Arch Linux

MAYBL8

Member

Registered: 2022-01-14

Posts: 307

Have windows in GRUB when using live usb drive

Installed Arch on a usb drive .
Looking for best practice on using this drive on Multiple Laptops.
Right now the Laptop I am using it on only has Windows on it.

What I want to do (and you guys tell me if this is ok or not) is when the GRUB menu is shown that it shows the Windows that is installed on this laptop.
If I put the drive in another Laptop I would like to update grub to show what is installed on that laptop.

I believe what I would have to do is regenerate grub each time I put the flash drive in each different Laptop.

So current issue is I am not seeing Windows in GRUB.
I'm sure I might need to load some packages to make this happen but I only want to install the minimum needed.

Let me know what info you need to proceed.
Thanks

jonno2002

Member

Registered: 2016-11-21

Posts: 765

Re: Have windows in GRUB when using live usb drive

I believe what I would have to do is regenerate grub each time I put the flash drive in each different Laptop.
Thanks

yes thats exactly what you have to do.

also read this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB#D … ng_systems

Last edited by jonno2002 (2023-10-08 20:56:36)

MAYBL8

Member

Registered: 2022-01-14

Posts: 307

Re: Have windows in GRUB when using live usb drive

In the link is this part:

For Windows installed in UEFI mode, make sure the EFI system partition containing the Windows Boot Manager (bootmgfw.efi) is mounted. Run os-prober as root to detect and generate an entry for it.

Problem with this in my situation is this
This is my lsblk when booted from usb

demo@archlinux ~]$ lsblk
NAME    MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda       8:0    1  58.6G  0 disk
├─sda1    8:1    1    10M  0 part
├─sda2    8:2    1   500M  0 part /boot
└─sda3    8:3    1  58.1G  0 part /
nvme0n1 259:0    0 238.5G  0 disk
└─md126   9:126  0     0B  0 md
nvme1n1 259:5    0  13.4G  0 disk
└─md127   9:127  0     0B  0 md

So my windows efi partition won't be included.
My boot partition is on the usb drive

At this point Windows is not even mounted.

What should be my process for doing this?
Or should I not even try to do this?

I would like to dual boot from the usb drive to what ever OS is on the computer I put the usb drive into.
It will be different for every computer I get that. 
Maybe there is not an easy way to do this .
In this case the computer doesn't have any other GRUB on the drive on the laptop.
Some computers will have a GRUB on them.  I don't want to mess up those GRUBs either with what I am doing.

I know this is not a standard way to run Arch . Maybe beyond the scope of this forum for help. I understand that if that is the answer.
Just tell me I'm on my own and I will figure it out.

Thanks for the help.