Arch Linux

Coalms

Member

Registered: 2020-04-22

Posts: 59

[SOLVED] Acer Nightmare installing arch with poor bios

Hello everyone I....have a small problem with my noooot so good laptop bios so I wourld like to request some guidance from my senior wizards on installing Arch

So keeping things simple,
First "the catch" aka "Acer aspire E5-575G-534G" :

Main problem: Bios dosen't recognize almost any operating system
(windows vista to 7,
ubuntu ,
some versions of opensuse except the current one [ Leap 15.1] ,
lubuntu,
pop os,
debian,
solus,

some versions of mint are the ones i have tested so far and dont boot after install)

Secondary: Arch linux on the other hand,since i changed the cable that connects my screen with the motherboard everything has gone downhill,probably because i got a different model , this leads to cause problems whenever i get my nvidia card working properly ( either computer wont boot or nvidia wont but but intergrated gpu will , I have reasons to believe this has something to do with Secure Boot)

Now to my request,witch is Im not asking you to fix my problem but help me analyse it from a different prespective

Since i have somehow managed to instal opensuse 15.1(for now somewhat stable) I would like not to play with my luck but the flexibility it gives me and the problems it causes are too unfavourable for me to keep so I want to install Arch on a new partition on the disk,keep both operating systems bootable untill I manage to stabilize Arch and make it bootable

Why is this a problem?:

Firstly https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ac … _Linux_ISO suggested that I use bcfg  to finalize my install (? alongside grub presumably ?)
the problem is Im not the most experienced linux user with less than half a year under my belt plus to do all of the above I wourld like to avoid the extra headache and at least get a few tips and most desirably a point to the right direction ,

Thank you kindly in advance,

Edit: Readability

Problem solved apperantly i had to install open source nvidia drivers on install and remove then and install binary ones on boot,the uefi problem ...just never turned secure boot once and it fixed itself,i think it has to do with me having a bootable operating system in there from the start for uefi to know where to look since turning secure boot on to white list arch efi used to show no boot in the past,but im pulling "solutions" out of thin air atm since I dont really understand what the fix is maybe the conversation i had here unclogged my mind or something,anyway thank you for your time explaining and have a nice week

Last edited by Coalms (2020-04-23 09:24:21)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,657

Re: [SOLVED] Acer Nightmare installing arch with poor bios

Welcome to the boards,

Acers are indeed a bit weird, but you don't need to use bcfg.  (I'm not entirely certain based on the description, you did manage to boot and (can theoretically) install based on the ISO right? that would at least align with my experience/expectation)  Once you've done  this, go into the UEFI, enable secure boot -> save -> go back in. Now that secure boot is enabled you should have an additional page where you can add "trusted" binaries. Select the relevant boot loader you've set up on your EFI partition, give it an entry name --> save --> go back in --> disable secureboot (unless you want to actually and actively deal with it but I assume not) secure boot should be disabled and the previously created entry should stick.

Alternatively you could also add Arch's kernels to Suses GRUB (or whatever the boot loader is there) to boot them that way. What you should do regardless of other partitioning decisions is to share at least the EFI partition between the systems, where you'll at minimum will want to install some boot loader, if you don't have the space for multiple kernel images you'll want to use GRUB or refind or so.

What might also be problematic, is suse installed with secure boot compat in mind? if you do the above it "might" (not certain here) be necessary to flip flop between secure boot enabled/disabled depending on which entry to boot.

Also (don't take this the wrong way and you did ask for it) try to cut down on the prose next time, while it is nice to hear that you think we are lovely and it's good that you have confidence in yourself to tackle this that's all completely useless information in regards to the problem at hand and makes a jarring read for someone that needs factual information of the problem. Your post could be half as long as it is now and have the same amount of real technical value/hard facts on the problem, maybe read http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html to get a feel of how we expect questions to be structured.

Last edited by V1del (2020-04-22 07:24:14)

Coalms

Member

Registered: 2020-04-22

Posts: 59

Re: [SOLVED] Acer Nightmare installing arch with poor bios

Welcome to the boards,

Acers are indeed a bit weird, but you don't need to use bcfg.  (I'm not entirely certain based on the description, you did manage to boot and (can theoretically) install based on the ISO right? that would at least align with my experience/expectation)  Once you've done  this, go into the UEFI, enable secure boot -> save -> go back in. Now that secure boot is enabled you should have an additional page where you can add "trusted" binaries. Select the relevant boot loader you've set up on your EFI partition, give it an entry name --> save --> go back in --> disable secureboot (unless you want to actually and actively deal with it but I assume not) secure boot should be disabled and the previously created entry should stick.

Alternatively you could also add Arch's kernels to Suses GRUB (or whatever the boot loader is there) to boot them that way. What you should do regardless of other partitioning decisions is to share at least the EFI partition between the systems, where you'll at minimum will want to install some boot loader, if you don't have the space for multiple kernel images you'll want to use GRUB or refind or so.

