A quick suggestion : Why not try systemd-boot instead of grub? (Since now arch is installed in UEFI) No harm trying ;) On Mon 7 Nov, 2016, 23:05 David C. Rankin, <drankinatty@suddenlinkmail.com> wrote:
On 11/05/2016 04:38 AM, Simon Brulhart wrote:
I may be missing something, but is there a chance that the bios just doesn't wait long enough for the disk to turn on? On some laptops this sometimes happen to me when trying to boot an USB harddisk. The disk isn't detected at all by the bios, but generally rebooting with the disk already turned on fixes the issue. I've also seen an option on some BIOSes to wait for a few additional seconds at boot before enumerating drives, indicating that this may be a common issue.
Simon
Simon,
Thanks, but no, I eliminated that by choosing the boot options menu (e.g. F9) on boot which allowed 30 seconds or so as I pondered the options for the drives to spin up, no it is something quirky with this laptop that I have to figure out, but I'm totally stuck.
I prepared a fresh summary of my ordeal in hopes of getting some wisdom to help with this mystery. Here is the summary to date:
I need a miracle (or just some good help) to find out why I can boot from the .iso and "Choose existing OS" just fine, but cannot get this laptop to find and boot grub otherwise. (UEFI is *completely* disabled in the BIOS and it boots win10 in Legacy mode fine) I have now exhausted all that I can figure out based on my decade and a half of Linux use and based on the wikis:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFI_System_Partition https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HP_EliteBook_840_G1 (uses EFI mode)
I have configured and tried simple MBR boot with the following setup:
# fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disklabel type: dos Disk identifier: 0xff7d45aa
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type /dev/sda1 2048 1953525167 1953523120 931.5G 5 Extended /dev/sda5 * 4096 1028095 1024000 500M 83 Linux /dev/sda6 1030144 105887743 104857600 50G 83 Linux /dev/sda7 105889792 1951383551 1845493760 880G 83 Linux /dev/sda8 1951385600 1953525167 2139568 1G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
grub isn't seen on boot, but popping the .iso on USB in, choosing "Boot existing OS", hitting 'tab' and changing 'hd0 0' to 'hd1 0' boots Arch fine.
I next tried with GPT and a 'bios_boot' partition:
# fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disklabel type: gpt Disk identifier: 00B6A48C-CBDB-4071-A1EC-97FA828A6C26
Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/sda1 2048 4095 2048 1M BIOS boot /dev/sda2 4096 1028095 1024000 500M Linux filesystem /dev/sda3 1028096 105885695 104857600 50G Linux filesystem /dev/sda4 105885696 1949282303 1843396608 879G Linux filesystem /dev/sda5 1949282304 1951379455 2097152 1G Linux swap
same result, grub not found on its own, but booting from USB works fine.
Next, stranger things being possible, I decided to try a full UEFI setup thinking maybe the Legacy mode for this laptop uses some contrived boot scheme that requires the esp partition to be present. so I re-partitioned the drive and went though the UEFI setup:
# fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disklabel type: gpt Disk identifier: 00B6A48C-CBDB-4071-A1EC-97FA828A6C26
Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/sda1 2048 4095 2048 1M BIOS boot /dev/sda2 4096 1028095 1024000 500M EFI System /dev/sda3 1028096 105885695 104857600 50G Linux filesystem /dev/sda4 105885696 1949282303 1843396608 879G Linux filesystem /dev/sda5 1949282304 1951379455 2097152 1G Linux swap
Still, grub isn't seen on boot, but now "Choose existing OS" starts grub, but then throws the error of "unrecognized partition type" (I presume is due to the UEFI setup while UEFI is disabled in the BIOS)
So I'm stuck. This box boots from the iso perfectly. After "Choose existing OS", I pull the USB drive, and the machine works flawlessly. (I've got a full plasma/KDE5 setup installed with wpa_supplicant WPA wifi, bluetooth, synaptics touchpad, ieee-1394, all working just fine, etc.., e.g. I drafted this on kwrite and sent it via thunderbird from this same darn box) I just can't get this box to find grub to save my life.
I need help figuring out how the .iso is booting in Legacy mode just fine, while I can't do the same thing from the hard drive. If this box can see and boot the .iso just fine, what could possibly explain it not seeing grub on the hard drive? Anybody have any more ideas?
-- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.