You are not logged in.

#1 2019-01-15 19:25:03

Pumpino
Member
Registered: 2011-06-09
Posts: 69

EFI installation issues on MSI B450-A Pro

I happily ran Arch on multiple systems for years, with all of them being legacy/bios installs. However, I just upgraded to a MSI B450-A Pro with a Ryzen 5 2400G and decided to move to EFI.

Windows and Fedora have installed without any major issues. However, I've tried installing Arch multiple times and even Antergos hangs at the grub installation stage. I'm so frustrated that I'm considering wiping the SSD and returning to the legacy/bios way of doing things, where everything worked fine. I thought I'd post here as a last ditch attempt at getting my setup to work.

There's nothing non-standard about it. Win10 created four partitions, with /dev/sda2 being EFI. I then have a data partition on /dev/sda5, swap on /dev/sda6, Arch on /dev/sda7 and Fedora on /dev/sda8. The EFI partition has boot and esp flags.

Towards the completion of my installation of Arch, I mount /dev/sda2 to /boot and enter grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg and grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=Arch Linux --recheck. I've also tried replacing "recheck" with "removable", since the following thread suggests that MSI motherboards can be problematic with EFI. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 2#p1795752

I suffer through the 10 minutes of  "WARNING: Device /dev/loop0 not initialized in udev database even after waiting 10000000 microseconds." and see that my Fedora installation is correctly detected, but not my Arch installation. On one occasion, the install was at least added to my motherboard's pre-boot menu, but it just left me at a grub> prompt. I'm also left with multiple old listings in the pre-boot menu from trying different things and I don't know how to get rid of them.

I'm just about ready to chuck the towel in. Am I close to getting this EFI setup working or should I simply return to the legacy/bios setup that I'm familiar with?

Offline

#2 2019-01-15 20:59:35

CarbonChauvinist
Member
Registered: 2012-06-16
Posts: 412
Website

Re: EFI installation issues on MSI B450-A Pro

It sounds like you really need to get a better understanding of UEFI. I've found this link, UEFI boot: how does that actually work, then?, to be invaluable personally and it may help you as well.

I would also recommend moving away from GRUB and using systemd-boot instead.

Last edited by CarbonChauvinist (2019-01-15 20:59:48)


"the wind-blown way, wanna win? don't play"

Offline

#3 2019-01-15 20:59:59

thorstenhirsch
Member
Registered: 2005-08-03
Posts: 102

Re: EFI installation issues on MSI B450-A Pro

You can try booting the kernel directly with EFI (so to say: without grub)

# add new entry for ArchLinux (load kernel directly from /dev/sda2==/boot)
efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sda -p 2 -L "ArchLinux" -l \vmlinuz-linux -u "root=/dev/sda7 rw initrd=/initramfs-linux.img"

Offline

#4 2019-01-15 21:24:05

Pumpino
Member
Registered: 2011-06-09
Posts: 69

Re: EFI installation issues on MSI B450-A Pro

CarbonChauvinist wrote:

It sounds like you really need to get a better understanding of UEFI. I've found this link, UEFI boot: how does that actually work, then?, to be invaluable personally and it may help you as well.

I would also recommend moving away from GRUB and using systemd-boot instead.

Thanks for the link. It's certainly a long read, so I'll have a proper look later.

If one is using systemd-boot, what's displayed instead of grub when there are multiple operating systems?

I do need to improve my understanding of EFI, but I also want to get the installation completed successfully ASAP.

Offline

#5 2019-01-15 21:30:46

jasonwryan
Anarchist
From: .nz
Registered: 2009-05-09
Posts: 30,424
Website

Re: EFI installation issues on MSI B450-A Pro

You get a simple menu that you can TAB through to select your system. FWIW, it is much simpler to configure than Grub.


Arch + dwm   •   Mercurial repos  •   Surfraw

Registered Linux User #482438

Offline

#6 2019-01-15 21:38:14

CarbonChauvinist
Member
Registered: 2012-06-16
Posts: 412
Website

Re: EFI installation issues on MSI B450-A Pro

I'd recommend posting your partition layout and your grub.cfg(s) in order to get the best chance of people helping.

lsblk -f

should give us what we need re: partitions.

I'd also pay close attention to Windows Changes Boot Order section of the UEFI wiki.


"the wind-blown way, wanna win? don't play"

Offline

#7 2019-01-16 00:21:03

viniosity
Member
From: New York, NY
Registered: 2005-01-22
Posts: 404
Website

Re: EFI installation issues on MSI B450-A Pro

I followed this guide yesterday with success. Perhaps there's useful information in there for you.

Offline

#8 2019-01-16 00:24:28

jasonwryan
Anarchist
From: .nz
Registered: 2009-05-09
Posts: 30,424
Website

Re: EFI installation issues on MSI B450-A Pro

viniosity wrote:

I followed this guide yesterday with success. Perhaps there's useful information in there for you.

Don't recommend third party guides, particularly stupid video tutorials, that are unsupported here.


Arch + dwm   •   Mercurial repos  •   Surfraw

Registered Linux User #482438

Offline

#9 2019-01-16 06:38:55

Pumpino
Member
Registered: 2011-06-09
Posts: 69

Re: EFI installation issues on MSI B450-A Pro

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, but I decided to reinstall all three OSs in BIOS mode. It might not be the "best" choice, but it works and I understand it.

Offline

#10 2019-01-16 09:47:38

akstrfn
Member
Registered: 2018-04-10
Posts: 11

Re: EFI installation issues on MSI B450-A Pro

I recently had problems with Grub EFI boot and after a few hours of strugle with strange errors I decided to reformat the partition and everything was solved. So that could be worth a try.

Pumpino wrote:

Towards the completion of my installation of Arch, I mount /dev/sda2 to /boot and enter grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg and grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=Arch Linux --recheck.
...
but it just left me at a grub> prompt
...

Did you try making the grub config after installing efi?

Pumpino wrote:

I'm also left with multiple old listings in the pre-boot menu from trying different things and I don't know how to get rid of them.

You can delete old listings using efibootmgr: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rhins … ter/README

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB