Arch Linux

symbolix

Member

Registered: 2016-11-06

Posts: 2

Ended-up with an incomplete installation

Hi,

I tried to install arch linux on a MacBook (MacBookPro10,1) and I have followed the instructions. However, I was unable to complete the process and boot into arch. I have done this 10 years ago, with success, triple booting XP, Ubuntu 7.04 and OSX. However, this time I find the process to be really complicated and most of the information fragmented. Could you please help me with this. Here where I am:

* I have created the linux partition, so my devices are:

/dev/sda1 (EFI)
/dev/sda2 (Apple)
/dev/sda3 (Apple, probably recovery)
/dev/sda4 (Linux)

* I have installed rEFind and configured it, so it loads at start-up.

* I have installed arch linux to /dev/sda4 using a USB Bootable Media.

Now, when I boot with the stick, I can mount /dev/sda4 to /mnt and then when I browse /mnt, I can see that the configuration I have created is there. For example, the files I have created inside /etc (for example vconsole.conf etc.) are there.

But, I had installed and configured quite a lot of packages such as yoaurt, pkgquery (which is dependent) for yoaurt, those have vanished. I had quite a few git checkouts inside /tmp and compiled some packages and these are not there as well.

So it seems like, at some point I have messed up the mount order. The process of constantly going into arch-chroot and mounting things to /mnt and unmounting them etc. This is all really confusing. I would like to start from scratch, clean, but I am not sure which instructions to follow? Could you please help me?

I would like to have rEFind, OSX and Arch all together on a MacBookPro10,1 and I am comfortable with Linux and shells etc. In the process when I was setting up packages to get my wifi working (broadcom-wl), I got familiar with pacman and the other package config tools of Arch, however something had gone wrong during the process.

I hope I can do it again. Thanks.

graysky

Wiki Maintainer

From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,597

Website

Re: Ended-up with an incomplete installation

Not sure what happened but could it be that you installed to a partition that didn't mean to and now that you mount the one you did mean to, are seeing different files?  As the disappearing files on /tmp ... that is to be expected since /tmp is tmpfs and by definition volatile.

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symbolix

Member

Registered: 2016-11-06

Posts: 2

Re: Ended-up with an incomplete installation

Yes,  I guess, going in and out of arch-chroot and mounting and unmounting through out the process messed things up. Everything I have configure and installed is on /mnt which effectively is /dev/sda4. Which is a proper linux disk I have created using cgdisk.

I have gone through so many stages, even managed to mount the EFI partition to /boot and install grub in there. But that ended up being messed up cause the only thing that I was getting when proceeding with the boot menu was a grub prompt and no boot selection etc.

I guess, it was a pretty messy first go.

These are the instructions I have followed:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide

But then there is this:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBookPro11,x

And this:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook

And this:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … structions

And so many other guides and blogs, it seems like there is a lot of information out there and it is really easy to get lost and mix different approaches.

I mean, I even got that bit working:
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=arch_grub --recheck --debug

Not to speak that I have built and compiled the package for broadcom-wl etc.

However, ended no where.