Arch Linux

Foxblood

Member

From: Dublin, Ireland

Registered: 2010-10-06

Posts: 29

Arch installation: issue with Grub

Hi, I installed Arch but when it came to the last part, Grub installation, something went awry. I started over, paying much more attention to both the Beginners Guide and the Installation Guide. Again, I ran into difficulty with installing Grub. Both guides say essentially the same thing. "See Category:Boot loaders for available choices and configurations". What, exactly, am I supposed to do? I strongly suspect that I'm missing something obvious but I don't want to go through the whole rigamarole again only to fail again. Any and all advice would be very gratefully received, thanks.

*Edit. I used another OS's Grub but when I run grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg it doesn't see Arch. Also, if I boot directly into the installation drive, I get 'cannot find VMLINUZ, the kernel must be loaded first'

Last edited by Foxblood (2018-08-06 18:25:35)

jasonwryan

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From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

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Re: Arch installation: issue with Grub

There is no Beginners' Guide: that was removed years ago. The Installation Guide directs you to the page of the boot loader/manager of your choosing, IN your case, you would follow the directions on this page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB

Moving to Newbie Corner...

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Foxblood

Member

From: Dublin, Ireland

Registered: 2010-10-06

Posts: 29

Re: Arch installation: issue with Grub

Thanks for the reply but that doesn't help much. When I'm coming to the end of the installation process, I need to install Grub. How? I used pacman -S grub. Obviously, that didn't work. Am I missing something?

BTW, the Beginner's Guide may have been removed but it still exists, I Googled, downloaded and printed it out. Just in case. I have both printouts in front of me.

Just to clarify, after dealing with Time settings, next is Initramfs, I don't need to change anything and move on to Boot Loader. And that's where I don't know how to continue.

The last time I installed Arch, ~ three years ago, I don't remember having this issue.

jasonwryan

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From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

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Re: Arch installation: issue with Grub

My reply didn't help much because there is no information to help with. A start would be telling us about your system: UEFI or BIOS? Output of blkid. The grub config that you have written or generated, etc...

I used pacman -S grub. Obviously, that didn't work.

Didn't work how? The install failed, or it didn't magically configure itself to boot your new install?

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WorMzy

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From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 13,718

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Re: Arch installation: issue with Grub

BTW, the Beginner's Guide may have been removed but it still exists, I Googled, downloaded and printed it out. Just in case. I have both printouts in front of me.

While it's possible, using the page history, to find the content of the Beginners' Guide as it was before it became a redirect to the Installation Guide, it is two years out-of-date and shouldn't be used.

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Foxblood

Member

From: Dublin, Ireland

Registered: 2010-10-06

Posts: 29

Re: Arch installation: issue with Grub

Apologies for the lack of info. System is BIOS. I have Arco, an 'easy' version of Arch, Pinguy and Bodhi installed. I am using Pinguy to run blkid. The result is /dev/sr0: LABEL="ARCH_201807" TYPE="iso9660" .

When installing Arch, at the Bootloader section, both guides say a boot loader must be installed and to look at Category:Bootloaders, which links to the page that you gave me a link to. However, the crucial question of exactly how to proceed is not spelled out. Or, at least, not in terms that are clear to me. I cannot access Category:Bootloaders because I'm in the middle of installing. Was I right to use pacman? The pacman command I used, 'pacman -S grub' seemed to work ok but you can see the result above. I have tried using grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg on both Pinguy and Arco, booting from their respective drives but neither sees the Arch install. I am more than willing to start the process over from scratch but want to be reasonably sure that Grub will work as expected. Thanks for your help.

Foxblood

Member

From: Dublin, Ireland

Registered: 2010-10-06

Posts: 29

Re: Arch installation: issue with Grub

BTW, the Beginner's Guide may have been removed but it still exists, I Googled, downloaded and printed it out. Just in case. I have both printouts in front of me.

While it's possible, using the page history, to find the content of the Beginners' Guide as it was before it became a redirect to the Installation Guide, it is two years out-of-date and shouldn't be used.

I'm well aware that there was a good reason that the BG was removed, At every step I was also aware that the information in the Installation Guide would take precedence over any conflicting info in the BG.

jasonwryan

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From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

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Re: Arch installation: issue with Grub

If you are posting to these boards, why can you not just open another browser tab and follow the link I included to the Grub page? You have to be in the chroot to install Grub and run blkid...

Also, if you have all those other distros, you probably don't need Grub at all on your Arch system: just add it to your existing Grub instance.

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Foxblood

Member

From: Dublin, Ireland

Registered: 2010-10-06

Posts: 29

Re: Arch installation: issue with Grub

My installation attempt is over for now. I'm posting this from a restarted into Pinguy install. . Thanks for the chroot info, I'll try with that. The problem with the other distros is that something in the Grub install seems to have not worked. At least inasmuch as grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg in each of them finds every OS except Arch. I can't believe that all three distros suddenly developed the same problem, makes more sense to look at what they have in common - Grub. Is there any other possible cause for the Grub configure command to fail across all three? What is it that they all don't see?

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

Website

Re: Arch installation: issue with Grub

No idea, I don't use Grub. But I know if you use it from Arch, you need to install os-prober for that fucntionality.

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Foxblood

Member

From: Dublin, Ireland

Registered: 2010-10-06

Posts: 29

Re: Arch installation: issue with Grub

My thanks to all who have offered assistance. Just to cut to the heart of my main question, was I correct to use pacman to install Grub or not? Thanks.

peterklarc

Member

Registered: 2017-03-28

Posts: 28

Re: Arch installation: issue with Grub

Hi,
Maybe something like this:
- live iso:

mount /dev/sdx1 /mnt
arch-chroot /mnt
grub-install /dev/sdx
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
exit
umount /dev/sdx1

sdx1 or other from cmmd: blkid

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 19,113

Re: Arch installation: issue with Grub

@Foxblood just installing the grub package does not install it as the system's boot loader.
Installing the package under arch would not help the other installations of grub find the arch install.
Do you want to replace the existing grub boot loader with grub as packaged by arch which may not detect the other installations?

Just to cut to the heart of my main question, was I correct to use pacman to install Grub or not?

You seem to be assuming there is a right solution that would either require the above or not.

ray731

Member

Registered: 2018-01-27

Posts: 23

Re: Arch installation: issue with Grub

@Foxblood, you may install grub from any iso to any partition supported by grub and make simple grub.cfg for all your distros. For example