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#1 2017-01-18 20:12:20

jakonen
Member
Registered: 2017-01-18
Posts: 1
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Boot fails in an attempt to create an universal key with Syslinux

I have always wanted to achieve a USB installation of Arch that would work virtually on all the computers I encounter.
I followed my typical installation procedure but yet failed to reach the final goal.

I booted on my Arch .iso stick in BIOS mode and formatted the destination drive in cfdisk and used mkfs to make the sole partition of the drive to be ext4.
After checking Syslinux wiki, I even included -O \^64bit in the mkfs command.

After this I proceeded just normally and ultimately generated the fstab (using UUID) and then after chrooting into the drive I downloaded syslinux abd gptfdisk since it is required in my case. Obviously, I installed syslinux using `syslinux-install_update -i -a -m` command and everything worked as expected. And finally, I took my destination partition's UUID using blkid and wrote that to my syslinux config file in the /boot directory.

`root=UUID=the_id`

This should be all needed? I rebooted and it worked on the pc but when I plugged it into any other pc in my house (and at school) it failed booting. No root / boot device found. Syslinux menu appeared and that is strange. The UUID doesn't seem to be found by any other computer.

I booted onto my Arch live stick on a random PC and checked the UUID of the created installation drive and it was identical to the one I wrote to the config. Strange.

After numerous attempts, I tried using PARTUUID but with no luck.

So, now I am desperate but I hope there is someone who knows what the cause could be.

And btw, I really cannot use any different boot loader. Syslinux is the way to go - it just needs some fixing.

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