System Not Booting From EFI Partition After Fresh Arch Installation

egfraz · 2017-05-09 05:54:20

Hello! Sorry if this has been addressed elsewhere in the forums. I searched but in the threads I saw, the user was usually getting errors when getting to GRUB or some other Boot Manager whereas I cannot get to GRUB at all, or I implement the fix and my system still is not working.

My System:
- CPU: Intel Core i3 7320
- Motherboard: MSI H11M Pro-VD
- Hard Drive: WD Blue 1TB SATA 6 Gb/s 7200 RPM 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch Desktop Hard Drive (WD10EZEX)
- Memory: Crucial DDR4 4GB 2133MHz by Micron Tech, Inc
- Only Arch is installed at this time, though other partitions have been created in anticipation of a multi-boot system.
- I initially had a WD 3TB NAS Hard Drive that I thought was new, but had Windows installed on it, as the original hard drive. I removed it as soon as I discovered this, so I don't see why that would have any impact but fyi just in case it is related

Issue:
After completing the installation guide, Arch will not start on my system when I remove the installation media (USB). Initially upon rebooting and removing the installation media, I received this message:

"Reboot and Select proper Boot device or insert media in selected Boot Device and press a key."

After I first entered my motherboards EFI Graphical Interface, the above message stopped displaying and I began going directly into the EFI graphical interface anytime I booted without the installation media inserted.

When the installation media is inserted, I get this menu upon boot:

http://imgur.com/iVdNcpA

Which I am assuming is the UEFI boot menu, not the GRUB menu. It defaults to the Archiso option.

What I Have Tried So Far:

- As stated above, I completed all the steps in the Arch Installation Guide (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide). I did not run into any errors.
- Reviewed the Article on UFI (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/sU … _Interface):
- /sys/firmware/efi exists and I'm able to run efivar -l without errors
- Kernel bitness matches UEFI bitness
- Confirmed the following kernel config options are present:
CONFIG_RELOCATABLE=y
CONFIG_EFI=y
CONFIG_EFI_STUB=y
CONFIG_FB_EFI=y
CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y
- The wiki says CONFIG_EFI_VARS must be disabled, I've confirmed it is not defined at all
- Confirmed that efivarfs is mounted and manually added it to the /etc/fstab (while chrooted into the install)
- efibootmgr shows entries for EFI partition, Hard Disk and USB drive (in that order). I also changed the order to Hard Dish, EFI, USB but issue persists

- Regarding GRUB, the ESP was definitely mounted at /mnt/boot/ from Archiso and I can see the GRUB files in the partition. Followed the UEFI GRUB installation process at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … allation_2 and did not receive any error message. Also generated the config file messaging (no customization of GRUB config attempted).

- Also, per some recommendations on the forum, I enabled the boot and esp flags on the arch root partition (enabling boot automatically enable esp), still this did not allow me to boot the Arch install without the installation media.

Diagnostic Information (taken while chrooted into the Arch install):

$ df -h:
Filesystem     Size      Used      Avail     Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3      12G       1.2G      11G       10%  /
/dev/sda1      511M      46M       466M      9%   /boot
udev           1.9G      0         1.9G      0%   /dev
shm            1.9G      0         1.9G      0%   /dev/shm
run            1.9G      0         1.9G      0%   /run
tmp            1.9G      0         1.9G      0%   /tmp
airootfs       256M      276K      256M      1%   /etc/resolve.conf

$ parted /dev/sda print:
Model: ATA WDC WD10EZEX-60W (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number    Start     End       Size      File system    Name      Flags
1         1049kB    538MB     537MB     fat32          EFI       boot, esp 
2         538MB     2000MB    1462MB    linux-swap(v1) SWAP      
3         2000MB    15.0GB    13.0GB    ext4           Arch      boot, esp
4         15.0GB    30.0GB    15.0GB    ext4           Ubuntu
5         30.0GB    45.0GB    15.0GB    ext4           Minix
6         45.0GB    60.0GB    15.0GB    ext4           FreeBSD
7         60.0GB    260GB     200GB     ext4           Data
8         260GB     760GB     500GB     ext4           Media