What might also be problematic, is suse installed with secure boot compat in mind? if you do the above it "might" (not certain here) be necessary to flip flop between secure boot enabled/disabled depending on which entry to boot.

Also (don't take this the wrong way and you did ask for it) try to cut down on the prose next time, while it is nice to hear that you think we are lovely and it's good that you have confidence in yourself to tackle this that's all completely useless information in regards to the problem at hand and makes a jarring read for someone that needs factual information of the problem. Your post could be half as long as it is now and have the same amount of real technical value/hard facts on the problem, maybe read http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html to get a feel of how we expect questions to be structured.

V1del
Thank you for the reply,

Secure but is infact the reason i have posted this here,it is the weirdest problem I have come across to this point and it makes me dizzy just thinking of how it works since it works in a different than normal way

as for the last paragraph,thank you for your honesty,I just knew im too talkative for forums like this and i needed a reference point to know how to communicate in here so my and your time here dosent pass with frustration,i will give your link a read and edit my post later when i get to it,thsnl you

Last edited by Coalms (2020-04-22 16:18:07)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,657

Re: [SOLVED] Acer Nightmare installing arch with poor bios

Well this is kind of important to how you want resp. need to tackle this. Is secure boot enabled right now? Are you booting suse via secure boot?

Coalms

Member

Registered: 2020-04-22

Posts: 59

Re: [SOLVED] Acer Nightmare installing arch with poor bios

Well this is kind of important to how you want resp. need to tackle this. Is secure boot enabled right now? Are you booting suse via secure boot?

At this moment I'm going with secure boot,
the problem i have noticed in this particular model is that secure boot acts...unpredictably so would you suggest I install arch on Legacy mode or UEFI secure boot off and turn it back on whenever i need to go back to OpenSUSE

The reason i am asking is I couldn't find any information on the negatives of having Legacy mode or secure boot off while running arch,the way i understand it now secure boot on caused my Dedicated GPU to not turn on,unreadable by the system(only on arch)

Edit: Secure boot on this system needs to stay on one mode if i understand it correctly,so if i install arch with SB off and turn it on and enable the EFI ,GPU wont boot , if i install while SB is on and then enable the EFI and then turn it off pc wont boot(No disk found)
Edit 2:Also have'nt tried to install with Legacy and switch to secure boot since the required partition for each is different
Thank you

Last edited by Coalms (2020-04-22 16:17:45)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,657

Re: [SOLVED] Acer Nightmare installing arch with poor bios

There shouldn't be any negatives "while running" for secureboot on nor off. The primary question is what can you actively start. Secureboot is for preventing untrusted binaries to be introduced/injected during the firmware/bios phase. Actively setting up secure boot adds quite a bit of complexity to the installation process: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Secure_Boot that I am also not entirely familiar with.

I'm not sure where you are going with your GPU focus, if secure boot is off all HW should be accessible to all processes. It's also very unlikely that your external GPU has any relevance to anything, as it's likely not connected to any display.

I would suggest that if you "just" want to try things out that you do not use secureboot, and use the approach outlined in my first post to have an accessible EFI entry.  Or you get into the meat of things and work through the Secure Boot article to properly sign the EFI binaries.

Coalms

Member

Registered: 2020-04-22

Posts: 59

Re: [SOLVED] Acer Nightmare installing arch with poor bios

There shouldn't be any negatives "while running" for secureboot on nor off. The primary question is what can you actively start. Secureboot is for preventing untrusted binaries to be introduced/injected during the firmware/bios phase. Actively setting up secure boot adds quite a bit of complexity to the installation process: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Secure_Boot that I am also not entirely familiar with.

I'm not sure where you are going with your GPU focus, if secure boot is off all HW should be accessible to all processes. It's also very unlikely that your external GPU has any relevance to anything, as it's likely not connected to any display.

I would suggest that if you "just" want to try things out that you do not use secureboot, and use the approach outlined in my first post to have an accessible EFI entry.  Or you get into the meat of things and work through the Secure Boot article to properly sign the EFI binaries.

Alright Ill take you up on that and try it in a few hours if worse comes to worse ill check how to re-attach GRUB + OpenSUSE through the arch installer ,
i will keep you posted by tomorrow morning on news how things have gone

Coalms

Member

Registered: 2020-04-22

Posts: 59

Re: [SOLVED] Acer Nightmare installing arch with poor bios

Problem solved apperantly i had to install open source nvidia drivers on install and remove then and install binary ones on boot,the uefi problem ...just never turned secure boot once and it fixed itself,i think it has to do with me having a bootable operating system in there from the start for uefi to know where to look since turning secure boot on to white list arch efi used to show no boot in the past,but im pulling "solutions" out of thin air atm since I dont really understand what the fix is maybe the conversation i had here unclogged my mind or something,anyway thank you for your time explaining and have a nice week

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,657

Re: [SOLVED] Acer Nightmare installing arch with poor bios

Glad to hear, please mark as [SOLVED] by editing the title in your first post and prepending that.