Problem booting Arch after first install on MacBook Pro

Question

Hi all,
I've spent the past month intermittently trying to install Arch on an old MacBook Pro with a broken screen running in clamshell mode (I've reformatted, clean installed OSX, and run pacstrap around 20 times now). I was originally trying to install Debian, but the Arch Wiki was so good that I switched. The issue has been the same anyway.
Every time I try to install, I get stuck at the bootloader stage, where I need to make the installation bootable. It doesn't matter what bootloader method I use, since I've tried:
Boot from /boot partition with GRUB
Boot from separate HFS+ GRUB partition
Boot from Apple EFI System Partition (ESP) with GRUB
Boot with rEFInd
Boot with rEFInd installed to the ESP
Arch itself works fine, but when I go to boot from rEFInd's autodetected vmlinuz-linux from 128MiB ext2 partition, I get the same error message I've gotten with every other configuration:
:: running early hook [udev]
:: running hook [udev]
:: Triggering uevents...
[ 0.558033] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: Found HC with no IRQ. Check BIOS/PCI 0000:00:1a.0 setup!
[ 0.558097] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: init 0000:00:1a.0 fail, -19
[ 0.558135] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: Found HC with no IRQ. Check BIOS/PCI 0000:00:1d.0 setup!
[ 0.558189] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: init 0000:00:1b.0 fail, -19
Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-uuid/2b121a89-aeb9-430a-8e6c-a05b79f08427 ...
ERROR : device 'UUID=2b121a89-aeb9-430a-8e6c-a05b79f08427' not found. Skipping fsck.
ERROR: Unable to find root device 'UUID=2b121a89-aeb9-430a-8e6c-a05b79f08427'.
You are being dropped to a recovery shell
[etc.]
When the Arch .iso live CD boots, it gets the first uhci_hcd errors, and then just moves on with:
:: hook [memdisk]
:: hook [archiso]
[etc.]
Here are the contents of my refind.conf file (/boot/efi/ESP/refind/refind.conf) (I omit all the standard comments):
timeout 0
scan_all_linux_kernels
[The example menu entries - all disabled]
menuentry "Arch Linux" {
icon /EFI/refind/icons/os_arch.icns
"Arch Boot"
loader /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
options "root=/dev/sda7 rw rootfstype=ext4"
And my refind_linux.conf (/boot/refind-linux.conf):
"Boot with standard options" "ro root=2b121a89-aeb9-430a-8e6c-a05b79f08427"
"Boot to single-user mode" "ro root=2b121a89-aeb9-430a-8e6c-a05b79f08427 single"
"Boot with minimal options" "ro root=2b121a89-aeb9-430a-8e6c-a05b79f08427"
My custom menu entry for Arch doesn't work either (I'm still researching exactly why). I've been quite confused by different posts all over by different people on how to configure the manual refind.conf stanzas. I also tried a direct to root menu entry, where I tried the files as /boot/vmlinuz-linux, etc.
The error I always get here is the same:
Starting vmlinuz-linux
Using load options "[same as above]"
Invalid loader file!
Error: Not Found while loading vmlinuz-linux
I've installed GRUB as well, just to be sure. Although I haven't moved it to any other partitions or 'blessed' it in OS X. (I have blessed the HFS+/EFI partitions when I used GRUB.)
Just FYI, I've used the following pages as guides:
My primary guide: Cody Littlewood's installation procedure for a MacBook Pro
The Arch Wiki MacBook Page, which was useful but a bit confusing and self-referential on the Bootloader section
The rEFInd website, by Rod Smith. I've read it fairly extensively (including an interesting comparison of SodaStream flavours)
A Gentoo Wiki page with a rEFInd example
The LFS GRUB chapter, and surrounding material
And I've largely read the Arch Wiki Beginners' Guide, Bootloaders page, GRUB page, GRUB EFI examples page, UEFI page and EFI Stub Loader page.
There have been others, but it's been a while since I read them. I've been trying to make this work for a while.
I've also looked at some other posts on similar subjects:
A post on the Arch Linux subreddit matching my (previous; with GRUB) situation, but not fixing my problem
An Arch forum post, of which there have been others, but google seems to have changed my search results.
EFI-Booting Ubuntu on a Mac, by Rod Smith
The Debian MacBook Pro page
A post about booting Debian without rEFIt
Again, there are more, but I can't find them all just now.
I've looked EVERYWHERE for a solution.
My question is, does anyone have any ideas on how I might make my computer bootable?
Almost forgot; I've run
mkinitcpio -p linux
successfully (I get the two driver warnings that seem to be standard).
Computer specifications are as follows:
Model Identifier:    MacBookPro6,2 (mid 2010)
Processor Name:    Intel i7
Architecture:    amd64
RAM:    4GB DDR3
Graphics:    NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512MB
Software:    OS X 10.9.2
My disk partition table is as follows:
$gdisk -l /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.9
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Fround valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): C0ADB511-F73D-404A-B128-DD01509AE6EA
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 976773134
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 262150 sectors (128.0MiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name [Additional Info]
1 * * 200.0MiB EF00 EFI System Partition rEFInd currently installed here, mounts to /boot/efi
2 * * 185.8GiB AF00 OSX
3 * * 619.9MiB AB00 Recovery HD
4 * * 93.1GiB AF00 DMZ unjouranaled HFS+ shared partition
5 * * 4.0GiB 8200 Arch Swap
6 * * 128.0MiB 8300 Arch Boot ext2
7 * * 50.0GiB 8300 Arch Root ext4
8 * * 131.8GiB 8300 Arch Home ext4
And my fstab, made with genfstab after I mounted everything (except for the swap stanza, which I had to write):
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# UUID=2b121a89-aeb9-430a-8e6c-a05b79f08427
/dev/sda7 / ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 1
# UUID=efb41f69-6f99-4c8b-8431-01f3cd22c9cc
/dev/sda6 /boot ext2 rw,relatime 0 2
# UUID=67E3-17ED LABEL=EFI
/dev/sda1 /boot/efi vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed, errors=remount-ro 0 2
# UUID=[another long UUID]
/dev/sda8 /home ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2
# UUID=[another long UUID] LABEL=DMZ
/dev/sda4 /dmz hfsplus rw,relatime,unmask=22,uid=0,gid=0,nls=utf8 0 0
# UUID=[another long UUID]
/dev/sda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
Last edited by rjmh (2014-04-04 08:35:20)