$ cat /etc/fstab
# /dev/sda3
UUID=e4887b81-85be-4f74-9e35-194f913fd88c    /         ext4      rw,realtime,data=ordered      0 1

# /dev/sda1
UUID=EA09-EO8C      /boot     vfat      rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro     0 2

efivarfs        /sys/firmware/efi/efivars     efivarfs       ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime     0 0

$ efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0003
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0003,0001,0002
Boot0001 Hard Drive
Boot0002 USB KEY
Boot0003* UEFI: USB DISK 2.0 PMAP

The following entries excepted from dmesg output looked like warnings/errors, but not sure if they are related to this issue:

[0.000000] No NUMA Configuration found
[0.088571] x2apic: IRQ Remapping doesn't support X2APIC mode
[0.468905] APCI FADT declares the system doesn't support PCIe ASPM, so disable it
[0.581151] system 00:08: [mem 0xfee00000 - 0xfeefffff] could not be reserved
[0.581174] system 00:09: [mem 0xfe000000 - 0xfe01ffff] could not be reserved
[2.927064] GHES: HEST is not enabled!
[2.971503] PM: Hibirnation image not present or could not be loaded
[3.009974] r8169 0000:01:00.0: can't disable ASPM, OS doesn't have ASPM control
[3.011440] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: cache line size of 64 is not supported
[3.336733] [drm] failed to retrieve link info, disabling eDP
[3.368232] ACPI Error: [DSSP] Namespace lookup failure, AE_NOT_FOUND (20160831/psargs-359)
[3.368235] ACPI Error: METHOD parse/execution failed [\SB.PCIO.PRTO._EFT] (Node ffff88016a0e9d98), AE_NOT_FOUND (20160831/psargs-543)
[3.369136] ACPI Error: [DSSP] Namespace lookup failure, AE_NOT_FOUND (20160831/psargs-359)
[3.369138] ACPI Error: METHOD parse/execution failed [\SB.PCIO.PRTO._EFT] (Node ffff88016a0e9d98), AE_NOT_FOUND (20160831/psargs-543)

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide. I'm kind of at a loss at this point, but I really want to get Arch working on my system.

Last edited by egfraz (2017-05-09 05:55:57)

LaurentvdB · 2017-05-09 12:52:59

Hello!

The configuration of your drive seems to be okay, but your output of efibootmgr is a bit strange. Only the last entry is enabled (the one with the star) and that one says it is a USB. Did you select that name on purpose?

I suggest chrooting into your system and reinstalling grub:

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

NB: do not forget to generate a configuration file for GRUB before installing it:

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Could you post the output of both commands?

egfraz · 2017-05-09 16:04:58

Hello LaurentvdB. Thanks for pointing out that issue with the enable flag in the efibootmgr output. I thought the asterisk just signified which drive the system was booting from currently. To see if that was the issue I tried enabling the Hard Drive with efibootmgr -a 0001 and reordering so that the hard drive was first, but the changes do not persist after reboot.

Regarding the USB Drive name, no I did not select that name. I though I reformatted the drive pretty throughouly, but I guess it is possible that the label is something that carried out. It's just a generic Staples 16GB USB.

Interestingly enough, there were some errors this time around when I ran the GRUB installer. Here is the output:

[root@archiso EFI]# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=grub
Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
[868.201925] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev loop0, sector 433920
[868.201944] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev loop0, sector 433922
[868.201945] SQUASHFS error: squashfs_read_data failed to read block 0xd3df331
[868.201945] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read fragment cache entry [d3df331]
[868.201946] SQUASHFS error: Unalble to read page, block d3df331, size 101b94a
# The previous two lines repeat 4 times
[868.202101] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev loop0, sector 433924
# The previous line repeats 7 more times, but with different sector numbers
Installation finished. No error reported.

