Arch Linux

Sunnystew22

Member

Registered: 2022-04-14

Posts: 3

Arch Linux not booting

Hi. I have a very weird issue with Arch Linux. I followed the install guide and I forgot to make an EFI partition. A few hours later, I finally got it to work on ONLY ONE computer. If I try it on my laptop and try to boot from it, my laptop enters a screen that looks like network boot but then it immediately shuts off and turns back on again. On the same PC it works just fine but on my laptop it doesn't boot. It has been installed to an external HDD. Can anyone help me? I'm trying to make my mom try and learn how to use Arch Linux. (Imagine if she says the same thing that Diana from OSFirstTimer said)

xdanil

Member

Registered: 2022-04-13

Posts: 2

Re: Arch Linux not booting

Hi check please if your laptop is UEFI boot mode (or in BIOS MBR boot mode). Then you need to repeat partiotioning and GRUB install for ARCH settings again for the appropriate boot option.

Sunnystew22

Member

Registered: 2022-04-14

Posts: 3

Re: Arch Linux not booting

My laptop is in CSM mode as I need support for BIOS boot media. I followed LearnLinuxTV's guide to install half of it. I followed the website guide for the other half. And I had to do it in UEFI mode. My laptop's Wi-Fi card couldn't scan and I just got this error: "no station on device 'wlan0' " I typed 'device list' like 100 times and it showed my wireless card but it didn't work. I tried it on my aunt's PC and I used wired. But my laptop is not booting into Arch Linux. It just enters a network boot screen and then says "Exiting PXE ROM." and then it turns off, then about a second later it turns back on. Also if it boots into the GNU GRUB command-line screen thingy I can't exit it by typing "exit". This just brings me to a blinking cursor screen. Is it the partition part that I f**ked up, or is it the GRUB part where I f**ked up? (Sorry for the swearing)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,691

Re: Arch Linux not booting

I followed the install guide

I followed LearnLinuxTV's guide to install half of it. I followed the website guide for the other half.

One of those statements is only 50% true…
Also: this shit guide again? The one that forgets to tell you to set your hostname?

I forgot to make an EFI partition.

I wonder in which half that happened…

My laptop is in CSM mode as I need support for BIOS boot media …  I had to do it in UEFI mode

You do understand that those statements are contradictive?

No idea what you want w/ your wifi at this point, but what most likely happened is that your invalidated the boot/root partition in your pursuit of an EFI partition - notably if you added the latter ahead of the former and had to shrink the former.
So there's absolutely no bootable partition to be found and the BIOS goes on to attempt a PXE boot.

I'd suggest to re-do the installation (assuming there's no data to be lost so far) and this time use the installation guide for half of the installation and then the installation guide also for the other half of the the installation instead of lemminging after some likeshareandsubscribe moron who apparently also has no idea what he's doing.
If you encounter problems during that process, there's https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewforum.php?id=17

If there's valuable data on the system you can't boot right now, you'll have to fix that offline (as much as possible), eg. from the install iso or a distro like grml - it might be possible to reconstruct the FS from a backup superblock further into the partition. Otherwise you'll have to use testdisk and photorec to recover whatever you can.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/File_recovery

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