[arch-general] Having trouble understanding UEFI booting

[mick]

On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 18:57:10 -0400
Christian Demsar <vixsomnis at vczf.io> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 26, 2015, at 10:17 PM, mick wrote:
> > The disk is currently split into 11 partitions
> > part    size    code    name
> > [...]
> > 2       260mb   EF00	  EFI system partition
> > [...]
> > when installing I have only used partitions 9, 10 & 11. partitions 1 -
> > 8 were on the disc from the windows pre-install and shrunk to make way
> > for linux.
> 
> If you didn't mount your ESP (EFI System Partition), then that's why
> your installation failed.
> 
> You need to mount the partition of type EF00 (EFI System Partition) on
> /boot. By the looks of it, it's your second partition (if your drive is
> /dev/sda, then most likely /dev/sda2).
> 
> Follow this after you have the partition mounted correctly:
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd-boot#EFI_boot
> 
> Unless you really need GRUB, you should use bootctl.

the original grub was a big advance for its time but has now it has thrown away its greatest advantage over lilo (open the grub.cfg, edit, save reboot - no compiling the config). NowI hate it.
 
Many thanks to Tobias,Maxwell & Christian, I have now sorted it out. The key mistake was not mounting the ESP partition.

For myself, I found the instructions were not as clear as they could be. Perhaps someone who knows better than I could look at them with a critical eye. 

mick