After that I ran the installer again to see if I would get the same errors, but the output just had two error messages this time:

[root@archiso EFI]# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=grub
Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
[924.066266] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read fragment cache entry [d3df331]
[924.066358] SQUASHFS error: Unalble to read page, block d3df331, size 101b94a
Installation finished. No error reported.

This is the output from generating grub.cfg:

[root@archiso /]# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
[2016.840056] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read fragment cache entry [d3df331]
[2016.840154] SQUASHFS error: Unalble to read page, block d3df331, size 101b94a
# The previous 2 lines repeat 2 times
Generating grub configuration file...
[2017.420606] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read fragment cache entry [d3df331]
[2017.420700] SQUASHFS error: Unalble to read page, block d3df331, size 101b94a
# The previous 2 lines repeat 8 times
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-linux
Found initrd image(s) in /boot: intel-ucode.img initramfs-linux.img
[2018.891401] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read fragment cache entry [d3df331]
[2018.893854] SQUASHFS error: Unalble to read page, block d3df331, size 101b94a
# The previous 2 lines repeat 6 times
Found fallback intrd image(s) in /boot: intel-ucode.img initramfs-linux-fallback.img
[2019.678530] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read fragment cache entry [d3df331]
[2019.680918] SQUASHFS error: Unalble to read page, block d3df331, size 101b94a
done

Thanks

Scimmia · 2017-05-09 16:08:50

You need to chroot into your system before doing any of that

egfraz · 2017-05-09 16:17:40

Hi Schimmia. I had already run arch-chroot when I ran those commands.

Last edited by egfraz (2017-05-09 16:18:22)

Scimmia · 2017-05-09 16:40:55

The squashfs errors would seem to indicate you didn't; or you mounted something in /mnt that you shouldn't have.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2017-05-09 20:41:28

egfraz wrote:

3         2000MB    15.0GB    13.0GB    ext4           Arch      boot, esp

You will need to reverse this change, those flags identify that as an EFI system partition.

If your motherboard is not accepting new NVRAM entries then you can try the removable loader location, as used by USB sticks and the like (I can't remember if systemd-boot does this automatically):

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
# mkdir -p /mnt/EFI/BOOT
# cp /mnt/EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi /mnt/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI

If that doesn't work, try the Windows bootloader location:

# mkdir -p /mnt/EFI/Microsoft/Boot
# cp /mnt/EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi /mnt/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi

http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloader … ive-naming

EDIT: corrected case (for the non-case-sensitive FAT filesystem, ofc).

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2017-05-09 20:42:53)

zilverling · 2018-01-06 21:31:38

Thanks for this thread.

I had a similar issue on my ASrock N3700 with AMI UEFI BIOS version N3700-ITX P1.80
Couldn't get the system boot properly until I switched off Compatibility Support Module (CSM) under Boot options.

Arch Linux

#1 2017-05-09 05:54:20

System Not Booting From EFI Partition After Fresh Arch Installation

#2 2017-05-09 12:52:59

Re: System Not Booting From EFI Partition After Fresh Arch Installation

#3 2017-05-09 16:04:58

Re: System Not Booting From EFI Partition After Fresh Arch Installation

#4 2017-05-09 16:08:50

Re: System Not Booting From EFI Partition After Fresh Arch Installation

#5 2017-05-09 16:17:40

Re: System Not Booting From EFI Partition After Fresh Arch Installation

#6 2017-05-09 16:40:55

Re: System Not Booting From EFI Partition After Fresh Arch Installation

#7 2017-05-09 20:41:28

Re: System Not Booting From EFI Partition After Fresh Arch Installation

#8 2018-01-06 21:31:38

Re: System Not Booting From EFI Partition After Fresh Arch Installation

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