Reinstalling arch

I screwed up arch and am reinstalling, I backed up my home folder, but is there anything else I need/shoiuld back up to make the next install easier? I have alreayd written down my programs and themes and such, but should I save my pacman and x.org configs or anything?
Also, I am backing up to a hard drive I added, it's 1 ext3 partition on a 20gig drive. How do I keep this intact while I reinstall arch on my master drive? I can't afford for any problems with the data on it, as it is very needed. Unfortunatley that's as much as I can back it up, due to it being 5 gigs and not having a cd or dvd burner or a portable hard drive. I definately intend to go get one after this though :!:

jellywerker wrote:I screwed up arch and am reinstalling, I backed up my home folder, but is there anything else I need/shoiuld back up to make the next install easier? I have alreayd written down my programs and themes and such, but should I save my pacman and x.org configs or anything?
I always back up /etc -- it makes things a lot easier.
Also, I am backing up to a hard drive I added, it's 1 ext3 partition on a 20gig drive. How do I keep this intact while I reinstall arch on my master drive? I can't afford for any problems with the data on it, as it is very needed. Unfortunatley that's as much as I can back it up, due to it being 5 gigs and not having a cd or dvd burner or a portable hard drive. I definately intend to go get one after this though :!:
Assuming you've used rsync or something similar, you theoretically should be cool. I'd unplug the drive to make sure that nothing gets overwritten though - better safe than sorry. I'm not going to go all zealot on you, since I hate people who get holier than thou about backups (and I've seen an amazing amount of this sort of zealotry) but that's really not an acceptable backup system for important data. DVDs do a fairly good job for most desktops machines since a lot of what you have on there will be static, more or less, in any event. You may add to your music collection over time, but there's not a lot of sense in including 20 GB of mp3s that you've already backed up to DVD in a grandfather, father, son routine.

Similar Messages

Reinstalled Arch, sound works but not when I login

Hey guys I just reinstalled Arch, card has worked fine before (M-Audio Revolution 7.1). It works fine now, too, as I have a little "welcome.wav" file that plays when I reach GDM on boot, and it plays just fine but as soon as I log in I can't get any sound. I am in the audio group:
bobby@dabox:~$ groups
video audio optical bobby
bobby@dabox:~$
Also here is lsmod output so you can see that it certainly works:
bobby@dabox:~$ lsmod
Module Size Used by
nvidia 7813984 24
pcspkr 3072 0
rtc_cmos 7712 0
rtc_core 15240 1 rtc_cmos
rtc_lib 3072 1 rtc_core
ppp_generic 23956 0
firewire_ohci 15360 0
firewire_core 36416 1 firewire_ohci
crc_itu_t 2432 1 firewire_core
ohci1394 28848 0
ieee1394 80568 1 ohci1394
i2c_i801 8976 0
i2c_core 20096 2 nvidia,i2c_i801
tsdev 6976 0
intel_agp 21780 0
agpgart 27352 2 nvidia,intel_agp
sg 26652 0
evdev 8320 0
thermal 12956 0
processor 28248 1 thermal
fan 4100 0
button 6544 0
battery 10248 0
ac 4356 0
snd_ice1724 76364 0
snd_ice17xx_ak4xxx 3712 1 snd_ice1724
snd_ac97_codec 95396 1 snd_ice1724
snd_pt2258 4096 1 snd_ice1724
snd_i2c 4992 2 snd_ice1724,snd_pt2258
snd_ak4xxx_adda 8320 2 snd_ice1724,snd_ice17xx_ak4xxx
snd_ak4114 8192 1 snd_ice1724
snd_mpu401_uart 7168 1 snd_ice1724
snd_rawmidi 19232 1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_oss 29568 0
snd_seq_midi_event 6656 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 47056 4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 7052 3 snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 37152 0
snd_pcm 69124 4 snd_ice1724,snd_ac97_codec,snd_ak4114,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 19332 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 8200 1 snd_pcm
snd_mixer_oss 14592 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd 45476 15 snd_ice1724,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pt2258,snd_i2c,snd_ak4xxx_adda,snd_ak4114,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss
soundcore 6496 1 snd
ac97_bus 2432 1 snd_ac97_codec
slhc 5760 1 ppp_generic
sky2 40324 0
usbhid 40000 0
hid 28160 1 usbhid
ff_memless 5256 1 usbhid
ext3 119944 9
jbd 54568 1 ext3
mbcache 7040 1 ext3
sr_mod 14884 0
cdrom 34080 1 sr_mod
sd_mod 23040 12
ehci_hcd 32140 0
uhci_hcd 22544 0
usbcore 123016 4 usbhid,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
ata_piix 13572 10
ahci 20356 0
ata_generic 5380 0
pata_jmicron 4736 0
libata 105968 4 ata_piix,ahci,ata_generic,pata_jmicron
bobby@dabox:~$
Any ideas???

