Arch Linux

rocktale

Member

From: Munich, Germany

Registered: 2009-03-18

Posts: 24

Grub/grub2 reboot loop

Hello,

I have a Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook S761 with a SSD here and I wanted to install Arch in addition to the already installed Windows XP. I'm not a newbie. I have installed Arch on a couple of devices before and I've never had serious problems. Until now...

Everything went smoothly (using the current netinstall version) but after the final reboot, I can only read "Grub loading stage 1.5." and "Grub loading." and after that the system immediately reboots again. If i don't stop it seems to go on forever. After that I thought I'd give grub2 a try. I erased the new partitions and started from scratch. But oddly enough... the result is the same. I can again read "Grub loading." and a second later another reboot is on its way. Since I can't see any error message etc. I don't know where to start looking. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Kind regards,
Karsten

masteryod

Member

Registered: 2010-05-19

Posts: 433

Re: Grub/grub2 reboot loop

Did you went through ssd wiki page? SSD's need some special care

look at: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives

rocktale

Member

From: Munich, Germany

Registered: 2009-03-18

Posts: 24

Re: Grub/grub2 reboot loop

I tried to follow it as closely as possible. Since it is a work laptop and the Windows came already preinstalled, I had some issues with aligning the patitions right. However, I thought that anything related to the SSD should only result in performance loss and not a total failure to boot. I installed arch on a SSD before on my laptop at home and it worked like a charm. However, there's no Windows on it at all and I started with a fresh disk.

masteryod

Member

Registered: 2010-05-19

Posts: 433

Re: Grub/grub2 reboot loop

What is your partition table type, MBR vs GPT? (assuming MBR cause you have XP right?)

For 32-bit Windows Vista and 7, and 32 and 64-bit Windows XP, you need to use MBR partitioning and boot in BIOS mode only.

I'm not sure if I understand correctly, you did try to swipe ALL partition and make them from scratch? How do you make partitions?
Did you try to install only Arch without XP?

Sorry, I'm not SSD expert

Last edited by masteryod (2011-09-17 14:05:40)

rocktale

Member

From: Munich, Germany

Registered: 2009-03-18

Posts: 24

Re: Grub/grub2 reboot loop

Partition type is MBR, since I require dual boot with XP. And as far as I know, grub (which I tried first) doesn't work with GPT either.

I did swipe all Arch related partitions but left the XP partitions untouched. It is a work laptop and the XP stuff requires intervention from an administrator every time I do something about it. That's why I did not try to install Arch without the XP.

I created the pratitions using fdisk or cfdisk. I tried several different configurations but the effect was always the same. I also tried aligning the partitions as well as not aligning them. I'm not a SSD expert either but I still think that doing something wrong there should only result in performance loss but not in a failure to boot at all. It's odd because grub complains with an error if the "/boot"-partition is missing but when it's there it just reboots over and over again.