Arch Linux

olocin

Member

Registered: 2018-01-03

Posts: 171

Now unable to boot arch iso from usb stick on t460s

I've been running arch linux on my thinkpad t460s for a few years.
Today I tried to re-install it from a usb stick with arch iso, but failed.
If I use

 dd bs=4M if=path/to/archlinux.iso of=/dev/sdx status=progress oflag=sync 

as suggested in the wiki, after I choose boot from usb and then the first entry, I just get a black screen;
if I use instead what gentoo suggests

 dd if=/path/to/image.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=8192k 

then it starts booting, but gives error

EFI stub: ERROR: Failed to read file
Trying to load files to higher address
EFI stub: ERROR: Failed to read file

Notice that booting the gentoo iso works just fine, so it must be some parameters that got changed since I last installed arch on my machine.

schard

Forum Moderator

From: Hannover

Registered: 2016-05-06

Posts: 2,712

Website

Re: Now unable to boot arch iso from usb stick on t460s

Did you use the latest Arch Installation ISO?
Did you verify its checksum after the download?
Did you try another pen drive?

Last edited by schard (2019-08-19 15:05:49)

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olocin

Member

Registered: 2018-01-03

Posts: 171

Re: Now unable to boot arch iso from usb stick on t460s

I did the first two, as for the third: the same pen drive works fine with gentoo iso.

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 9,003

Website

Re: Now unable to boot arch iso from usb stick on t460s

if I use instead what gentoo suggests
[...]
then it starts booting, but gives error

That's strange because the Gentoo command doesn't flush the buffers and so is less "correct" than the Arch version. But of course the optimal command is:

# cp archlinux.iso /dev/sdX ; sync

Anyway, with the Arch ISO burned to the USB stick can we please see the output of

wipefs /dev/sdX

Replace X with the actual letter assigned to the stick, obviously.

Have you tried using the USB stick with other machines?

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olocin

Member

Registered: 2018-01-03

Posts: 171

Re: Now unable to boot arch iso from usb stick on t460s

 dd bs=4M if=arch.iso of=/dev/sda status=progress oflag=sync 

results in

wipefs /dev/sda
DEVICE OFFSET TYPE    UUID                   LABEL
sda    0x8001 iso9660 2019-08-01-14-29-48-00 ARCH_201908
sda    0x1fe  dos
sda    0x200  gpt

olocin

Member

Registered: 2018-01-03

Posts: 171

Re: Now unable to boot arch iso from usb stick on t460s

Actually, now the same setup seems to boot, so I take it back.