Macbook Pro 8,2 EFI_STUB loading with rEFInd Failing

Question

Hello fellow Arch users, I've been struggling with trying to get Arch running on my Macbook Pro 8,2 (Early 2011) for the past couple of days and I was hoping that the collective intelligence of the community might be able to help me. I feel that the combination of recent changes in the installation medium, using a Macbook, and my hardware modifications have all converged to make it hard to diagnose what is wrong.  First off for hardware I have:
Processor: Core i7 (I7-2820QM)
Integrated Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000
Dedicated Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB
Ram: 16G (8Gx2) 1333 MHz
Internal Harddrive: 1Tb WDC WD10TPVT-00HT5T1
Internal Harddrive (in optical drive spot with an OWC Data Doubler): 128Gb APPLE SSD TS128C
I have the SSD setup with only OSX and I planned on installing Arch to the HHD and using rEFInd to boot everything with EFI_STUB.  Initially started by trying to install from an external source, but was unable to do so.  In the past I had attempted to install windows 7 from an external CD drive only to learn that it is essentially imposible (it would appear to firmware constraint as the Macbook Airs and rMacbook Pros as able to) and I wonder if the same constraint applies for linux live CDs.  I tried the "Remove UEFI boot support from ISO" from the UEFI page as well and that did not help.  Oddly enough I also was unable to get any usb medium to work as well (both the regular install disk and Archboot, the "Create UEFI bootable USB from ISO" method of the UEFI page) even though it seems that many others have successfully gotten this to work and it should not be affected by my modifications.
At this point I removed the SSD from inside and replaced it with the original super drive.  rEFInd will not boot it through efi, but will boot it through BIOS emulation (the partition is listed as windows in rEFInd).  From there I followed the standard insertion procedure to get Arch installed (following UEFI_Bootloaders#Linux_Kernel_EFISTUB, Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#Create_an_UEFI_System_Partition_in_Linux and MacBook_Pro_8,1_/_8,2_/_8,3_(2011_Macbook_Pro):
$ cgdisk /dev/sda
    512M partition of type EF00, name efi
    the rest default type (linux), name root
$ mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/sda1
$ mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2
$ mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
$ mkdir /mnt/boot/efi
$ mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
$ mkdir /mnt/boot/efi/EFI/arch/
$ pacstrap /mnt base{,-devel}
$ genfstab -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
$ arch-chroot /mnt
$ nano /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
    MODULES="..ahci libahci.."  #The Macbook page recommends this and I tried it with sd_mod as well based off some previous forum posts.
$ mkinitcpio -p linux
$ cp /boot/vmlinuz-linux /boot/efi/EFI/arch/vmlinuz-arch.efi
$ cp /boot/initramfs-linux.img /boot/efi/EFI/arch/initramfs-arch.img
$ cp /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img to /boot/efi/EFI/arch/initramfs-arch-fallback.img
# create /boot/efi/EFI/arch/refind_linux.conf as instructed with the UUID of sda2
$ echo “archy” >> /etc/hostname
$ ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime
$ echo “America/New_York” >> /etc/timezone
$ vi /etc/locale.gen
    /#en_US and uncomment
$ locale-gen
$ hwclock --systohc --utc
$ echo “KEYMAP=us” >> /etc/vconsole.conf
$ passwd root
$ exit
$ umount /mnt/boot/efi
$ umount /mnt
$ reboot
When I reboot rEFInd does not show the arch partition, but if I boot holding option to bring up the built in partition selection and select the efi partition, rEFInd loads showing the arch linux partition.  At this point it loads and gets stuck displaying:
Error: device '' not found.  Skipping fsck
Error: Unable to find root device ''.
You are being dropped to a recovery shell
    Type 'exit' to try and continue booting
sh: cant access tty; job control turned off
[rootfs /]#
I've tried mounting /dev/sda and I simply presents the same error again.
I can confirm the default kernel has EFI_STUB enable as:
$ zcat /proc/config.gz | grep EFI_STUB
displays:
CONFIG_EFI_STUB=y
Any help would be greatly appreciated.  I have refined installed on the SSD with OSX and most guides have it installed on the EFI partition with Arch.  Is there a different approach I should be taking to set this up with two disks? Thanks.

