[SOLVED] Unbootable fresh install

kRYOoX · 2015-04-30 22:53:10

Hello wonderful people !

First of all, I hope your day is going well. Mine isnt ...

I recently decided to ditch ubuntu and found that Arch followed a philosophy that really appealed to me. Therefore I decided to give it a try.

Unfortunately, my installation attempts so far only gave birth to :

- Black screens with blinking cursors
- "Reboot and select a proper Boot device"
- Tears (mine)

I followed the beginner's guide each and everytime, tried both gummiboot and grub, as well as look through this forum and tried some of the suggestions.
For my 6th attempt, and out of a mixed feeling between despair and frustration, here's a live transcript of every command, so that you can maybe tell me where the error is :

efivar -l     (outputs variables, not an error, so it shoud be good)

sgdisk -Z /dev/sda     (wipe the disk as suggested here : https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=196733)

parted /dev/sda
--| mklabel gpt
  | mkpart ESP fat32 1MiB 513MiB
  | set 1 boot on
  | mkpart primary linux-swap 513MiB 4.5GiB
  | mkpart primary ext4 4.5GiB 100%
--| quit

mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3
mkswap /dev/sda2
swapon /dev/sda2

mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel

genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
nano /mnt/etc/fstab
--| #
  | # /etc/fstab: static file system information
  | #
  | # <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
  | # /dev/sda3
  | UUID=52a6c537-f423-44d2-983b-0cb4818cfc80    /    ext4    rw,relatime,data=ordered    0 1
  | 
  | # /dev/sda1
  | UUID=7A84-D374    /boot    vfat    rwq,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro    0 2
  | 
  | # /dev/sda2
--| UUID=8b68db16-cc13-4e6c-9947-be4c9cda7b9d    none    swap    defaults    0 0

arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash

## I'll spare you the locale, keymaps, timezone, hostname ... settings. They're most likely irrelevant anyway. Let me know if you need them too.

mkinitcpio -p linux     (It's mentionned that it's not mandatory, I've tried to do it or not, it doesn't seem to change anything)
passwd

pacman -S dosfstools efibootmgr
pacman -S gummiboot
gummiboot --path=/boot install

nano /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
--| title   Arch Linux
  | linux   /vmlinuz-linux
  | initrd  /initramfs-linux.img
--| options root=/dev/sda3 rw

nano /boot/loader/loader.conf
--| default arch
--| timeout 5

exit
umount -R /mnt
shutdown -p now     (rather than reboot, so I can take my time to remove the usb drive and go back to the UEFI/bios and make sure the boot order is correct)

I never get any error along the process.
I willingly admit that this is still a bit new to me - I've always used distros that did most of this automatically or through graphical tools.
But i'm not completely lost either and this seems pretty solid to me.

In the UEFI/BIOS, I have 3 entries that match my SSD :
- Linux Boot Manager
- UEFI OS
- P2 Samsung SSD 840 EVO 500GB

--
Secondary question : what's the difference between those three ? Given that they all pathetically fail at the moment, I can't really tell. =P
--

After this latest attempt, all three give me the "reboot and select proper boot device" error.

I hope you can help me find the problem. Let me know if there are other informations you need.

Best regards.

Last edited by kRYOoX (2015-05-01 08:12:03)

jasonwryan · 2015-04-30 22:57:14

This isn't in your arch.conf, is it?

options root=/dev/sdaX rw

kRYOoX · 2015-04-30 23:08:23

Indeed, my bad. I fixed it in my post, it's sda3 obviously.

jasonwryan · 2015-04-30 23:24:00

Your steps look OK. When you chroot in, can you see all of the files under /boot?

Head_on_a_Stick · 2015-05-01 07:16:18

Have you disabled Secure Boot?

The Arch live ISO (and your Ubuntu system) will boot with it enabled but the installed system will not.

kRYOoX · 2015-05-01 08:11:19

@jasonwryan, I did, yes.

@Head_on_a_stick THAT WORKED. I LOVE YOU !

Is this mentionned anywhere in the wiki guides, have I missed it ? If not, it might be a reasonnable addition. I'm pretty sure I would have searched for days and not think of that.
I'll switch the subject to solved. Again, thanks a lot

karol · 2015-05-01 13:31:08

It's mentioned e.g. in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wi … ecure_Boot

kRYOoX · 2015-05-01 13:34:07

Ah, thank you for the info.
Since it's not a dual boot system, I didn't bother to read that, but true, Win8 was installed on it in the past.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2015-05-01 21:05:46

kRYOoX wrote:

I LOVE YOU !

Right back at you baby!

karol · 2015-05-02 02:17:58

I see that non-English installation guides mention that too.
If it indeed is missing from the English guides, please add it or post a comment on the talk page.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-04-30 22:53:10

[SOLVED] Unbootable fresh install

#2 2015-04-30 22:57:14

Re: [SOLVED] Unbootable fresh install

#3 2015-04-30 23:08:23

Re: [SOLVED] Unbootable fresh install

#4 2015-04-30 23:24:00

Re: [SOLVED] Unbootable fresh install

#5 2015-05-01 07:16:18

Re: [SOLVED] Unbootable fresh install

#6 2015-05-01 08:11:19

Re: [SOLVED] Unbootable fresh install

#7 2015-05-01 13:31:08

Re: [SOLVED] Unbootable fresh install

#8 2015-05-01 13:34:07

Re: [SOLVED] Unbootable fresh install

#9 2015-05-01 21:05:46

Re: [SOLVED] Unbootable fresh install

#10 2015-05-02 02:17:58

Re: [SOLVED] Unbootable fresh install

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