You need to store the alsa "state" once (alsactl) before using the alsa daemon for this task.
That caused me some confusion recently as well.

[solved] dhcpcd: timed out after reinstalling arch

Hi erveryone!
After reinstalling arch I can't connect to my wireless network anymore.
Typed:
wpa_supplicant -B -Dwext -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant_vienna.conf
dhcpcd wlan0
Got:
dhcpcd: wlan0: waiting for carrier
dhcpcd: timed out
wpa_supplicant_vienna.conf (ssid and psk deleted):
network={
ssid=""
proto=RSN
pairwise=CCMP TKIP
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
psk=
I reinstalled arch on my netbook at the same time and there's everything working fine (even with the same wireless-card). The only difference between the two systems is that my laptop has an i686 installation while on my netbook I've installed x86_64.
Things I've tried:
+ Update the system via wired-connection (mirrors.kernel.org) --> the download never gets faster than 10KB/s (?).
+ Configure the wireless interface via netcfg --> same problem
+ Reinstalled again and only changed LOCALE in /etc/rc.conf --> same problem
So you may see, I have no idea what I could be doing wrong and hope that theres anybody out there who knows what to do!
P.S. Well, i have now by-passed my problem.
1.) Created a list of packages installed during system-update on my netbook.
2.) In this list I changed package-name-x86_64.tar.gz to package-name-i686.tar.gz
3.) Downloaded the list with wget.
4.) Ccopied the packages to my laptop
5.) Created a local repository and made a system-update.
Last edited by kronfeld (2010-05-04 17:34:43)

Hi trusktr
This might seem stupid but are you sure you are using "eth0" and not "eth1" etc.? As an example I have two on-board lans and I'm plugged into eth1. I had to change rc.conf as it defaults to using eth0.
#Static IP example
#eth0="eth0 192.168.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.0.255"
eth1="dhcp"
INTERFACES=(eth1)
Since I am using eth1 and not eth0 here is what I get when I try:
ifconfig eth0:
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:04:4B:00:88:0E
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:23 Base address:0x6000
Look familiar?
I'm not saying this is the case but it could be something as simple as that.
ifconfig -a
should show you how many lans you have.
Thought I would drop the obvious first in case that's all it is.

Reinstalled Arch- GRUB didn't change?

I reinstalled Arch a couple of hours ago. I deleted the partition that Arch had been on using the installation CD and then I went all the way again. But when installing the bootloader, I discovered upon reboot that the dual boot entry for Windows hadn't changed from last install, still displaying "Windows XP entry that I made" instead of plain "windows" that I wanted this time around. Ain't that strange? And it seemed like the system hadn't actually been deleted, as many of the packages were already installed. What could have gone wrong? Strange...

This happens sometimes, If you chose the same type of filesystem as last time, you will get remnants of leftover stuff from the last install sometimes too.
I would switch filesystem types and reinstall, or zero out the drive and start over.

[SOLVED] System hangs on boot, reinstalling Arch doesn't help

After a recent upgrade (including the kernel), my system hangs on boot. I have an Asus K40IN laptop, about 2 years old. I've been running Arch for the life of the computer and never had any (serious) problems.
I booted into a live Arch environment, tried rebuilding the mkinitcpio image, didn't work. Tried downgrading the kernel, didn't work.
I then assumed it was just some software issue that I couldn't figure out, so I reinstalled Arch. No change.
Here's what my screen looks like when it hangs:
Any ideas would be very much appreciated. I'm completely stumped here.
Last edited by noahsark1126 (2011-06-15 23:32:34)

jnguyen:
I have another arch system, a desktop, that I tend to keep pretty much in sync with my laptop. So I can look in the logs on that system to see what was upgraded. The other notable packages in that upgrade were probably udev, initscripts, and mkinitcpio. I will try downgrading those.
Leonid.I:
I'm using the 2010.05 arch release, which has kernel 2.6.33. I see two cores in the live env, as I should, and there's nothing to suggest any problems in the logs.
I'm actually now getting a completely different hang screen:
Of course I don't know what this one means either...

