??                -- 128M -- 'MSRecovery'
mmcblk0p4 -- bitlocker (wtf??) --  49G -- 'Basic data' -- C:\
mmcblk0p5 -- ntfs              --   8G -- 'Restore'
What are there many recovery/restore partitions? (Each of them contain some bootloader and/or .efi files...) I'm don't very familiar with win booting process and laptop restoring systems... And what is 'bitlocker fs' (not mountable)?
I'm want to install arch to mmc (with saving windows too)... Which partition can i reduce safely? And in what configuration (partitions, boot, grub, efi...) should i install grub bootloder (safely to to windows booting, i mean)?

If you want to save windows, I'm afraid the only partition you can reduce is C:\ - you should probably do that from within windows itself. In my case I nuked all of them except for the EFI partition, which I mounted at /boot, and installed grub with --efi-directory=/boot. I also could not get rid of the 8G "Restore" partition (which shows up as /dev/sda1 in my case, and cannot be erased with gdisk or gparted, complaining that /dev/sda was opened in read only mode, which even hdparm could not change).

Booting your kernel with the parameters "video=VGA-1:1368x768e reboot=pci,force" should fix the blinking issue (cf http://www.jfwhome.com/2014/03/07/perfe … book-t100/). I have not been able to get rid of the mmcblk0rpmb errors, but I change the "loglevel" to 2 instead of 7 when I boot with a live CD to suppress those messages.

Last edited by manzdagratiano (2014-12-15 05:31:42)

huvber · 2014-12-15 17:03:55

What do you suggest to avoid loosing Windows forever?
The things that block me to install arch since now is that the 32GB SSD is too small to contain both Windows and Linux. In your opinion is possible to install Arch on a SD Card and boot from there and using as a normal installation?

tijl · 2014-12-28 20:27:31

manzdagratiano wrote:

Booting your kernel with the parameters "video=VGA-1:1368x768e reboot=pci,force" should fix the blinking issue (cf http://www.jfwhome.com/2014/03/07/perfe … book-t100/).

No, it doesn't fix it! There is blinking with any options while KMS is enable.
There is no blinking only with nomodeset and/or i915.modeset=0... And this way i have low resolution on console.

tusharkant15 · 2015-01-12 07:41:15

manzdagratiano wrote:

Hi folks. I have managed to get Arch successfully (almost) installed on my T100 - I am using the stock Arch kernel and the xf86-video-intel driver, and display as well as touchscreen are working out of the box!
The only issue I have at the moment is that even though I have added "mmc_core mmc_block sdhci sdhci_acpi sdhci_pci" to my MODULES array and regenerated my initramfs, these modules do not load on boot and as a result my root partition (/dev/mmcblk0p3) does not get mounted and I get dropped to an emergency shell. I can then modprobe these modules, after which I can run "systemctl default" and boot proceeds as normal (thanks to @grawity on #archlinux for helping me with that). I am still investigating what is missing there, but aside from the annoying 1min30s wait for the root partition to time out, the tablet is usable.
WiFi was pathetic when I initially installed Arch, and I have not attempted to fix it since. I am currently using a USB to ethernet adapter and directly hooking this thing into my router to get on the net. My use case is limited to non-WiFi situations anyway for now, so I'll get to that later.
I did very little to get Arch working (aside from all the time spent struggling) by way of configs and packages - I started from archiso Archboot since it supported mixed mode UEFI booting, and I installed grub as my bootloader. I would not have gotten anywhere without James Wells' original article (for kernel boot parameters), but the bleeding-edge nature of Arch seemed to be a no-brainer for me to choose it over Ubuntu for such a venture - so that newer features come in sooner as they stabilize. I am strengthened in this belief further by the fact that I got X/Gnome working with touchscreen without any custom changes.
I look forward to getting full Linux/Arch support on this machine.
Edit: I nuked the Windows partition as well as the Windows EFI folders from the EFI partition, and I installed grub (both with target x86_64-efi and i386-efi) when I finished the install from archiso, which didn't give me any trouble with being able to find a UEFI entry to boot from the install itself. My EFI partition is mounted at /boot - hope that helps with any issues.

Hi! I am planning to buy this tablet/laptop and want to run gnome shell on it. How difficult is it going to be to install and in your opinion will the final experience be worth the effort it takes to get it up and running?

tijl · 2015-01-13 18:41:19

tusharkant15 wrote:

Hi! I am planning to buy this tablet/laptop and want to run gnome shell on it. How difficult is it going to be to install and in your opinion will the final experience be worth the effort it takes to get it up and running?

Technically, t100ta is the simple x86_64 laptop. Running any distro's kernel is sucessfull, but booting it up has some specific resolvable problems: uefi, kms (video), etc... In my mind it is same as installing up on laptop.

Last edited by tijl (2015-01-13 18:42:07)

Gusar · 2015-01-13 19:52:03

tijl wrote:

Technically, t100ta is the simple x86_64 laptop.

Far from it. It uses eMMC for internal storage, peripherals are attached to SDIO instead of pci/usb (that's why wifi doesn't show up in either lsusb or lspci), the wifi is a fullmac device while laptops have softmac devices, various other differences in how things are set up. Tablets are "embedded" devices, they're wired quite differently, and as such definitely *not* like laptops.

tijl wrote:

In my mind it is same as installing up on laptop.

Clearly not, as this thread nicely demonstrates. There may be a time when Linux can be installed on these things as easily as on "traditional" hardware, but we're definitely not there yet.

tijl · 2015-01-13 22:38:37

Gusar wrote:

tijl wrote:
Technically, t100ta is the simple x86_64 laptop.
Far from it. It uses eMMC for internal storage, peripherals are attached to SDIO instead of pci/usb (that's why wifi doesn't show up in either lsusb or lspci), the wifi is a fullmac device while laptops have softmac devices, various other differences in how things are set up. Tablets are "embedded" devices, they're wired quite differently, and as such definitely *not* like laptops.
tijl wrote:
In my mind it is same as installing up on laptop.
Clearly not, as this thread nicely demonstrates. There may be a time when Linux can be installed on these things as easily as on "traditional" hardware, but we're definitely not there yet.

"In my mind", i mean that instaiiling proccess likes one with exotic laptop, or laptop 7 (in example) years ago, if you are understanding me
- MMC in arch starts out of the box very well.
Only one what I was found: maximum number of partition with stock arch kernel on gpt-table is only 8 , and this limitation may be overing with kernel recompiling... maybe it is also the mmcblk0rpmb issue, but i'm not understand what is it (tell me plz if you are know?).
- Wifi?.. but this also resolved...
- Embeded device, SoC? --- Ok, but it is simply more-embeded, and in subject of installation os it is the same that on laptops some years ago, when we needed find drivers, patching kernel and so on.

Anyway, it is the standard set of problems to linux-user (gentoo-way, heh ).

Last edited by tijl (2015-01-13 22:41:16)

huvber · 2015-02-23 15:50:41

I manage to install Arch with Archboot but I wasn't able to proper install grub or to add linux on windows bootloader. Someone have some instruction to do it properly? I followed the instruction on the wiki here

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wi … oot_loader

but windows says that the linux.bin file is corrupted.

I partitioned the Asus T100 by removing 5Gb on the windows Partition and create an ext4 partion. I installed there arch by mounting only that partition. If I try to install grub or any other bootloader some errors came up and the installation process of the bootloader doesn't finish. I tried to find proper information on internet but neither I found that or I didn't understand that.
Can anyone help me please? I really wanted to have arch on this device.
Thanks

huvber · 2015-02-25 14:48:48

Finally I was able to install Arch linux on a Partition and install grub on the EFI partition. Was a tought work and still I don't know exactly how I did. But for everyone who want to try here my passages:
You should have an Archboot.iso on a USB drive
1) Run the usbdrive by changing the boot on EFI firmware setting (F2 at start) and you should disable boot security
2) I had to modify the /arch/setup script in order to do not check the ntfs drives.
3) I created a partition by shrink the windows partition and by creating a ext4 new partition (i take 5Gb I hope will be enough)
4) I mount the mmcblk0p1 partition (the efi one) on /boot with vfat without format it
5) I install arch normally but I didn't install the bootloader
6) I arch-chroot on the install partition and I run the grub installer with this command:

 grub-install --target=i386-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=Arch --recheck

7) I run

grub-mkconfig

and i modify the grub.cfg with the indication in this post:

 linux	/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda2 video=VGA-1:1368x768e reboot=pci,force sdhci.debug_quirks=0x8000 rw  quiet

8) Reboot with removing the usbdrive and on firmware setting choosing Arch
and it run.

The problem is still that I can't see the wifi so for now it's completely useless. I cannot see the interfaces with ifconfig.

Was anybody able to setup the wifi in order to work?

Dregel · 2015-03-04 23:17:20

Just got myself a T200 and im working furiously at getting it to work satisfactory, and thanks to huvbers above post I finaly got the damned thing to boot arch!
But just in case anyone else is trying i thought id add that i also, in adition to what huvber describes, had to generate a 64bit grub.efi with this command:

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

It would not boot unless i generated BOTH .efi files, and i have no idea why really, because i have been reasured from multiple sources that the T200, while it is a 64bit procesor, only will boot a 32bit .efi...really strange actualy.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-04-13 01:03:45

Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#2 2014-04-13 09:23:30

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#3 2014-04-13 13:47:18

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#4 2014-04-13 22:58:45

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#5 2014-04-13 23:14:01

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#6 2014-04-13 23:37:25

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#7 2014-04-29 01:51:17

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#8 2014-04-29 13:42:19

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#9 2014-08-06 16:54:43

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#10 2014-12-06 10:53:38

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#11 2014-12-07 04:48:18

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#12 2014-12-07 15:34:22

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#13 2014-12-09 03:34:47

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#14 2014-12-09 20:45:25

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#15 2014-12-13 19:15:43

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#16 2014-12-14 06:52:42

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#17 2014-12-15 17:03:55

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#18 2014-12-28 20:27:31

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#19 2015-01-12 07:41:15

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#20 2015-01-13 18:41:19

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#21 2015-01-13 19:52:03

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#22 2015-01-13 22:38:37

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#23 2015-02-23 15:50:41

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#24 2015-02-25 14:48:48

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

#25 2015-03-04 23:17:20

Re: Arch Linux running on Asus Transformer T100/T100TA... sort of.

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