Installing arch to macbook 2,1

Hi,
I'm trying to install arch (dual boot with OSX) on my macbook 2,1. I've install rEFIt.
The partitions that I have setup are
1 OSX boot partition
2. OSX system partition
3. Archlinux
4. Home
I've arrive at the stage where I need to install the bootloader. But the installer doesn't give the option of installing grub to the Archlinux paritions. So I exit the installer and manually install grub using grub-install /dev/sda3 (which is where my arch partition is).
I still can't boot into arch. There are 2 entries now in my rEFIt menu (OSX and "Boot Legacy OS") How do I setup grub to boot into arch?

So, is rEFIT able to boot GRUB but GRUB is not able to find Arch? Or is rEFIT not able to find GRUB?
For what it's worth, I recently installed Arch on my Macbook 5,1. I also used rEFIT (installed using OS X). My drive partitioning was
/dev/sda1: EFI/OS X boot partition
/dev/sda2: OS X
/dev/sda3: Linux Swap
/dev/sda4: Arch
As you mentioned, the new Arch installer doesn't give you the option of selecting primary partitions to install GRUB (the old installer did). So, when I reached the last stage of the installer (installation of the bootloader), I exited the installer, launched GRUB in interactive mode, and installed GRUB to my 4th partition (where /boot is). (It sounds like you did something similar.) When I rebooted rEFIT discovered that my 4th partition was bootable and displayed a Tux logo. Clicking on the Tux logo launched grub. From there I am able to launch Arch.
Some thoughts:
1. Did you make sure your partition tables are synced? I didn't need to do this, but I've heard of other needing to do this.
2. Did you make sure that the grub was configured properly; e.g. you've specified the correct path to the kernel, etc.
3. Did you try prayer and/or other forms of divinity?

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Installing Arch on MacBook Air - EFI issues

Hi, all.
I have a mid-2012 13" Air and I want to install Arch on it as the only OS.
Now, I've tried following guides on the wiki and in the forum, and I tried to install it with grub2-efi loader, but after numerous attempts I either got nothing, or got a system that had a big delay with the bootloader. There are two or three articles on the topic: GRUB2, MacBook guide and EFI guide, but no straightforward guide, just these three pages that crossreference each other in all the wrong places What is the best way to install Arch on a Mac?
I understand that installing rEFIt can simplify things, but I want to find a way around it, since I'll only be using one OS, and I really dislike the Qt3 looks of rEFIt.
Some articles say that LILO is simpler to setup that grub on an EFI machine - is that true?
Furthermore, some discussions here mention that I should use archboot rather than the default installation image.
So, could anyone please give me a simple list of steps?
Last edited by ilembitov (2012-11-04 00:45:48)

Hi,
I'm using also Arch on a MacBook, but with rEFIt. Never tried to to remove OS X complete, because I want to have the chance to upgrade EFI and Firmware itself via Mac OS X Update.
But for a clean grub_efi installation you have to create and mount an "efi partition" and install some boot files here. Check for detailed information those 2 wiki pages:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UEFI
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UEFI_Bootloaders
Afterwards you can start with the grub installation.
Simple Steps:
create partitions on disk
mount partitions
Install arch system ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide )
prepare chroot environment
jump into crhoot environment
configure system
configure grub2_efi (default files /etc/default/grub)
prepare efi partition (dir and files)
install grub2_efi
That should it be...
As I already said, never tried it without rEFIt, but its not simple, because Apple is not using a standard UEFI, so some futures won't work or will work differently. If I have some free time and money, I will try it on a second harddisk. That will be my next private project :-)

Installing Arch on Macbook

I'm trying to install Arch onto a partition of my internal hard-disk.
I've gone through the installation procedure 6 times now, and each time, I can't seem to re-boot into Arch. I had a friend to the exact same scheme I am trying to do, however things aren't working for me.
Deepest re-vamp of my system so far:
I've erased my entire hard-disk, repartitioned it from the OS X DVD, installed OS X, then tried to install Arch. I've partitioned the Arch portion in OS Extended, and FAT, and neither appear to work. Everything during the install sequence works fine, GRUB installs correctly the first time (every time), however when I re-boot to try and enter Arch, I can never see the disk (neither using rEFIt, or holding down option). I end up going into OS X, and that can't even mount the disk, however it believes that it is an OS Extended formatted drive each time. I'm fairly sure I'm doing everything right, because I've checked things over with my friend's installation, which worked properly... however if there's something special that could be the problem, please do reply!!!
Thanks.

