Arch Linux

EdesMerkis

Member

Registered: 2014-02-01

Posts: 3

[SOLVED] Difficulties in installing arch with EFI

Hello,
I tried installing arch on my new computer yesterday and had difficulties to make it work with EFI.
My first problem was that when I was booting on the usb key to install arch, the system was not responding anymore after the "triggering uevents" message (it was working fine without EFI).
The temporary solution I've found is to connect my screen on the CPU ( 4770K). With this configuration I was able to install arch with EFI, and to boot still in EFI.
When I switch back to the GPU (which is what I want since it's a geforce 780 TI which cost me a lot of money), the system crashes during the linux startup (just before I can login).
Since xorg in not activated for the moment, I really don't know what causes this crash. I guess it's an incompatibility between EFI and my GPU.
Since the computer is at my work place, I can't try anything before Monday. I guess the only thing I haven't done for the moment is to install the nvidia official drivers. My guess is it won't change anything since xorg is not started.

Does somebody have any advice before I reinstall arch without EFI ?

Thanks in advance,

E.

Last edited by EdesMerkis (2014-02-03 10:46:58)

Spider.007

Member

Registered: 2004-06-20

Posts: 1,175

Re: [SOLVED] Difficulties in installing arch with EFI

Does 'linux crash' mean you get a black screen, or an actual error message? Also; did you try booting with nomodeset (to disable kms)?

EdesMerkis

Member

Registered: 2014-02-01

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Difficulties in installing arch with EFI

I got no error message, the computer freezes just before I can login.
I didn't try with the nomodeset option, but it seems to be an interesting idea. I'll try Monday morning !

EdesMerkis

Member

Registered: 2014-02-01

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Difficulties in installing arch with EFI

Ok, finally just installing the nvidia official drivers was enough. Thanks for your suggestion though.

yuyquan

Member

Registered: 2015-12-28

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Difficulties in installing arch with EFI

I have a 780ti and I believe it is the root of the problem. I believe the 780ti has a hand in the booting of the computer. I get an nvidia bios screen before my actual mother board's bios screen. If you have a 780ti you should know what I'm talking about.
To an extent, the nvidia bios would interfere with EFI boot ups?
I was attempting to do a GPT disk install, but failed seeing that my computer wouldn't recognize the GPT disk. AFAIK you can only boot up a GPT disk with EFI, no? You said you got an EFI to boot by installing nvidia drivers while still in arch-chroot mode from the install? Or did I misunderstand?

yuyquan

Member

Registered: 2015-12-28

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Difficulties in installing arch with EFI

I have a 780ti and I believe it is the root of the problem. I believe the 780ti has a hand in the booting of the computer. I get an nvidia bios screen before my actual mother board's bios screen. If you have a 780ti you should know what I'm talking about.
To an extent, the nvidia bios would interfere with EFI boot ups?
I was attempting to do a GPT disk install, but failed seeing that my computer wouldn't recognize the GPT disk. AFAIK you can only boot up a GPT disk with EFI, no? You said you got an EFI to boot by installing nvidia drivers while still in arch-chroot mode from the install? Or did I misunderstand?

tom.ty89

Member

Registered: 2012-11-15

Posts: 897

Re: [SOLVED] Difficulties in installing arch with EFI

No. MSDOS/MBR is well supported by any PROPER UEFI. nvidia does not interfere with your drive / probing of FS / locating of efi binaries. This is completely FUD.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,657

Re: [SOLVED] Difficulties in installing arch with EFI

Very likely was the modeset. Nouveau doesn't support acceleration/KMS on new chipsets and causes bootup to hang. Next time you get something like this you could try running with the kernel line loglevel=7 which will give you debug-output and will tell you that nouveau tries to initialize modesetting but trips over and freezes the system. Definitely nothing to do with UEFI or general bootsupport for that matter.