On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 6:44 AM, David Benfell <benfell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote: > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hi all, > > So far, my attempt to install Arch Linux on a UEFI system is a total > facepalm moment. The problem is in booting post-install. > > So, first, does anyone have actual--and successful--experience > installing Arch on a UEFI system? Yes, I went to the Arch Wiki, which > initially pointed me at GummiBoot. There are actually two sets of > instructions, one given where I looked first, for the UEFI entry, and > another under the entry for GummiBoot. Neither succeeds, but I wound up > following the latter set of instructions (and cleaning up extra entries > with efibootmgr, which fortunately makes this relatively easy). > > GummiBoot says it can't find /vmlinuz-linux. I tried modifying the > configuration to say /boot/vmlinuz-linux, but no joy. Apparently, I'm > really supposed to copy this file and the initrd image to the EFI > partition, but nobody says where in the EFI partition, so I have no idea. > > I also tried following the instructions for grub-efi. I'm just > mystified. I managed to install the right package, but from there I just > wasn't understanding a thing. I've been using linux since 1999 so this > shouldn't be so completely mystifying. > > I tried installing rEFInd (from sourceforge). As near as I can tell, it > does indeed detect all the possible boot options on the system. But when > I try booting the Arch installation, it says it can't find the root > partition. It also detects the GummiBoot option, but that leads the same > place as before. Finally, it detects the Windows option, which I hope > still works (unfortunately I do need this). > > I guess getting something that just works--like it did with BIOS > systems--is not in the cards. What do I do now? > > Thanks! > > I have a system that I installed a couple of weeks ago using rEFInd - which works really beautifully and needs no manual intervention when new kernels arrive. However it did take me some time with a lot of help from Rod Smith to get it all set up correctly. Basic steps were: 1) Format disks with GPT instead of MSDOS 2) Make sure that there is a /boot/efi/EFI ESP which is formatted FAT32 3) Since I also wanted /boot to contain initial ramdisk and kernel I had /boot as a directory in my root (/) partition which is ext4. 4) In order to get it to work I made sure that the rEFInd config files were set up in the ESP as well as the required files in /boot (and including the ext4 rEFInd driver files in the ESP so that rEFInd can read the initrd and kernel files unde ext4 in /boot (and include the rEFInd driver files in those directories also. 5) In my system I found that the standard method to write the nvram entries failed to work - so I had to boot to the efi shell from the arch install iso on usbkey and write the nvram entries from the shell. If you want more details I can post more tomorrow. I hope this helps. -- mike c
