Arch Linux

mikytolon

Member

Registered: 2018-06-28

Posts: 2

[SOLVED] "Read-only" error when installing systemd-boot

Hi everyone.

I'm currently trying to install Arch in VirtualBox and it's the first time I'm doing it in UEFI mode. I chose to install systemd-boot as the bootloader following the EFI partition and systemd-boot installation guides but I'm stuck in the installation of systemd-boot. The problem comes from the following command. I'm executing it from arch-chroot:

$ bootctl --path=/boot install
Created "/boot/EFI".
Created "/boot/EFI/systemd".
Created "/boot/EFI/BOOT".
Created "/boot/loader/entries".
Copied "/usr/lib/systemd/boot/efi/systemd-bootx64.efi" to "/boot/EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi".
Copied "/usr/lib/systemd/boot/efi/systemd-bootx64.efi" to "/boot/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI".
Failed to create EFI Boot variable entry: Read-only file system

It's strange because that command was able to copy a bunch of files so far. Just in case I checked if Arch booted in UEFI mode with the following command:

efivar --list

Also I made sure to mount the EFI partition as read-write and indeed it is. I can create, modify or remove files in the EFI partition manually though:

$ mount -t vfat -o rw /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
$ mount | grep sda1
/dev/sda1 on /mnt/boot type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro)

The EFI partition is marked as ESP when I created it with fdisk and I formatted it in fat32:

$ parted -l
Model: ATA VBOX HARDDISK (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 21.5GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End      Size    File system  Name  Flags
 1      1049kB  578MB    577MB   fat32              boot, esp
 2      578MB   11.3GB   10.7GB  ext4
 3      11.3GB  21.5GB   10.2GB  ext4

I searched all over the internet and checked systemd-boot troubleshooting with no luck. I found similar problems but the solutions don't work for me. What am I doing wrong? Thank you for reading and I'm looking forward to your replies.

Last edited by mikytolon (2018-06-28 12:48:11)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,072

Re: [SOLVED] "Read-only" error when installing systemd-boot

The read-only message refers to EFI entries added to your NVRAM, not to your EFI partition. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Vi … n_EFI_mode Suggests that VirtualBox's implementation is incomplete and this behaviour expected to a certain degree, if you can reboot and systemd-boot starts properly everything should be correct.

Last edited by V1del (2018-06-28 11:10:54)

mikytolon

Member

Registered: 2018-06-28

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] "Read-only" error when installing systemd-boot

It's working perfectly. Thank you!