[arch-general] Installing Archlinux alongside Ubuntu on aWindows8 UEFI laptop

[Alan E. Davis]

Following up on installing Archlinux

Preface to the Appendix of this thread, with thanks and deference to those
who have helped so far: I am definitely not up to speed on the nuts and
bolts of GNU/Linux, I am a user, needing to get this tool working.  That
being said, I have Archlinux working now, but not truly dual bootable, in
the usual sense.

In particular, the BIOS settings are several, and their meaning unclear to
me.  I did change the secure boot setting, back to Off.  This led to a
cacade of other changes, so I am not even certan what to report.  Most of
the steps that were so kindly outlined and restated by my friends on this
list didn't mean much to me, so I blundered through it all.  Installed
Archlinux, with the UEFI / EFI partition mounted on /mnt/boot/efi.  Many
other files were visible there.   I didn't make sense of the instllation of
gummiboot, because I was not using a separate /boot partition, I think, so
the instllation of gummiboot failed.  I used GRUB.   Installed some
ancillary files, mentioned as optional.  I did some other things as well.

When I rebooted, ARchlinux was not listed in the GRUB menu.

I changed the BIOS settings, dealing with secure boot and UEFI vs BIOS
(which I set to both, with EUFI prioritized).   Rebooted.

Now I only see Archlinux.

What I hope is that thi will continue to work, as is.  Later on, when I
feel brave, I will go through the BIOS settings again, and see of the other
systems, inlcuding Windows 8, come up.  For now,. this is all I need.

Thank you,

Alan Davis

  p


On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 2:35 PM, Mark Lee <mark at markelee.com> wrote:

>
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> On 05/07/2014 05:16 PM, Alan E. Davis wrote:
> >   I would like to sign off with a little information about how this has
> > gone.
> >
> > I had used the "F12" boot options method once.  Subsequently, the
>  Windows
> > Boot Loader appeared on the GRUB menu.  I have since then installed
> Fedora
> > 20, and it went very well.
> >
> > I now see that if once specifies "UEFI" as the boot method in the
> BIOS, and
> > not Legacy or Both, these linux distros look for the EFI partition (or
> > whatever that is called), and if one specifies it to be mounted wihtout
> > formating in the parititioning scheme, all goes well.
> >
> > Thank everyone for the help.  Now the machine boots right into GRUB.
> >
> > Alan Davis
> To Alan,
>
> That's excellent. But, the point of UEFI is not to use any boot managers
> like GRUB. A proper UEFI install should be able to boot directly off the
> firmware. On a very high level, UEFI internalizes boot loaders like GRUB
> so instead of chainloading with a boot loader, one boots directly into a
> UEFI program (windows, linux, mac os, etc...) I am glad to hear that
> your machine setup is working though.
>
> Might I add, if you are truly booting into UEFI mode with Linux (could
> be Ubuntu or Arch), you could probably apply the procedures in the Arch
> Wiki to boot Arch Linux without a boot loader
> <
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFISTUB#Directly.2C_without_boot_manager
> >
>
> Regards,
> Mark
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