Arch installation on Macbook 3,2

wilhelms · 2011-04-16 20:13:31

I'm having some trouble following these instructions. I've got rEFIt installed, I can boot to the archboot install disk, I've got everything partitioned, and I believe my arch installation was successful, but grub never installs correctly. I've tried installing both from the arch installation and using the command above, neither seems to work. (arch installation of grub reports success but it never starts, the above command indicates that grub-install is not installed). rEFIt does not recognize the arch installation (and, if this is related, whenever I've tried the partition repair tool in rEFIT, attempting to boot to any drive reports "missing operating system," including when I try to boot the archboot usb disk again (which I find a little odd)).

Happy to report any output, but at this point I can only report what I get from the archboot install cd or the original mac osx installation since nothing will boot the arch partition. Also, it's a macbook air 3,2 with the solid state drive.

Thanks for any help!

litemotiv · 2011-04-16 20:43:09

wilhelms, can you list your partition scheme and the exact (manual) grub command you issued?

(Topic splitted off to a dedicated thread)

orez · 2011-04-17 04:38:03

I am installing arch on my Air too~~ and what you described happened here ...
i installed grub-efi-x86-64~~~
the thing is~~~
during install, the arch will mount /boot partition twice:
so:
if your /boot dir is on your linux partition, the grub will be installed to /boot/efi/efi/grub/, of course refit wil not recognize it...i believe this is your case... (i tried to build to /dev/sda5/efi/grub/ but reift still donot recognize it, i use ext4, this might be the reason...)

if you mount /dev/sda1 EFI partition as your /boot, as ArchBoot mount the partition twice , actually the grub installed to /dev/sda1/EFI/grub, ~~ refit will detect that~~~ but the "prefix" in grub.efi is still "(hd1,1)/efi/efi/grub/",you might need to reset it in rescue grub, recommend you to install grub-efi manually to /dev/sda1/efi ~~~

Last edited by orez (2011-04-17 04:38:56)

wilhelms · 2011-04-18 04:00:38

Thanks very much for the quick response!

I had been largely following the instructions from http://www.dm9.se/?p=398 , though it starts to be a little less helpful around the grub installation, so I then found the previous thread we were on.

My partition table is:
1 105MB ext4 Apple HFS/HFS+
2 105MB ext4 Linux/Windows data
3 4295MB linux-swap Linux swap
4 92.2GB ext4 Linux/Windows data
5 210MB fat32 EFI System Partition
6 24.2GB hfsx Apple HFS/HFS+

I had left a ~24gb partition to reinstall OSX, which I did once I ran into trouble with the grub installation. Reinstalling OSX split the partition into the final two, the fat32 and hfsx.

My attempt to do a manual install was just using the command on the previous thread (though I corrected the device to be sda2 for my partition table):
mount -o bind /dev /tmp/install && mount -o bind /proc /tmp/install/proc && grub-install /dev/sda2 --no-floppy --force
mount: mount point /tmp/install/proc does not exist.
-bash: grub-install: command not found

Looking back it seems kind of silly to have tried (I guess I thought that grub-install was part of the archboot install disk?) but I didn't find better instructions for these circumstances.

Again, any help is appreciated, thanks for the reply!

orez · 2011-04-18 09:17:08

wilhelms wrote:

mount -o bind /dev /tmp/install && mount -o bind /proc /tmp/install/proc && grub-install /dev/sda2 --no-floppy --force
mount: mount point /tmp/install/proc does not exist.
-bash: grub-install: command not found

i guess you didnot chrooted to the new system:
~~~chroot:

mount -o bind /dev /tmp/install/dev
mount -t proc none /tmp/install/proc
chroot /tmp/install

if /tmp/install/proc does not exsit, mkdir.

in the thread openBSD posted, i believe they are using grub-legacy/grub2-bios,
for grub2 install, please ref: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB2

what i posted before..... i am trying boot linux in pure EFI mode ~~~

Last edited by orez (2011-04-18 09:32:23)

wilhelms · 2011-04-19 04:00:58

Grub installation was successful! (The first time i visited that page, I missed the "Installing GRUB2 during Arch Linux installation" section and skipped directly to the "Bootloader Installation for UEFI systems," which left me confused.

Unfortunately, now that grub loads, after Arch Linux is selected, i get the error:
error: no such partition
error: you need to load the kernel first

I edited the grub.cfg file to reflect which partition my arch installation is on, but I still get this error.

Any more thoughts?

Thanks again for all your help!

litemotiv · 2011-04-19 08:33:42

wilhelms, you're probably pointing it to the wrong partition. You can paste the relevant part of your grub.cfg here if you like.

orez · 2011-04-22 13:01:34

wilhelms wrote:

Grub installation was successful! (The first time i visited that page, I missed the "Installing GRUB2 during Arch Linux installation" section and skipped directly to the "Bootloader Installation for UEFI systems," which left me confused.
Unfortunately, now that grub loads, after Arch Linux is selected, i get the error:
error: no such partition
error: you need to load the kernel first
I edited the grub.cfg file to reflect which partition my arch installation is on, but I still get this error.
Any more thoughts?

use root=hd1~~~

wilhelms · 2011-04-22 18:08:48

Got the grub/partition issue solved (I started over from scratch because I had extra partitions, and because the partition numbering wasn't in the same order as they appear on the disk).

The error I get now appears after grub loads and the first selection is made:

Booting 'Arch Linux, with Linux vmlinuz26'

Loading Linux vmlinuz26 ...
Loading initial ramdisk ...
error: no suitable mode found.
Booting however

The relevant part of my grub.cfg file is:
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
menuentry 'Arch Linux, with Linux vmlinuz26' --class archlinux --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
load_video
insmod part_gpt
insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,gpt4)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 79e6abeb-fa77-4c10-ba8c-9fafac1d6fbc
echo "Loading Linux vmlinuz26 ..."
linux /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/79e6abeb-fa77-4c10-ba8c-9fafac1d6fbc ro quiet
echo "Loading initial ramdisk ..."
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
}

Of course, there may be more that I don't realize is relevant at the moment.

Thanks for all your help so far!

skodabenz · 2011-06-11 10:32:17

wilhelms wrote:

error: no suitable mode found.
Booting however

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … ms_in_UEFI

Arch Linux

#1 2011-04-16 20:13:31

Arch installation on Macbook 3,2

#2 2011-04-16 20:43:09

Re: Arch installation on Macbook 3,2

#3 2011-04-17 04:38:03

Re: Arch installation on Macbook 3,2

#4 2011-04-18 04:00:38

Re: Arch installation on Macbook 3,2

#5 2011-04-18 09:17:08

Re: Arch installation on Macbook 3,2

#6 2011-04-19 04:00:58

Re: Arch installation on Macbook 3,2

#7 2011-04-19 08:33:42

Re: Arch installation on Macbook 3,2

#8 2011-04-22 13:01:34

Re: Arch installation on Macbook 3,2

#9 2011-04-22 18:08:48

Re: Arch installation on Macbook 3,2

#10 2011-06-11 10:32:17

Re: Arch installation on Macbook 3,2

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