[SOLVED] Need help with installing Arch to a USB. (just reinstalling)

Shyden · 2022-02-18 10:27:34

For the past week or 2 I've been trying to install Arch to a USB drive for a kind of "universal tester" device. I've had a few issues along the way, but the main one is with the booting portion of it. I've read the wiki page over and over again, but cant seem to get anything to work in terms of booting on both MBR and GPT systems. The hybrid disk makes grub give me errors about having to use blocklists, and the other method linked above that doesn't output what it should, only outputs the first "partition." Sorry if this is a dumb question or not clear, I'll try to clarify on parts if asked. Thanks :)

Edit: forgot to mention if it wasnt clear, I'm trying to make this work on EVERY system. So gpt/bios mbr/bios mbr/uefi gpt/uefi, all combinations.

Last edited by Shyden (2022-02-19 17:40:02)

V1del · 2022-02-18 10:32:17

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Multib … T/MBR_boot should handle that.

Shyden · 2022-02-18 10:47:05

As said in the post, I have already tried hybrid disk

Head_on_a_Stick · 2022-02-18 11:17:01

Have you tried just creating a standard GUID partition table with a BIOS boot partition? All the machines I have can boot in either UEFI or non-UEFI mode with that configuration. I've never had to resort to a "hybrid" partition table.

Otherwise please post the actual commands you used and the full, verbatim error messages.

Lone_Wolf · 2022-02-18 16:40:50

UEFI systems can read mbr disks , bios systems often can do nothing with gpt disks .

If you want something that can boot on as much as possible stick to an mbr disk .

You will need an ESP on the MBR disk to boot into uefi mode, probably a bios boot partition and a bootloader that can handle both .
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_sy … oned_disks has info about setting up such an efi boot from mbr (my desktop uses this to boot uefi without needing any gpt disks)

The archlinux official iso also used this method for a long time and may still use it, check its documentation.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2022-02-18 18:00:11

Lone_Wolf wrote:

probably a bios boot partition

A BIOS boot partition is only needed to hold GRUB's core.img on a GPT disk. Drives with an MS-DOS ("MBR" type) partition table store core.img in the MBR region.

Shyden · 2022-02-19 10:02:02

Sorry for taking so long. I have to use a hybrid gpt/mbr disk due to one of my laptops (2007 ish) not being able to boot off of gpt. Due to it not properly booting on my PC 90% the time, I have to manage this with arch-chroot. In this scenario my main hard drive is /dev/sda, and the USB I'm installing on is /dev/sdb. Exact command is "grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sdb --recheck" and since it says I should also install it to the bios boot partition, I do that as well using the command "grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sdb1 --recheck". (information https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Multib … T/MBR_boot as linked from https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Instal … e_machines) Installing on /dev/sdb, I get

grub-install: warning: Attempting to install GRUB to a disk with multiple partition labels. This is not supported yet..
grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
grub-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists.

When I try /dev/sdb1, it outputs

grub-install: warning: Filesystem 'fat' doesn't support embedding.
grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
grub-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists.

I also tried zeroing out /dev/sdb1 to remove the fat partition I put on there (I was getting errors before I formatted it as well) thinking it might do anything, but that outputs an error saying "grub-install: error: unable to identify a filesystem in hostdisk//dev/sdb; safety check can't be performed." Using the --force flag "works," but as said previously it breaks for no reason. I frankly wouldn't like to use mbr, because some UEFI systems seem to require gpt for security reasons (god I hate MS). I'm frankly not sure where to go from this.

The other method is tricking an MBR system into reading GPT in terms of booting (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Partit … g_from_GPT). This wasn't working last night on a VM, but now it seems to be. I frankly don't want to redo the USB, but would be willing to if nobody knows anything else I can do. Sorry if the formatting is weird, and if you need verbose grub logs I should be able to provide them. Thanks again.

Last edited by Shyden (2022-02-19 10:41:18)

Lone_Wolf · 2022-02-19 11:23:58

It's your choice but although the archlinux installation iso changed bootloaders over the years several times , grub was never used .

If I remember correctly isolinux was used as bootloader for it when (u)efi was an exception .
The last few years it uses syslinux for the MBR boot and systemd-boot for the efi boot .

I do suggest you get a different usb stick/disk , put the archlinux iso installation iso on it and check if you can boot reliably with it on lots of systems, especially the 2007 MBR system.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2022-02-19 14:22:08

Shyden wrote:

Sorry for taking so long.

No need to apologise. Take as long as you want, I'm not going anywhere :-)

Shyden wrote:

it says I should also install it to the bios boot partition

No, it doesn't:

ArchWiki wrote:

you can also install GRUB on your MBR-bootable data partition

Shyden · 2022-02-19 16:02:44

same error with the bios boot partition (I'm an idiot and you're right, I read it wrong), except replace 'fat' with 'ext2'.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2022-02-19 16:46:28

Looks like ext2 doesn't support embedding then. Perhaps try ext4, XFS or Btrfs instead?

Shyden · 2022-02-19 17:34:54

It is ext4, just shows up as ex2. Btrfs feels like a bad idea for a usb and I dont think xfs supports it either. I'll probably just remake it.

Arch Linux

#1 2022-02-18 10:27:34

[SOLVED] Need help with installing Arch to a USB. (just reinstalling)

#2 2022-02-18 10:32:17

Re: [SOLVED] Need help with installing Arch to a USB. (just reinstalling)

#3 2022-02-18 10:47:05

Re: [SOLVED] Need help with installing Arch to a USB. (just reinstalling)

#4 2022-02-18 11:17:01

Re: [SOLVED] Need help with installing Arch to a USB. (just reinstalling)

#5 2022-02-18 16:40:50

Re: [SOLVED] Need help with installing Arch to a USB. (just reinstalling)

#6 2022-02-18 18:00:11

Re: [SOLVED] Need help with installing Arch to a USB. (just reinstalling)

#7 2022-02-19 10:02:02

Re: [SOLVED] Need help with installing Arch to a USB. (just reinstalling)

#8 2022-02-19 11:23:58

Re: [SOLVED] Need help with installing Arch to a USB. (just reinstalling)

#9 2022-02-19 14:22:08

Re: [SOLVED] Need help with installing Arch to a USB. (just reinstalling)

#10 2022-02-19 16:02:44

Re: [SOLVED] Need help with installing Arch to a USB. (just reinstalling)

#11 2022-02-19 16:46:28

Re: [SOLVED] Need help with installing Arch to a USB. (just reinstalling)

#12 2022-02-19 17:34:54

Re: [SOLVED] Need help with installing Arch to a USB. (just reinstalling)

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