Arch Linux

ilkyest

Member

From: Brazil

Registered: 2010-02-13

Posts: 269

EFI installing. I'm confused with wiki. What is the correct way?

Hello pals.

I'm trying install arch linux with EFI. If I understood:

create/format the /mnt partition
create directory /mnt/boot and mount "/boot/efi" in "/mnt/boot/"
create directory /home and mount
so I go until arch-chroot... install iw, dialog, etc in arch-chroot. I install grub, os-prober, and I don't know how I continue.

1) Should I install efibootmgr?
2) Should I only run "grub-mkconfig -o"? and don't run grub-install
3) Should I install, above efibootmgr, any other "xUEFI thing" that is necessary? (intel-ucode is already installed)

On fedora forums, there are posts about don't run grub-install on uefi systems. Only install grub2-efi (I mind that is efibootmgr on arch linux)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,435

Re: EFI installing. I'm confused with wiki. What is the correct way?

What is /boot/efi in your case? This doesn't make any sense, you will want to mount your ESP partition to /mnt/boot /boot/efi should either not exist, or be a partition on the live image which you don't want to mount there.

For the bullet points:

1. If you want to manipulate and/or check on your EFI entries after installation, you can do so. It isn't inherently required

2. No, you will have to run both follow https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … allation_2 and not some random fedora  board posts.

3. Shouldn't be necessary.

Read our wiki, don't follow fedora posts, they are for a different environment.

ilkyest

Member

From: Brazil

Registered: 2010-02-13

Posts: 269

Re: EFI installing. I'm confused with wiki. What is the correct way?

V1del, I only look for wiki.
The fedora appointment I did cause I haven't find any solution.

What is /boot/efi in your case? This doesn't make any sense, you will want to mount your ESP partition to /mnt/boot /boot/efi should either not exist, or be a partition on the live image which you don't want to mount there.

As I use dualbooting with windows 10,  I understood I should select "esp" to windows boot directory

On it, there should be a directory named "EFI". If these criteria are met, this is your ESP. Make note of the partition number. You will need to know which one it is, so you can mount it later on while installing GRUB to it. In the following of this section esp must be substituted by it in commands.

So, following the wiki
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide

Update the system clock
Partition the disks
Format the partitions
Mount the file systems

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

# mkdir /mnt/boot <<<< I wen't create this, since it's present, cause windows.

# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot <<<<<< this I'll point to windows /boot directory, what means "mount /dev/<windows boot directory> /mnt/boot/efi"

and... arch-chroot /bin/bash

follow until:
... Boot loader

When I install grub, os-prober, intel-ucode, efibootmgr

and run:
# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=esp_mount --bootloader-id=grub

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,435

Re: EFI installing. I'm confused with wiki. What is the correct way?

Use [ code ] tags for pasting terminal output.

# mkdir /mnt/boot <<<< I wen't create this, since it's present, cause windows. 

You have to create this, otherwise the following mount command will throw an error. You have to have some directory where the partition is mounted to

# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot <<<<<< this I'll point to windows /boot directory, what means "mount /dev/<windows boot directory> /mnt/boot/efi"

Correct. But don't do the Windows part. Windows doesn't have the notion of a /boot directory you don't have to accomodate for it in your linux environment. After the

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot

you will notice the Windows EFI directory present at /mnt/boot

and... arch-chroot /bin/bash

follow until:
... Boot loader

When I install grub, os-prober, intel-ucode, efibootmgr

and run:

# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=esp_mount --bootloader-id=grub

Replace esp_mount with the location of your ESP, given you've done the steps as mentioned so far, the correct invocation would be

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=grub

lpr1

Member

Registered: 2017-10-08

Posts: 126

Re: EFI installing. I'm confused with wiki. What is the correct way?

Windows creates it's own boot partition for efi, so you should use that partition for your efi boot if you are on one drive (or even multiple drives, there should be only one efi partition with all boot entries, two partition might confuse UEFI on some motherboards).

For example you have /dev/sda and you have sda1 as Windows 10 efi partition, sda2 for Windows 10 OS itself, and you want to install Arch, you create just one sda3 partition, mount that partition on /mnt, and mount sda1 on /mnt/boot, then you continue with pacstrap etc.

So basically, in this example we have:
/dev/sda1 = mounted as /mnt/boot (fat32 partition)
/dev/sda2 = not mounted (Windows 10 NTFS partition)
/dev/sda3 = mounted on /mnt (ext4 or your linux filesystem of choice partition for Arch)

In this example you run:
grub-install /dev/sda

and it should automatically detect everything, I never run with "--target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=esp_mount --bootloader-id=grub" and it works fine, I'm sure that's not proper for every system, so you should follow Arch Wiki.

You always need to run "grub-mkconfig -o ...." because that creates grub configuration file, so it is required regardless if it's EFI or legacy(BIOS).