Arch Linux

epower53

Member

Registered: 2025-07-02

Posts: 3

Looking for feedback on my dual-boot setup

Newbie here, and I'm looking for feedback on how I could do my dual boot better. Specifically, if I've stepped on any landmines without realizing it, or made newb mistakes that need correcting before they're baked into my thought patterns I'd love to have some expert comments/corrections. Here's the writeup of what I did: https://github.com/epower53/ArchLinux_W … KS2_Refind

I tested this in a virtual machine and it worked, so I think it's close. Would love to get it more polished before deploying on my new PC build (not fully assembled). Thanks in advance!

unixman

Member

Registered: 2015-03-12

Posts: 115

Re: Looking for feedback on my dual-boot setup

cant look at links because of my browser.(writing this on w3m- thanks to Arch forum admins for not forcing bloatware browsers to participate btw.)
my 2cent nevertheless

* disable fast boot from windows side if you share disk with it.(So NOT your case)

* put an efishell into EFI partition then add it to boot menu as additional recovery measurament.
( add it to boot menu via its own built-in 'bcfg' command as permanent(to firmware boot menu) so it cant disappeared unless you delete it manually)
(maybe you found it easy and want to use it as bootloader as in my case
it has default boot hook as startup.nsh efi shell script free to modify as you wish.)
Since you add add/delete item to firmware boot menu even with full command and its cmdline together permanently
then what is the rational behind of using additional software(bootloader) to do same job?

* Compile a static kernel(with only bare minimum modules as built-in for able to mount root and edit a file - eg ahci, atkbd, ext4 and maybe NIC driver/IP stuff)
create an initrd which includes: static busybox and some important recovery tools prefably statically linked.
recovery utils: fdisk/gdisk, e2fstools(for ext4) ...
busybox -single executable- include tons of useful cmds, text editor
Put static kernel and recovery initrd into EFI partition.recovery initrd just drop to 'sh' immediately.
Below is bare minimum /init to put into initrd.
#!/bin/busybox sh
exec /bin/busybox sh

* encrypted disks/partitions maybe Dangerous WRT recovering important data when trouble occurs.(lost password)

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 13,937

Re: Looking for feedback on my dual-boot setup

Verify windows uses UTC and not localtime , see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dual_b … e_standard.

Also look at the rest of that page.

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

epower53

Member

Registered: 2025-07-02

Posts: 3

Re: Looking for feedback on my dual-boot setup

Thanks for the helpful tips, Unixman and Lone_wolf. I'm not too worried about snafus with encryption causing data loss - all my valuable files sit on my home server, so at most I'll lose a local copy and that'll set me back a day. Extra failsafes in the boot menu can only help, so I'll work on getting a barebones kernel and recovery initrd prepped and added to the EFI partition.