Arch Linux

jamesdcj

Member

Registered: 2020-04-27

Posts: 3

[SOLVED]Issue with installation on Removable USB

Hi -- I'm having some trouble getting my installation working on a Removable USB drive. I've been following along the instructions from:
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … ble_medium
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB

Installation is done from archiso VM running on Windows host with 8GB USB passed through.

It seems like the issue is more specifically with my GRUB install, or even the GPT/UEFI configuration. After following all the steps from above and selecting the removable USB from my Lenovo L390 boot menu, screen goes black for less than a second and goes back directly to the Lenovo boot menu.

Some info related to GPT/UEFI configuration:

fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Disk /dev/sdb: 7.69 GiB, 8242855936 bytes, 16099328 sectors
Disk model: Flash Disk     
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 34994F0D-1675-F641-9B97-62C76DE2E8E2

Device       Start      End  Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sdb1     2048  1050623  1048576  512M EFI System
/dev/sdb2  1050624 16099294 15048671  7.2G Linux filesystem

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/dev/sdb2 mounted in archiso on /mnt, arch-chroot to /mnt, /dev/sdb1 mounted to /efi:

ls -l1R /efi
/efi:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Apr 17 22:45 EFI
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Apr 27 04:26 System Volume Information

/efi/EFI:
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 17 22:45 BOOT

/efi/EFI/BOOT:
total 132
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 135168 Apr 27 08:59 BOOTX64.EFI

/efi/System Volume Information:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 27 04:26 AadRecoveryPasswordDelete
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 27 04:26 ClientRecoveryPasswordRotation

/efi/System Volume Information/AadRecoveryPasswordDelete:
total 0

/efi/System Volume Information/ClientRecoveryPasswordRotation:
total 0

Commands for installing grub were within arch-chroot /mnt:
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/efi --bootloader-id=GRUB --removable --recheck
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

I didn't want to include contents from /boot/grub/* for brevity but can certainly provide them or anything else if necessary.

Last edited by jamesdcj (2020-04-27 17:15:25)

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 7,732

Website

Re: [SOLVED]Issue with installation on Removable USB

Have you confirmed that EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI actually exists on /dev/sdb1?

Does the Arch ISO image boot from your machine? Perhaps you need to disable Secure Boot, although that isn't necessary for Arch ISO images on all of my UEFI machines.

---

Are you infected with Wetiko?

jamesdcj

Member

Registered: 2020-04-27

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED]Issue with installation on Removable USB

Have you confirmed that EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI actually exists on /dev/sdb1?

Yep -- /dev/sdb1 is FAT32 with that directory structure & bootx64.efi exists.

Does the Arch ISO image boot from your machine? Perhaps you need to disable Secure Boot, although that isn't necessary for Arch ISO images on all of my UEFI machines.

Actually, I have not confirmed if a LiveUSB would boot on this PC. That's probably a good thing to confirm. I'll give that a shot in the meantime.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,523

Website

Re: [SOLVED]Issue with installation on Removable USB

And confirm that the iso actually boots to uefi mode (check efivars once booted).

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"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

jamesdcj

Member

Registered: 2020-04-27

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED]Issue with installation on Removable USB

Okay, some success! Turns out I could not boot to a LiveUSB either -- so as recommended, I tried disabling Secure Boot. Still nothing with LiveUSB. Check BIOS settings and Secure Boot is Enabled...? So, for anyone in the future with Lenovo L390 Yoga running into this problem:
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-S … -p/1794341

After *actually* disabling Secure Boot, had success booting thru to LiveUSB. So, I tried my original bootable USB which also booted into GRUB. Unfortunately for me some later configuration also failed, and it did not find my drive UUID and dropped me to a recovery shell.

Also unfortunately for me, Windows is now complaining about BitLocker because of my changed Secure Boot settings, and it doesn't look like I'll be able to successfully recover that. Soooo, I guess I'll just be going full send and install on hardware instead of the Removable USB. Although, it will be interesting to get to the bottom of that in the future sometime.

I'll update this as resolved, thanks for the help!