Answer 1

So, I really don't want to hijack this thread, but seeing that I've now 'repaired' my system from the damage mentioned before, I feel I should.
@WonderWoofy:
Well, I very much doubt that this was an issue with my firmware, my reasoning being that it quite simply did not change, the arch-packages however did, quite invasively I may add.
To clarify,
linux (3.6.2-1 -> 3.6.4-1) was the update that broke my systen boot for me.
linux (3.6.4-1 -> 3.6.6-1) since today has again fixed it.
My custom kernel was just vanilla 3.6.0.
So what I did to repair, was to boot up using a live-cd and after discovering I still had my custom-built kernel I copied it back to my EFI-partition, and guess what, it no longer booted!!
to be more precise, it booted, but no display, and after my hdd seemed to have settled, unresponsive/frozen system, hard-reset the only option. The stock kernel(3.6.4-1) never did boot, just froze immediately on load(I could still see the efi-shell).
So, I figured it must be systemd`s fault (because its responsible for loading my system and it was probably no longer working properly with the older kernel version + udev).
My solution was to boot using an older arch-installation cd (in bios-mode!!! again efimode broken) and chroot, update the system, and for now it seems to work again.
So I restate, that arch+efi can be quite unstable at times, even though it could well be my 'luck' to have multiple issues all at once.
To round this off, and maybe benefit the OP, I thought I'd clarify my setup.
I have a single disk, gpt formatted. It holds 7 partitions:
/dev/sda1 -> EFI
/dev/sda2 -> MSRESERVE
/dev/sda3 -> WINDOWS
/dev/sda4 -> DATA
/dev/sda5 -> LINUX
/dev/sda6 -> HOME
/dev/sda7 -> SWAP
Note, I do not have a separate boot partition.
My LINUX partition is laid out in the following way:
/boot -> contains the stock vmlinuz-linux and initramfs-linux.img
/boot/efi -> mountpoint for the EFI partition
fstab entry:
/dev/sda1 /boot/efi vfat rw,noexec,fmask=0113,dmask=0022 0 0
When mounted in such a way, /boot/efi contains:
ls -l /boot/efi/ ->
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 2.0K Nov 20 14:29 EFI/
ls -l /boot/efi/EFI/ ->
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2.0K Nov 20 14:30 arch/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2.0K Nov 20 14:30 archmy/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2.0K Jun 15 19:41 Boot/
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 2.0K Jun 15 19:25 Microsoft/
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 2.0K Aug 9 14:48 refind/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2.0K Aug 9 15:09 tools/
Now of interest are the /boot/efi/EFI/refind/ and /boot/efi/EFI/arch folders.
Notice the /boot/efi/EFI/archmy folder is for my custom kernel mentioned above.
Separate folders are one way to use refind's auto-detection mechanism (hence no need to mess with manual boot stanzas) and not have the arch-specific problem of unversioned kernel files.
So /boot/efi/EFI/arch contains:
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 13M Nov 21 13:08 initramfs-linux-fallback.img
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 4.0M Nov 21 13:08 initramfs-linux.img
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 200 Nov 20 14:14 refind_linux.conf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 3.4M Nov 21 13:08 vmlinuz-linux.efi
and /boot/efi/EFI/refind contains:
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2.0K Aug 9 14:48 drivers_x64/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K Aug 9 14:48 icons/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 12K Nov 20 14:14 refind.conf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 137K Jun 23 23:26 refind_x64.efi
The two important configuration files are /boot/efi/EFI/arch/refind_linux.conf:
"Boot with Default Options" "root=/dev/sda5 ro rootfstype=ext4 add_efi_memmap"
"Boot with More Options" "root=/dev/sda5 ro rootfstype=ext4 add_efi_memmap radeon.modeset=1 iommu=pt radeon.pcie_gen2=1"
In this case I have two seperate kernel-cmd lines, each with different options. I can select which to use, by selecting the 'kernel-entry' I want when refind loads up(each directory, arch/ and archmy/ are a seperate icon)
and pressing'+'. A menu will appear which will show both those lines and I can choose the one I want. This can also be handy when wanting to boot with debugging options.
For instance, the 'radeon-options' are specific to my hw-setup.
Notice that there is no mention of which initramfs file to use, this is handled by refind automatically, BUT can be wonky if not separating kernel versions properly!!!
The only required option is 'root=/dev/sda5' which obviously points at my root partition. (in this case /dev/sda5 -> LINUX)
And /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf:
timeout 7
hideui banner,label
#icons_dir myicons
#banner hostname.bmp
#selection_big selection-big.bmp
#selection_small selection-small.bmp
#textonly
#resolution 1024 768
use_graphics_for osx,windows
#showtools shell, about, reboot
#scan_driver_dirs EFI/tools/drivers,drivers
#scanfor internal,external,optical
#also_scan_dirs boot,EFI/linux/kernels
dont_scan_dirs EFI/boot
#scan_all_linux_kernels
#max_tags 0
#default_selection 1
These are just the configuration options I have set/unset. Note that some of the commented-out options are still in use, they are just the defaults.
This gives me automatic kernel detection (as long as properly separating things!) and at least when the image itself is working, results in a boot-able system