Arch Linux

Ada

Member

Registered: 2016-08-18

Posts: 13

no bootable device

Hi,

I just got a new Laptop:
Acer TravelMate X3 X349-G2-M-5910 Intel Core i5-7200U 8GB DDR4 256GB PCIe SSD Full-HD IPS Linux

It comes with "endless OS" preinstalled, which did actually boot. I replaced it and whatever I do now, when rebooting after installation, it will say "no bootable device found".

The full story: After installing arch for about a dozen times, I decided to try antergos this time, as I heard it basically is arch with an installer. I disabled secure boot, and installed antergos. I did not manually partition the drive, but had the installer do it.
First, I chose systemd-boot as bootloader. Everything seemed to work -> reboot -> no bootable device found
I checked a reasonable boot order in the firmware interface of course. What seemed a little odd, is that the hard drive showed ub as "unknown intel xxx..xxx (256GB). But on the live system it showed up as /dev/nvme0n1 with partitions /dev/nvme0n1p1, /dev/nvme0n1p2,...
Everything seemed to be where it should. /etc/fstab looked fine (to what I can say), kernel was there, vmlinux-linux. I concluded it would be the bootloader.

I reinstalled, this time using GRUB2 as bootloader in the installer. Same result.
I now tried to configure efibootmgr (as I use it on my main notebook), redo the mkinitcpio. No improvements.

Then I switched to legacy boot and reinstalled. Still "no bootable device found"

I switched back to UEFI and now returned to a "classical" arch iso and did the whole installation manually. 512MB vfat partition mounted as /efi.
A root partition, an extra /home partition and a swap partition. Tried efibootmgr and GRUB2. Every time I do the installation, everything seems to work fine, until reboot.

So I cannot even post any error messages.

Any idea how I could overcome this nuisance would be highly appreciated.
I will gladly provide any extra information you deem helpful.

Thank you very much in advance

EDIT: due to upcoming desperation I tried Manjaro. Same result at first, but then I noticed, the installer allows me to choose existing EFI bootloaders. The current entries are:
(hd1,gpt1) /efi/grub/grubx64.efi
(hd1,gpt1)/efi/Manjaro/grubx64.efi
(hd1,gpt1)/efi/boot/bootx64.efi

The first one will end in the grub rescue shell, but the other two options do actually start the installed manjaro. Interestingly, with the third option the touchpad will not work.

Still do not understand what the problem is.

Last edited by Ada (2019-01-25 11:01:43)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,447

Re: no bootable device

The first one is likely to be the Arch GRUBs boot loader, which is now disfunct as you removed it's entries.

It's quite likely that the underlying issue is with your UEFI firmware and you should go through that and check on whether that allows you to manually set a proper default entry.

As we don't care about Manjaro or Antergos, do a proper Arch install, post the output of mount and the exact command used to install GRUB as well as efibootmgr -v in [ code ] tags (or from a pastebin client)

Ada

Member

Registered: 2016-08-18

Posts: 13

Re: no bootable device

Ok thank you for your quick reply.

Sure, I did not mean to get Antergos or Manjaro support. I just wanted to point out, that the problem is always the same. My preferred install is Arch.

I had the same suspicion, that it might be a problem with the UEFI firmware, but I could not find any obvious options that would help me. I can en/disable secure boot (disabled now), I can change the order of boot devices and that pretty much seems to be it.

For GRUB I did

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

and

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

as in the manual. I had the ESP mounted to /efi.
I will do a completely new install and report the demanded informations

Thanks again!

EDIT: I did a new install and the problem persists. I chose systemd-boot (as it was my initial goal and as I have it running on this machine).

The output of mount is (from arch-chroot of course):

/dev/nvme0n1p2 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime)
/dev/nvme0n1p1 on /boot type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
sys on /sys type sysfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
efivarfs on /sys/firmware/efi/efivars type efivarfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=3993364k,nr_inodes=998341,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime)
run on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,mode=755)
tmp on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
airootfs on /etc/resolv.conf type overlay (rw,relatime,lowerdir=/run/archiso/sfs/airootfs,upperdir=/run/archiso/cowspace/persistent_ARCH_201901/x86_64/upperdir,workdir=/run/archiso/cowspace/persistent_ARCH_201901/x86_64/workdir)

I then did

# bootctl --path=/boot install

Created "/boot/EFI".
Created "/boot/EFI/systemd".
Created "/boot/EFI/BOOT".
Created "/boot/loader".
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".
Created EFI boot entry "Linux Boot Manager".$

I edited the file /boot/loader/loader.conf as follows:

#timeout 3
#console-mode keep
#default fa1e460cf7c84ae6aec95ef492a78e3a-*
default	arch
timeout 3
console-mode max
editor no 

and added the file /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf

title	Arch Linux
linux	/vmlinuz-linux
initrd 	/intel-ucode.img
initrd	/initramfs-linux.img
options	root=/dev/nvme0n1p2 rw

the ucode image is present in /boot, as well as the other images.

I also checked the firmware again. The only thing that appeared interesting to me is "Change TPM (TCM) State", which was enabled. disabling did not help.

What surprises me,too, is that an install in legacy mode did not work.

Thanks again

Last edited by Ada (2019-01-25 13:12:20)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,447

Re: no bootable device

efibootmgr -v with the current steup?

mianka

Member

From: BE LEUVEN

Registered: 2006-05-30

Posts: 230

Re: no bootable device

I have the same problem with an ACER Aspire E5-553G that has run Arch before.I tried Arch "normal" and Archboot: using archboot I get until I have to configure /etc/hosts with nano;when saving it says "no /install/etc".I tried debian/stable also, with the same result, so I guess it's a hardware (setting) problem.When I do a lsblk the partitios are there!
Any direction to search?

Thank you.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,447

Re: no bootable device

I just read OP closely enough, sorry about that, as we all have Acers, this is definitely the case here. You will have to add the entry manually, this can be a bit convoluted, since you will have to enable secure boot (to enable the ability to add a UEFI entry), add the correct entry to trusted UEFI binaries, disable Secure Boot again, and you should have a properly accessible entry. See the remark column on a few models here as well: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop/Acer

Last edited by V1del (2019-01-26 11:18:06)

mianka

Member

From: BE LEUVEN

Registered: 2006-05-30

Posts: 230

Re: no bootable device

Automagically I was able to install Arch on this machine.I used the page http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/faq/id-18 … -uefi.html .It dates back to 10/2013 but it works!

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,447

Re: no bootable device

That guide is really dated, and also not relevant to the issue in this thread