Arch Linux

uberben

Member

Registered: 2010-08-18

Posts: 78

Cannot get rEFInd to boot new Linux install

I am trying to setup a fresh install of Arch on a new SSD on my 2007 MacBook 2.1. This particular MacBook has a 32 bit EFI system, but everything else is 64 bit. The wiki article has some information for installing on this particular MacBook, but the instructions aren't super thorough.

This MacBook is already running Arch on an old HDD and is booting with grub. I remember that setting this up originally was a huge pain and I ended up installing arch onto the drive through another laptop (a Dell) with similar architecture and transferring the drive over once done. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to this other machine.

In order to get started with installing to the new drive, I decided to use the arch-install-scripts from within my working installation to install Arch to the SSD connected through a SATA-USB adapter. The installation of Arch went fine and I can chroot to it no problem.

Installing the bootloader has been the hard part. I have managed to get the computer to load rEFInd off the SSD if I set it up just right (installed as EFI/BOOT/bootia32.efi), and rEFInd can even detect and boot my old grub install from the HDD (as long as the HDD is internal and the SSD is attached over USB). Unfortunately, I cannot for the life of me get rEFInd to boot into the new Arch install on the SSD. I have tried placing the vmlinuz and init images in various locations to help with auto detection, and I have tried various combinations of manual configuration in refind.conf, but nothing seems to get me anywhere. The manual configurations just get me "Error: Not Found While Loading vmllinuz-linux" and the auto configuration only ever finds my old install.

I'm happy to post any configuration files here that are useful, but I'm not sure what people would want to see.

The SSD is setup as gpt with a fat32 ESP set to mount to /boot/efi, an ext4 partition set to mount to /, and a swap partition at the end.

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

Website

Re: Cannot get rEFInd to boot new Linux install

Moving to Installation Issues...

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Arch + dwm   •   Mercurial repos  •   Surfraw

Registered Linux User #482438

hungerfish

Member

Registered: 2009-09-13

Posts: 254

Re: Cannot get rEFInd to boot new Linux install

So, refind basically works/is started by the mb's firmware?
Please post your refind.conf (without all the comments, no manual stanzas!)
Also, to simplify things, I'm now assuming the ssd is the only internal drive installed, your old install/hdd is disconneted.
Use the arch-install cd , refind should detect it and allow you to boot, once the installer-system is up and running, please provide ouptut from lsblk.
Also, mount both partitons , and show what files are where  ls -l YOURROOTPART/boot  and ls -l YOURESPPART/ just to get a better overview.

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