so now, after re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-installing Arch, I now get a "Windows" partition on my internal drive however when I try and boot into that using rEFIt or by holding down the option key, I get "Non-system disk \n Press any key to reboot \n _"

Installing Arch on a MacBook Pro Retina

I've spent many hours trying to install Arch on my macbook pro to no avail (over 14 times I've tried), I've learned a lot through this process, but apparently not enough. I get the system installed and blessed (in OSX), but when I try to boot into it I get stuck on "loading initial ram disk." (Previous errors were a read-only file system, but this one is latest) My hunch tells me it has something to do with the mkinitcpio.conf (I was told to add "ahci" to MODULES and "keyboard" after "autodetect" in "HOOKS") and I know the mkinitcpio -p linux command creates the initial ram disk environment (thanks to the docs).
Here are my steps, the bash scripts I created to do all this. Does anything look out of the ordinary to anyone?
cgdisk /dev/sda #(setup partitions as below, sda1-3 not shown)
#partitions: (sda4 == 128MB Hfs+, sda5 == 256MB Linux (boot), sda6 == 30GB Linux (root), sda7 == 70GB #Linux Home)
#first script
mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda5
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda6
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda7
mount /dev/sda6 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot && mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/boot
mkdir /mnt/home && mount /dev/sda7 /mnt/home
pacstrap /mnt base base-devel
genfstab -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash
#second script
#install wifi (dmesg | grep firmware still says no firmware tho...)
pacman -S wget b43-fwcutter
wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/b4/b … are.tar.gz
tar -zxf b43-firmware.tar.gz
cd b43-firmware
makepkg -si --asroot #kosher?
rmmod b43 && modprobe b43
echo arch > /etc/hostname
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Central /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc --utc
useradd -m -g users -G wheel -s /bin/bash dmj && passwd dmj
sudo pacman -S sudo
nano /etc/sudoers #comment out wheel portion
sudo nano /etc/locale.gen #pick locale
locale-gen
echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
mkinitcpio -p linux #someone said i need "ahci" in modules?
#make boot loader, copy to usb
pacman -S grub-efi-x86_64
grub-mkconfig -o boot/grub/grub.cfg
grub-mkstandalone -o boot.efi -d usr/lib/grub/x86_64-efi -O x86_64-efi -C xz boot/grub/grub.cfg
mkdir /mnt/usbdisk && mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usbdisk
cp boot.efi /mnt/usbdisk/
umount /mnt/usbdisk/
sudo pacman -S dialog wpa_supplicant iw
exit
umount /mnt/home
umount /mnt/root
umount /mnt/
sudo reboot
I finally got a descriptive error message and am very excited to show everyone.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10021156/arch.jpg
Moderator Edit: Converted over sized in-line picture to link - ewaller
Last edited by dmj (2013-06-25 02:59:00)

Ok, so I managed to boot into arch. The issue was my fstab. The custom settings I was using were incorrect. Going with the defaults helped. Also, the version of grub I was using was broken. See this link for the fix: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=164101
So after I tar -xvJf xxx.tar.xz the fixed version I was able to generate a boot.efi, copy it onto the 128MB HFS+ on OSX and then bless and boot.
A whole new slew of errors occurred.
First, the video mode error occurs "No suitable video mode" (and something about a font).
I found a fix for it here: (but it didn't work) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … d.22_error
I added
cp /usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2 ${GRUB_PREFIX_DIR}
Then add:
UEFI systems:
insmod efi_gop
insmod efi_uga
After that add the following code (common to both BIOS and UEFI):
insmod font
if loadfont ${prefix}/fonts/unicode.pf2
then
insmod gfxterm
set gfxmode=auto
set gfxpayload=keep
terminal_output gfxterm
fi
Gist: Add these few lines to your grub.cfg, result: no luck still this error
What I'm not sure is if if this is affecting my ability to start the xorg-server.
Then after that the network became unreachable (which is strange because the ethernet worked ootb on install)
systemctl enable dhcpcd@enp0s10
systemctl start dhcpcd@enp0s10
allows me to ping -c 3 google.com
Lastly, I cannot start the xorg server. Says the nvidia module is bad. I installed bumblebee, and ran startx (not from root) and I get a black screen. This is after installing: xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-server-utils xf86-input-synaptics nvidia acpid
Then running: systemctl enable acpid nvidia-xconfig
My graphics card is a Geforce 650M and I've read I should be using the nvidia module, not the open source noveau module.
startx just boots into a blank screen now and I'm unsure why.
Any speculations, ideas, or thoughts would be gladly welcome.
Thanks ahead of time!
Last edited by dmj (2013-06-26 03:05:26)

