Arch Linux

raddecen

Member

Registered: 2015-12-19

Posts: 26

virtualbox doesn't boot into uefi mode

I tried installing Arch in a VM using VirtualBox but I wasn't successful.

I was able to install to Arch without any issues but when I tried booting my fresh installation, I landed into the EFI shell. I tried the solutions mentioned here but moving /boot/EFI/systend/systemd-bootx64.efi to /boot/EFI/Boot/BOOTX64.EFI didn't work. When I land in the EFI shell, I have no fs0: to work with but only blk0, blk1, and blk2.  I used the following disk structure -

Controller: SATA
    arch.vdi  -- /
    arch1.vdi -- /data
    arch2.vdi -- /boot
    archlinux-2016.06.01-dual.iso

I tried to do a fresh install after that but now, VirtualBox doesn't even boot the Arch Linux ISO image and lands in the EFI shell.

What am I missing?

olive

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2008-06-22

Posts: 1,490

Re: virtualbox doesn't boot into uefi mode

After having made tests, I have indeed problem to boot the CD in EFI mode (but I boot correctly from an installed ArchLinux). I have not debugged the issue completely; the structure of the CD is complicated (to be bootable in different way: USB, CD in Bios and UEFI mode) and VBOX EFI is messed up for some reason. The easier solution is to boot the machine from the Archlinux CD in Bios mode. If you correctly install Archlinux in a GPT partitioned disk as described below, you can afterwards remove the CD and boot from the hard disk in UEFI mode by changing the setting; so you will only boot in Bios mode the first time to install the machine.

VirtualBox boot this file: \boot\efi\bootx64.efi from the efi partition that must be formatted in fat32 (fat12 and fat16 might work too). You cannot change this and it will forget any setting that you may have set with efibootmgr (vbox does not remember efi variables across reboot).

Note that there are no real advantage by booting a machine in UEFI mode especially in VBOX where you can't change any persistent EFI variable. Unless you have a special reason, you might want to install in Bios mode and stay with it. If you use extlinux, you can use GPT partition even in Bios mode with no issue (if the only thing you really one is that).

Updated: Additional infos and cleanup after more tests.
Updated 2: It seems that VirtualBox do indeed boot from the archlinux CD in UEFI mode, but for some reason the screen stay black for a rather long time.

Last edited by olive (2016-06-26 15:50:52)