[arch-general] Gummiboot and EFISTUB booting irregularities

[Murari]

Thanks! It's nice (or maybe not...) to know that this is a problem with
only the EFI stub loader. I do have a standalone grub entry which I haven't
used in ages. I guess I will just add that to the gummiboot menu as a
fallback and wait for the next kernel update.


On 9 July 2014 23:43, Mike Cloaked <mike.cloaked at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 10:30 PM, Bigby James <bigby.james at crepcran.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On 07/09, Murari wrote:
> >
> > > When I start my laptop (or restart it) and select the Arch Linux entry
> > in the
> > > gummiboot menu, I sometimes only see a blank screen instead of any
> error
> > > messages or any of the usual boot text.
> >
> > This is a known issue, and yes, it's hard to describe or pin down. Some
> > UEFI
> > firmwares just don't seem to play nice with the kernel every couple
> > versions or
> > so. The systems that are effected seem almost random, which is probably
> > why it's
> > been around for so long. There are two workarounds that seem to work for
> > people:
> >
> > - Downgrade the kernel and wait until the next update.
> > - Build a kernel with ABS. For some reason this resolves the issue on
> some
> >   machines. And I don't mean build a *custom* kernel---for some reason,
> > simply
> >   downloading the PKGBUILD for the 'linux' package, running makepkg and
> >   installing it seems to eliminate boot problems for some people.
> >
> > Personally, after this happened to me a third time I just started booting
> > in
> > legacy mode with Syslinux.
>
>
> Another option that seems to work reliably is to use your normal uefi boot
> loader/manager to chainload grub and let grub boot the kernel if uefi boot
> fails due to the well-known stub loader bug. The problem appears to be only
> when booting uefi with the efi stub loader, whereas grub does not use the
> efi stub loader and appears not to be affected. On my own systems with
> rEFInd, I have a refind stanza that chainloads a grub standalone entry, and
> if there is a problem uefi booting a specific kernel on that machine, then
> I can simply reboot to the grub entry and let that boot the kernel. Having
> that as a fallback boot method should allow you to boot a kernel if it
> turns out that your machine is affected by the efi stub loader bug. Then
> simply wait for the next kernel or rebuild your kernel as per the previous
> post and check if that helps.
>
> --
> mike c
>



-- 
Murari