Installing Arch on a MacBook

Hello everyone!
I want to install Arch on a MacBook 2.1 but the keyboard is not working when I boot from the CD. It works perfectly fine on other computers. How can I install Arch anyhow?

I have never tried Arch on Apple hardware. Have you keyboard before the boot?
Might this be your problem?
If you use a different live distro that works, one can install Arch from another working Linux system. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … ting_Linux

[SOLVED] Is Refit required for single-boot Arch on Macbook Pro?

I have a Macbook Pro 7.1, and now that the issue with a non-supported chipset has a workaround I am planning to create a single boot Arch system using the latest Archboot that comes with the 2.6.35 kernel.
If I understand well I need the non-efi grub combined with the firmware's bios compatibility mode if I want 2d/3d accelerated gfx, since that does not work currently with grub2-efi. One question I cannot find an answer to though is whether or not I need Refit and an EFI partition for this. The Arch wiki (nor the Debian/Gentoo/Refit docs) is not very clear about this. Is it only needed for multi-boot setups or for all setups that use bios compatibility?
Last edited by rwd (2010-09-06 15:44:00)

Veovis Muad'dib wrote:You need to bless the Arch partition from OS X, probably running from USB or something like that
Do you mean that I need to install Arch besides the existing OSX and 'bless' that arch partition from OSX in order to be able to remove all non-Arch partitions?
Veovis Muad'dib wrote:, and then make sure to never zap the PRAM..
Not that I was planning to do this, but does this remove the possibility to boot Arch?
Veovis Muad'dib wrote:As for if you can change BIOS settings, no. You can change boot disk, but that's it. What would you need to do in the BIOS anyway?.
I just thought it might come in handy for tweaking powermanagement, wake-on-lan, bluetooth and stuff like that.
litemotiv wrote:Also be sure to set your boot partition active if you plan to fdisk, EFI won't be able to see it otherwise.
Thanks all for the info!
Last edited by rwd (2010-08-24 16:13:27)

Install Arch Before Windows?

My profession requires that I triple boot Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. I have purchased a Macbook Pro and know this is possible. I want to do anything possible to avoid Vista and have decided to download the Windows 7 RC this coming Tuesday. I would like to start making my Arch system right now, however. I know it is more than advised you install Windows first, but does anyone know how I could install Arch, then Windows, and not have a big mess on my hands?

If you want to dual/triple boot on a mac you need to boot from the EFI bootloader first, and most people install rEFIt. From there you can boot into your OS's. Remember your partition table will be a dual gpt/mbr, so you can only have four primary partitions.
Also, I don't see how the order of installing the OS's would matter at all.
Last edited by Stythys (2009-05-01 22:32:43)

Install Arch on External Hard Drive Bootable on Most Computers

At work I've been using a Mac OS X partition to boot up people's Macs and perform file recovery/partition manipulation. I'm trying to figure out how to install Arch Linux to an external hard drive so that it can be booted by the max number of computers, both PC and Mac. Should I go with grub, grub-efi 32 bit, grub 64, lilo, efistub, etc. for the bootloader? Can anyone give me some guidance on this?
Thanks
Last edited by duke11235 (2013-06-05 03:10:34)