Answer 1

henriqueleng wrote:
I don't know about Mac computers but i use a uefi motehrboard,
To install it i created a partition with 512MB and i mounted /boot on there. all the rest of system are normal.
I use gummiboot, i don't know if its stuff on Mac. I think that ou should try another bootloader!
And why do you mounted two point on /boot?
/boot and /boot/efi?
Are you sure you're using uefi, my fstab looks just like his with the boot and efi partition. I'm pretty sure that's how the wiki says to set it up. That's the fstab for a laptop with uefi if it helps you out. I had problems with grub btw, so I had to set up gummiboot
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# /dev/sdb3
UUID=0c1c97a3-0472-4141-a756-a03c00a4a3cf / ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered,discard 0 1
# /dev/sda3
UUID=8a4412fa-5d4b-4de4-91ff-a4d05b3705e1 /home ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2
# /dev/sdb2
UUID=971ed3e8-394d-46b3-b0d4-e8bb86b267cf /boot ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered,discard 0 2
# /dev/sdb1
UUID=095C-CB43 /boot/efi vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro 0 2
# /dev/sda1
UUID=12a4a2b1-6338-495a-8a41-474653eb227b /var ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2
# /dev/sda2
UUID=846803f1-3f5b-48ae-9945-37e9725011b2 none swap defaults 0 0