SOLVED - Reinstall Arch on new thumb drive

Hello all, I'm a noob to Linux, but not afraid of command lines (old school dos guy). I bought a pogoplug on a whim and installed using these instructions: http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv5 … 2-pinkgray but I would like to reinstall arch on a new faster thumb drive and start over. My question is how to go about this (I did google it too). I would like to avoid bricking the pogo. This is my thinking:
sda is the current slow, small, old thumbdrive, i plug in my new drive it would be sdb right?
My pass at the reinstall:
Start fdisk on the USB drive:
/sbin/fdisk /dev/sdb
At the fdisk prompt, delete old partitions and create a new one:
Type o. This will clear out any partitions on the drive.
Type p to list partitions. There should be no partitions left.
Now type n, then p for primary, 1 for the first partition on the drive, and then press ENTER, accepting default values.
Exit by typing w.
Now create the ext2 filesystem:
wget http://archlinuxarm.org/os/pogoplug/mke2fs
chmod 755 mke2fs
./mke2fs /dev/sdb1
mkdir usb
mount /dev/sdb1 usb
Download and install Arch Linux ARM:
cd usb
wget http://archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM … est.tar.gz
tar -xzvf ArchLinuxARM-armv5te-*.tar.gz # This will take a long time
rm ArchLinuxARM-armv5te-*.tar.gz
sync # Takes a while when using a flash drive
Clean up, reboot, remove old thumb drive. Cross your fingers and hope for the best.
cd ..
umount usb
/sbin/reboot
Once powered down, pull old thumb drive
The SSH key of your device will be different, so you need to tell Mac OS X or Linux to remove it from ~/.ssh/known_hosts before using SSH again:
ssh-keygen -R 192.168.1.123 # Use your device's IP
Log back in after your Pogoplug reboots using username root and password root.
*whew* so am I missing a step? Will the bootloader balk at the new drive?
Thanks in advance
Last edited by ubermacin (2013-01-20 04:36:58)

Not sure. But I think they are images and system tar in your link.
For images I would use dd (as say Ŝaran and later resize). You write all the system in the thumb drive and get a bootloader.
The second (systema tar), you get all files but you don't get bootloader.
You can do, too, what Ŝaran say. Do an image of your current system with dd. It's like clonning. Later resize your filesystem.
dd if=old_thumb_drive of=new_thumb_drive bs=4M
(from a third system)
Beware with dd and /dev/ (same people say that it stands for data destroyer)
*bs=4M is, generally, the block size of thumbdrives. So it takes less time to write.
Last edited by Alber (2013-01-19 10:35:34)

Reinstall Arch, what files to keep?

I'm thinking about reinstalling arch due to some issues with my laptop's monitor that I think are base on a software issue.
What should I save as far as configuration files etc so that I don't have to start from scratch?
I"ll be reusing the home partition so I'm just throwing stuff there in a /reinstall directory with the same dir structure as the OS.
So far this is my list:
/etc/rc.conf
~.xinitrc
/etc/network.d/* (All my wireless profiles)
/etc/ssh/ssh*config* (ssh and sshd config)
/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
/etc/pacman.conf
I also think that I needed some tools for my wireless card in the past but research shows that my Broadcom card is now supported in the kernel.
Anything I'm missing?
I hope to turn this into a sort of topic that could be stickied if it proves useful enough to others.

You can have a look at some backup scripts that are floating around to see what other people have hardcoded in there.
If you're keeping your mirrorlist, you can keep other configs from /etc such as mkinitcpio.conf as well.
I'd keep my .vimrc, .bashrc and so on too.

Reinstalling Arch Linux - Advice?