With grub, you can actually specify where the config is located. So you can put the grub config for UEFI in the same path as grub.efi, then the bios grub could still be in /boot/grub like usual. Personally, I would use something else though, as I am not the biggest fan of grub.
I think that you need to read through the grub wiki page, as most of the grub knowledge that i have (which isn't much TBH) came from that page. So the fact that I know this crap and I don't use it, means to me that you haven't actually read through that page very closely. It is a wealth of information actually.
I like using the EFISTUB for UEFI, so I am more of a gummiboot or rEFInd kind of user. Then I use syslinux as my backup bios setup.
I know nothing about requiring rEFInd for UEFI booting from an external HDD. I have never actually tried it. But when I set up UEFI on my old macbook in the ESP, the entry just showed up in the mac bootloader. So unless the Macs don't respect some of the basic UEFI standards (which is a very real possibility) there should be the ability to have multiple ESPs.

Clarification: Installing ARCH to RAID setup in BIOS

So I've been looking in to setting up ARCH on my laptop that has a RAID that's set up in the BIOS. I've been researching on the wiki as well as on the internet but it's only partially answered my question:
With a BIOS enabled RAID do I still need to use tools like MDADM to set up the raid inside of arch, or should arch see its own drive like windows does?
I'm sure I will have other questions as I delve in to installing on a RAID so I will ask what I have now as well:
Reading threads about doing this it seems like I will need a third drive something outside of the RAID to store the RAID configuration if I opt to use GRUB, however syslinux supports RAID during boot, does this still hold true and if so what do I need to do while installing syslinux to have it know that there's a RAID there and configure correctly?
Any other tips on this topic are very welcome.

So, is rEFIT able to boot GRUB but GRUB is not able to find Arch? Or is rEFIT not able to find GRUB?
For what it's worth, I recently installed Arch on my Macbook 5,1. I also used rEFIT (installed using OS X). My drive partitioning was
/dev/sda1: EFI/OS X boot partition
/dev/sda2: OS X
/dev/sda3: Linux Swap
/dev/sda4: Arch
As you mentioned, the new Arch installer doesn't give you the option of selecting primary partitions to install GRUB (the old installer did). So, when I reached the last stage of the installer (installation of the bootloader), I exited the installer, launched GRUB in interactive mode, and installed GRUB to my 4th partition (where /boot is). (It sounds like you did something similar.) When I rebooted rEFIT discovered that my 4th partition was bootable and displayed a Tux logo. Clicking on the Tux logo launched grub. From there I am able to launch Arch.
Some thoughts:
1. Did you make sure your partition tables are synced? I didn't need to do this, but I've heard of other needing to do this.
2. Did you make sure that the grub was configured properly; e.g. you've specified the correct path to the kernel, etc.
3. Did you try prayer and/or other forms of divinity?

A clean install on my MacBook Pro has left my icons stuck on the right side of the desktop. I want to move them but there is no 'None' option which I think would free them to move where I wish. Suggestions?

A clean install on my MacBook Pro has left me with my icons stuck in the grid on the right side of my desktop. I had the ability to move them and have them stay put in various sectors of the desktop, which I found very useful. The clean install upgraded the OS to 10.6.8 from 10.5.8. I want to move them again but there I see no 'None' option which I think would free them to move where I wish. Has the upgrade deleted that option? Suggestions? I am new to this community and if not new to Mac, I often feel that way. This is one of those times.
Julz11 in NYC

I have the same problem on the latest iTunes software and Windows 7. My window is maximzed and I do not see any tab for photos. Seems related to a recent update (IOS7?) as this was there - at least before the very big change to the interface.

How to install Arch from hard drive?

Hello
I have an old laptop - Pentium II 266 MHz, 128Mb RAM and I want to install Arch on it.
The problem is that there is no way to boot from this laptop -> floppy is broken, CD drive is not bootable, no available boot options from BIOS to boot from PXE or USB.
So, I found this link useful (but not enough).
I have done everything as described on the upper link, but on the final step 7 I don't know how to proceed.
What I have got is:
Arch installation CD is in the CD drive.
After loading vmlinuz26 and archiso.img (which is RAM Disk or initrd) it shows this message: "waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/"
And another message: "ERROR: boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds" and after that it put me in the ramfs prompt.
I try this in ramfs prompt, but without success:
1. ln -s /dev/sr0 /dev/archiso
2. exit (and try again)
What I want is to tell the installer that it must proceed with the installation files on my CD drive.
But how to do that?
If it is not possible, then how could I install Arch on this old laptop? Is there any other methods to try?
PS: There is Windows 2000 and Windows 98 installed on this laptop, but I want to install Arch on it. The whole hard drive is one partition.
Last edited by clovenhoof (2011-08-09 06:49:48)

