Arch Linux

ksu

Member

Registered: 2015-02-26

Posts: 55

Dual booting Kubuntu and Arch, question about shared /boot partition

I currently have Kubuntu 15.04 and Win 8.1 installed, but I would like to give Arch another try, because I'm annoyed by (K)Ubuntus out-dated software packages, and generally Arch was much faster in terms of boot time, and I also liked pacman better than apt/dpkg.

Right now I have a separate /boot partition where the Kubuntu installer installed Grub2. How would I go about installing Arch on a new root partition, while using the existing /boot partition? I *think* it should be pretty straight forward, I think that either os-prober will detect both my Linux distros, or maybe I'd just have to add the correct menu entry in my Grub boot menu. Is this correct?

Another thing I have noticed is that when a Kubuntu kernel package gets updated, it looks like that apt will also trigger a 'update-grub2', which updates my /boot partition. Could this behaviour cause problems when having multiple Linux distros installed? Or is this no problem at all? I read somewhere that it would be best to not let the OS manage Grub/the boot partition, but instead do this manually, but I'm not really sure how to do that.

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 7,744

Website

Re: Dual booting Kubuntu and Arch, question about shared /boot partition

Are you booting Kubuntu in EFI-mode?

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Are you infected with Wetiko?

ksu

Member

Registered: 2015-02-26

Posts: 55

Re: Dual booting Kubuntu and Arch, question about shared /boot partition

No, I'm booting in BIOS mode, although my motherboard is EFI capable. I found EFI Grub setup too complicated when installing Arch for the first time so I sticked with BIOS mode, and also because I never had an EFI capable PC before, so I really have no clue about EFI.
It seems Kubuntu installed Grub in BIOS mode (dmesg isn't mentioning EFI at least), and I'm not really sure if it even gave me the choice between EFI or BIOS mode during setup. I can't remember at least. So would it be a good idea to start from scratch and go with EFI? Does it make a real difference?

Thanks alot for help in advance! I'm kind of lost when it comes to grub and dual booting in general

Last edited by ksu (2015-04-23 18:46:58)

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 7,744

Website

Re: Dual booting Kubuntu and Arch, question about shared /boot partition

I can only ever tell if I am booted in EFI-mode or not when I reboot and see the vendor splash screen (it does not show up in EFI-mode) so I would say that it makes absolutely no difference at all.

Do you have a directory at /sys/firmware/efi?

---

Are you infected with Wetiko?

ksu

Member

Registered: 2015-02-26

Posts: 55

Re: Dual booting Kubuntu and Arch, question about shared /boot partition

Nope, there's only acpi and memmap

If the vendors splashscreen is the only noticeable difference then I don't care at all

ksu

Member

Registered: 2015-02-26

Posts: 55

Re: Dual booting Kubuntu and Arch, question about shared /boot partition

One thing I probably should mention (even though I don't think it should make a real difference) is that my /boot and root partition are on a USB key, while /home is on an internal SSD drive. I plan to make another root partition for Arch on my USB key and then make it somehow use the shared /boot partition, on that same USB key.