[arch-general] UEFI madness

[David Benfell]

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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!


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