Arch Linux

Tillter

Member

Registered: 2020-04-27

Posts: 1

Cant mount partition to /boot/efi

So I'm going through the installation for the first time, and I'm now stuck at installing grub. I've got a partition for it but when I try to mount it to /boot/efi I get an error saying

 [7970.306296] SQUASHFS error: Unable to read fragment cache entry [16d3eb9a]

[7970.308034] SQASHFS error: Unable to read page, block 16d3eb9a, size 101f8d0 

mount: /boot/efi: unknown filesystem type 'vfat'

Now if I swap it to ext4 it will mount, but when I try to point grub towards it I get some error about it not looking like an efi directory.

Sorry if formatting is off, wrote this on my phone as I'm trying to set this up on a laptop that has windows on a seperate(removed during install of arch) ssd

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,560

Website

Re: Cant mount partition to /boot/efi

That looks like either a failing flash drive or a corrupted iso.  Is the flash drive old?  Did you verify the iso checksum before burning to the flash drive?

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

wpkzz

Member

Registered: 2020-01-10

Posts: 43

Re: Cant mount partition to /boot/efi

Okey, it seems that you have a mess with the formatings. Can you boot from the installation media and check the stated format with gdisk or something like that?
Are you sure that you formated the the partition with the right tool, such as mkfs.vfat or mkfs.ext4?
It looks that you formated your partition with ext4, because it mounts like that, but not as vfat.
Grub needs a VFAT partition for the EFI boot thingy, if it is not vfat, it will complain. But you can put the EFI part and the boot part separately. Is a bit more advanced but I
think it helps if by some reason you have to destroy your grub. In my case i have it like this:

# <fs>			<mountpoint>	<type>		<opts>		<dump/pass>
/dev/sda6		/boot		ext4		auto,noatime	1 2
/dev/sda2		/		ext4		noatime		0 1
/dev/sda1		/boot/EFI	vfat		defaults	0 2

( yes yes I know about the UUIDS, Trilby,... I shall solve it later ).
So boot is in its own ext4 partition and inside it I mount a vfat for the EFI. When I install the grub, I put that last one as the parameter in the installation command:

# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/dev/sda1 --bootloader-id=GRUB

I end up with the EFI thingy inside that partition:

monstruona /boot/EFI/EFI/GRUB # ls
grubx64.efi

And the rest of grub outside this ( theoretically, I could collect kernels and splash images there without problems).

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Moyocoyani, Tloque Nahuaque.

nl6720

The Evil Wiki Admin

Registered: 2016-07-02

Posts: 601

Re: Cant mount partition to /boot/efi

/dev/sda1		/boot/EFI	vfat		defaults	0 2

Where do people get this weird idea to to mount the ESP to /boot/EFI. Why the uppercase? It makes it very easy to confuse it with the EFI directory that's inside the ESP (e.g. you'll get path such as /boot/EFI/EFI/).
If you don't mount the ESP to /boot, then mount it to /efi.

 --efi-directory=/dev/sda1

/dev/sda1 is not a directory.

wpkzz

Member

Registered: 2020-01-10

Posts: 43

Re: Cant mount partition to /boot/efi

Well, yeah, it would be better as you say, with the /efi instead of the /boot/EFI. But I did it like that because the first time i thought the ESP and the EFI directory where the same thing, later I discovered the error, but it works. Yeah, i got the nested EFI/EFI thing. By your tone, it seems to be something quite common. Yeaah, sorry, the correct option is:

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

in my "where do i get that idea" case. Anyhow, let us try to solve Tillter's problem. My guess is that he got the formats wrong.

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Moyocoyani, Tloque Nahuaque.