Try either of the following:
* Add archisolabel=LABEL to the kernel line in menu.lst, where LABEL is the filesystem label of the partition where the ISO resides.
* Add archisodevice=/dev/sdaX to the kernel line in menu.lst, where sdaX should be replaced with the partition where the ISO resides.
[Edit]
Hmmm, sorry I think I was wrong. With the above, you need also extract the ISO, put the arch/ directory at the root of the partition.
Alternatively, you can put the ISO to the root of that partition, and add img_dev=/dev/sdaX and img_loop=foo-bar.iso. For details, see:
https://projects.archlinux.org/archiso.git/tree/README
BUT even if it loads, I don't think you will be able to install Arch on the same partition since it's mounted readonly to /bootmnt, (unless, you explicitly add copytoram to the kernel line, in which case, everything is copied to RAM, but since the machine has got only 128MB of RAM, this is not gonna happen). So, you need to put the ISO (or the extracted squashfs images) to a different partition than your target installation partition...
There probably are other things I'm missing... Gotta say this sounds quite challenging.
[Edit2]
Bah! Try archisodevice=/dev/sr0 then!
Last edited by lolilolicon (2011-08-09 07:48:17)

How do i get more memory installed on my macbook air

How do i get more memory installed on my macbook air

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My USB hub driver is not installing on my macbook pro windows 7 partition ?

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Installing Arch on Asus Eee, Already Read the Wiki [Solved]

I'm attempting to install Arch on my Asus Eee 701 (4GB SSD model) and I made a mistake that I'm having trouble correcting. First, I accidentally wrote the image to my Eee's SSD, instead of my USB drive. I tried to install Arch with the installer on my SSD, set up the partitions (one for /, one for /boot, and one for /home), but when I issued the command, it told me that the disk was in use. It was then that I realized what I did. I used an Ubuntu LiveCD on another computer to burn the image file again, this time to my USB drive. I booted my Eee from the USB drive and tried to partition my SSD again, but this time, it tells me:
Device or resource busy
This disk is currently in use - repartitioning is probably a bad idea.
Unmount all file systems, and swapoff all swap partitions on this disk.
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Use the --force flag to overrule all checks.
When I boot from my SSD, I get the same message, so I'm not even 100% certain that I booted from my USB drive before. My USB drive's activity light was on though.
Is there any way to fix this? Also, given that I have an SSD, what partitions should I set up and how big should they be? I can't find any concrete numbers in the wiki.
Thanks in advance for the help.
Last edited by Tyrian (2008-11-17 04:14:23)

I'll try that, thanks. What would happen if I dismounted the SSD with -f if it was in use?
EDIT: I just realized that when I go into the installer, it lets me set up partitions manually (I run the installer, pick "Prepare Hard Drive", "Partition Hard Drives", "/dev/sda"). But how should I set them up? When I test it by just making one 4GB partition, it tells me, "Wrote partition table, but re-read table failed. Reboot to update table." So I rebooted, and it appears to work. So I deleted that partition, made a 512MB one, rebooted, and repeated until I had 3 partitions in ext2, a 512MB (sda1, bootable), 512MB (sda2), and one roughly 2.5GB (sda3). I then went to "Set Filesystem Mountpoints", said "NONE" for the swap (due to the avoiding pitfalls section of the wiki), picked "/dev/sda1" as "/" in ext2, made "/dev/sda2" as ext2 called "/var", and made "/dev/sda3" in ext2 called "/home", then said "DONE". When I say "Yes" as the confirmation prompt, I get this message:
Error creating filesystem: mke2fs /dev/sda1
I hit enter and get dropped back to the "Prepare Hard Drive" menu. I followed this section of the Beginner's Guide too.
Is there any way to fix this?
Last edited by Tyrian (2008-11-15 18:37:10)

Installing arch to macbook 2,1

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