[arch-general] Installing Archlinux alongside Ubuntu on a Windows 8 UEFI laptop

[Mike Cloaked]

On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 11:18 PM, Daniel Micay <danielmicay at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 01/05/14 06:15 PM, Alan E. Davis wrote:
> > Ubuntu's kernel is on the / partition.  Would I move it to the ESP
> > partition, in that case?
> >
> > And I will mount that partition on /mnt/boot ?
> >
> > I have never used gummiboot.  Since the Arch system is already to go, but
> > not yet with a boot management setup, I should manually move that kernel
> to
> > the ESP partition as well?
> >
> > Alan Davis
>
> Yes, you should mount the ESP partition as /boot so the kernels get
> installed there. Then install gummiboot and set up entries for Arch and
> Ubuntu.
>
>
The approach mentioned above should work. An alternative is to have the ESP
mounted as, say /boot/efi (which is a vfat partition) and then the (vfat)
ESP becomes /boot/efi/EFI/ which then contains the windows efi boot files,
and you can then if you wish install refind in a directory such as
/boot/efi/EFI/refind/ - and it is in principle also possible to have more
than one boot manager in that directory so that you can choose which boot
manager to use, and each can then boot all of your installed operating
systems via UEFI.

If so then it is also possible to have /boot as either a separate ext4
partition, or a subdirectory of the root partition, also as ext4 (thereby
getting the advantage of a journaled filesystem). Then the kernel(s) can be
in /boot/ and using refind the refind efi binary can still read the ext4
/boot/* files for the kernel(s) and initrd(s) since refind has drivers that
can read ext4 files.  The details are in the author's refind web pages (
http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ ).

It is possible to either let refind automatically discover all the
available operating systems that you have set up or you can configure the
config files with specific stanzas to boot individual OSes - and each
becomes a nice icon on the graphical boot screen. You can select which is
the default system to boot, but can also intercept the boot to choose a
non-default system.

Of course you have the choice to use different boot managers, and gummiboot
and grub will in principle be able to boot all three OSes once set up.

-- 
mike c