Loader.efi error Arch Linux

Software & Operating Systems Linux
1

I've decided to take another stab at using Linux. I'm attempting to install Arch on my Acer laptop (Aspire V3-772G-9653) by dual-booting with windows 8.1. I've used the universal USB creator to create a bootable USB, but whenever I boot off of it, it says it failed to start the loader, which should be called "loader.efi"

I can select OK, go to a "hash tool main menu" where it wants me to enroll a hash, which I have absolutely no idea what it's referring to.

I looked on the installation guide on the arch wiki, and I'm thinking that maybe I need to disable secure boot and fast boot? At any rate, I have no idea what to do, and one of my friends who uses arch on a regular basis has no idea what the problem is.

2

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#Secure_Boot

3

Looking at the instructions from that link, I'm able to load the loader.efi in that manner. but I can't find vmlinux-efi. Where should it be? Do I have a broken .iso?

4

Looks under the secure boot section. You really do need to have the wiki open when you do an arch install. You save time and headaches by going with manjaro it still is arch.

5

I managed to find it. I'll look into Manjaro. Thanks for your help!

6

I like learning Linux from a top down approach, Use an easy but powerful distro and then work your way into the more complex parts. Sabayon is based gentoo and and also easy to use.

7

Using a "USB Creator" for UEFI Arch will always give you problems.

You DO need to disable fast and secure boot. Thats for installing most any OS, really.

Make your USB drive bootable, then extract the ISO, then copy it to the Flash drive. it should work after that.

8

I've been following this guide:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide

I've gotten to the point where it talks about exiting chroot and rebooting the computer, and everything up to that point has seemed to work fine. I disabled fast and secure boot, and it STILL does not show the grub bootloader menu, and always boots to windows 8.1.

9

Ok, I figured out it was a boot order problem *facepalm*

At any rate, I get to the GNU GRUB versions 2.02~beta2 screen with a message:

"Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported." And then stuff with tab auto-finishing

10

Ahhh. Grub. Thats why.

https://teksyndicate.com/forum/linux/quick-and-dirty-guide-arch-linux-installation/158212

Dont worry about the parts in black that you cant read. The important parts are in red.

11

I've installed gummiboot, and I'm able to get to a boot menu now. However when I select Arch, it says "error loading /vmlinuz-linux: not found"

I have the arch.conf set up exactly as described in brennan's guide.

12

Did you get everything installed, then after removing the USB drive, get this error?

 

13

Yes, I've done everything up to that point in the guide. I exit chroot, unmount everything, and reboot. It brings me to what I assume is the gummiboot boot menu, there's options for Arch, Windows, UEFI firmware, and one other thing.

If I select the windows bootloader, it boots into windows just fine. But when I select Arch, it gives me that error.

14

is /boot on a different partition? if so is it mounted? I'm assuming yes to the first question since you are using UEFI, make sure that you are mounting your efi partition to /boot/EFI as mentioned int he guide

15

It is properly mounted, yes. For the config file for gummiboot, the partition I want to use in the last line is the root drive, not the boot drive, right?

16

Yes. If its a seperate hard drive, it will most likely be sdb2. 

If its the same as windows, then whatever one its instlled on. you can find out by using "fdisk -l"

17

I worded that really poorly. The internal drive on my laptop is /dev/sda. Its partitions are:

sda1 - windows recovery

sda2 - boot partition with gummiboot

sda3 - another recovery partition I believe

sda4 - main windows partition

sda5&6 - more recovery i think

sda7 - root partition

sda8 - swap partition

sda9 - a dumb partition I made when I wasn't sure if I needed to put the efi on the same partition as windows or not

sda10 - home partition

Do I maybe need to reduce the number of partitions I have? 

18

Well, I just decided to restart from scratch- I got rid of all of the arch-related partitions except the boot partition since that contained the windows EFI partition.

I'm able to boot arch just fine now with gummiboot, but I'm not getting the menu to select other OS's; my laptop immediately boots into arch.

19

go to /etc/default/grub and change GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 to like 15 check and see if windows is an option in to be booted into if not:

my_windows_part=/dev/sda3
my_boot_part=/dev/sda5
mkdir /media/win
mount $my_windows_part /media/win
dd if=$my_boot_part of=/media/win/linux.bin bs=512 count=1

but of course change the HDD/partition info that fits your system.


20

Not using Grub, that wont help. Gummyboot. 

go to /boot/efi/loader/loader.conf

Youll either have to do this in CLI, or open your file browser as sudo. You'll probably have to mount it first.

And make sure it shows a windows boot option in the conf file. If so, and the timer is set to 0, then up it. If there is no windows option, then I'll have to figure that one out.