UEFI dual boot installation tips for first time dual booting with UEFI

jbodhorn · 2016-10-10 22:29:05

I have a new laptop, this being the first machine I've had that is UEFI. I've made a complete backup of the hard drive with clonezilla, it's good practice for one but I mainly did it because I wanted to have a backup in case something goes awry when installing a second OS. I've been doing a bunch of reading from the Arch wiki before I even attempt to install Arch on this laptop, If anyone has any links I should read before I go through with my install I'd be glad to read them

ATM my main concern is actually booting, on my other laptop I ran onto something that became a huge issue, something that had never been an issue in the past, grub... my old laptop just used regular old BIOS and I had been using grub to boot both Windows 10 and Arch, When the Windows 10 anniversary update came around I was unable to install it. I found out that it was because I was using grub instead of the Windows bootloader. I was a big pain in the butt, but I finally got everything working, I ended up having to add Arch to the Windows bootloader. I believe the windows bootloader is chainloading grub to boot Arch now, I don't know that I'm using the correct terminology so please correct me if that is wrong.

On my old laptop when it boots I am presented with the Windows bootloader OS selection screen. If I select Windows 10 it boots right into Windows, if I select Arch the computer reboots and goes to the grub OS selection screen where I can choose Arch or windows.

I know I have to use the Windows bootloader or down the line it's going to mess something up, so I'm assuming I'm going to have to do something similar to what I did on my last Win10/Arch laptop. My problem is I don't fully understand how UEFI works and how bad I could mess things up. My understanding is that there is firmware installed to a partition on the drive and that this firmware is for running and booting the computer into it's OS. If this is correct and I delete the partition or it becomes corrupted will I be unable to boot from USB? I've heard that rm -rf / on a UEFI machine can make it unable to boot permanently because it removes the firmware installed to the boot partition and since this firmware is no longer available to the computer it can't boot from an external source.

What I don't get is how a hard drive/solid state drive in a UEFI computer could be upgraded or replaced if what I read is accurate. If someone could provide links or an explanation so I can better understand how UEFI works I think that might put my fears to rest so I can comfortably go about installing my favorite OS to this awesome laptop

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-10-11 07:05:33

jbodhorn wrote:

I know I have to use the Windows bootloader or down the line it's going to mess something up, so I'm assuming I'm going to have to do something similar to what I did on my last Win10/Arch laptop.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … boot_order

My problem is I don't fully understand how UEFI works

https://www.happyassassin.net/2014/01/2 … work-then/

I've heard that rm -rf / on a UEFI machine can make it unable to boot permanently because it removes the firmware installed to the boot partition and since this firmware is no longer available to the computer it can't boot from an external source.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … t_efivarfs

I think that bug is being (or already has been) corrected at the kernel level.

jbodhorn · 2016-10-12 04:30:26

Thanks much for the links, my install went well thus far, still have some driver issues to figure out though.

I found this link that you posted: https://www.happyassassin.net/2014/01/2 … work-then/ that helped clear up a lot of my concerns before I had read your response

newbie1962 · 2016-10-20 14:47:05

off topic
I would just tell you that I disabled UEFI and installed the same as the Windows 10 anniversarye, you remember windows anniversary,ask to minus 5-6 hours with adsl 20 mega.

Last edited by newbie1962 (2016-10-20 14:47:30)

jbodhorn · 2016-11-14 23:02:46

I don't currently have my Laptop because after owning it three weeks it had to be RMA'd... but anyway I found that when I resized my windows partition to make room for Linux it broke Lenovo's onekey recovery. Before even attempting to use Lenovo's recovery app I deleted my Linux partitions and resized my windows partition back to its original size. Is there any way to install Linux and not break Lenovo's recovery partition/app? I had not touched any partitions aside from my windows partition and all I had done was shrink it to create un-allocated space so I could install Arch.

Any input could be quite valuable, so thanks in advance to anyone that can help if they can help

jesc516 · 2016-11-15 02:13:37

jbodhorn wrote:

I don't currently have my Laptop because after owning it three weeks it had to be RMA'd... but anyway I found that when I resized my windows partition to make room for Linux it broke Lenovo's onekey recovery. Before even attempting to use Lenovo's recovery app I deleted my Linux partitions and resized my windows partition back to its original size. Is there any way to install Linux and not break Lenovo's recovery partition/app? I had not touched any partitions aside from my windows partition and all I had done was shrink it to create un-allocated space so I could install Arch.
Any input could be quite valuable, so thanks in advance to anyone that can help if they can help

make sure you are resizing the partition where the C:\ drive which, if windows is the only os, should be the last partition. if windows was installed in efi format, then just make sure you mount the EFI parition to /boot when you are installing arch. also, i would recommend using systemd-boot (previously called gummiboot) very, very easy to setup. one simple command and you are good to go. you will not use the windows boot loader. even when you use grub, you do not use the windows boot loader, you use grub.

this is my windows efi disk

Disk /dev/sda: 238.5 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: B5

Device       Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1     2048    923647    921600   450M Windows recovery environment
/dev/sda2   923648   1128447    204800   100M EFI System
/dev/sda3  1128448   1161215     32768    16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/sda4  1161216 234440703 233279488 111.2G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda5 ................................................... Linux filesystem

so you would mount /dev/sda5 to /mnt, create /mnt/boot and then mount /dev/sda2 to /mnt/boot. then run bootctl install. done. obviously follow all other install procedures prior to and thereafter.

...

$ mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
$ mkdir /mnt/boot
$ mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot
$ pacstrap -i /mnt base [base-devel]
$ genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
$ arch-chroot /mnt
... install any packages you need, wireless etc.., configure locale etc...
$ bootctl install
... get the PARTUUID for the /root partition
$ blkid -s PARTUUID -o value /dev/sda5 > /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
$ vi /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
-------------------------------------------------------------------
|    title Arch Linux
|   linux /vmlinuz-linux
|    initrd /initramfs-linux.img
|    options root=PARTUUID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
-------------------------------------------------------------------
$ exit

Last edited by jesc516 (2016-11-15 02:23:43)

Arch Linux

#1 2016-10-10 22:29:05

UEFI dual boot installation tips for first time dual booting with UEFI

#2 2016-10-11 07:05:33

Re: UEFI dual boot installation tips for first time dual booting with UEFI

#3 2016-10-12 04:30:26

Re: UEFI dual boot installation tips for first time dual booting with UEFI

#4 2016-10-20 14:47:05

Re: UEFI dual boot installation tips for first time dual booting with UEFI

#5 2016-11-14 23:02:46

Re: UEFI dual boot installation tips for first time dual booting with UEFI

#6 2016-11-15 02:13:37

Re: UEFI dual boot installation tips for first time dual booting with UEFI

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