Hi all,
I have been a deadbeat dad to my arch system for the past year or so, and now the poor thing has some pretty big problems. I am wondering weather to abort it or not. I have all my files that I want to keep in my /data partition (except configs, but I can always send them over into a new folder) so I'm not worried about losing any information, but it scares the hell out of me to actually go through with a new install because, well, I'm an idiot and always tend to mess crap up.
Can I reinstall without losing my data partition, how do I do it, and is it advisable to do that in most situations? All I know is that my Mencoder is messed up, my browsers glitch out, and I'm losing my connection with screen, MPD, etc quite frequently these days.
Thanks for the advice,
Poopstuffs

gregor wrote:try uninstall it first with # pacman -Rs mencoder ,and re-install it back with # pacman -Sy mencoder and see what happens
After going for a long stretch, installing anything with pacman -Sy would be an even worse idea than it already is. It's always best to update pacman databases with pacman -Syy, then install packages, so as to avoid potential version conflicts. If you've gone more than a couple months without updating the system, I'd recommend backing up your /home folder and following the wiki instructions on creating a list of installed packages, then reinstalling using the resulting text file. You'll have the same system (minus AUR packages), and be up-to-date. It's also important to note that over the last several months there have been some changes to the core system, namely the new rc.d script, a new rc.conf file, new networking parameters, etc. That could be too much to cope with for one upgrade.

[SOLVED] Reinstalling Arch on pure systemd - Localization problem.

Hi
I have accident regarding today filesystem update, so I decide to install arch again on pure systemd from the begining.
I am now on freshly installed xfce and i just noticed my userspace is totally not localized, despite proper localization steps.
/etc/locale.gen
pl_PL.UTF-8 UTF-8
# cat /etc/vconsole.conf
KEYMAP=pl
FONT=lat2-16
CONSOLEFONT=lat2a-16
FONT_MAP=8859-2
# locale -a
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_COLLATE to default locale: No such file or directory
C
POSIX
pl_PL.utf8
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
LANG=pl_PL.utf8@euro
LC_CTYPE="pl_PL.utf8@euro"
LC_NUMERIC="pl_PL.utf8@euro"
LC_TIME="pl_PL.utf8@euro"
LC_COLLATE="pl_PL.utf8@euro"
LC_MONETARY="pl_PL.utf8@euro"
LC_MESSAGES=C
LC_PAPER="pl_PL.utf8@euro"
LC_NAME="pl_PL.utf8@euro"
LC_ADDRESS="pl_PL.utf8@euro"
LC_TELEPHONE="pl_PL.utf8@euro"
LC_MEASUREMENT="pl_PL.utf8@euro"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="pl_PL.utf8@euro"
LC_ALL=
What i should do?
Last edited by utops (2012-10-06 11:46:37)

utops wrote:
karol wrote:
Create ~/.config/locale.conf
$ cat $HOME/.config/locale.conf
LANG="pl_PL.UTF-8"
and reboot.
I know nothing about xfce, but can you tell me what part of the console stuff is in English? Can you copy / paste an example?
$HOME config don't work either.
From grub to login and from using CLI apps like nano and wifi-menu,mc,no polish language there.
Everything is in english...
Like system sudenly goes blind and don't see what i put in to configs.
Everything worked well on my old pretty instalation i already miss that times.
EDIT:
Sudenly it worked again.
Dunno what happened,just working again...
Ok,so thx for tips guys,have a good evening...
see my previous post.
please mark the thread as solved.

[SOLVED] Problems trying to reinstall arch-kdemod

Hello to everyone. This is my problem. I´m trying to do a new and clean installation for my arch-kdemod system-. Everything is fine until i begin with kdemod. Since I have done other times, I write pacman -S kdemod-minimal, but pacman says that to install it needs the libxxf86misc dependece. I´ve read this dependence doesn´t exist, so how can I install kdemod? I´ve been looking for a solution in xorg, kdemod and other pages (and all google) with no results. Can you help me? I can´t find a solution by myself.
Thanks
Last edited by 7etc/ (2010-09-13 18:52:38)

hi all. I query the package in the following page.
http://chakra-project.org/packages/inde … bxxf86misc
The package was moved to different directory: platform
thus, i got the package by adding the following 3 lines into /etc/pacman.conf
[platform]
Server=http://chakra-project.org/repo/platform/i686
by the way, there are two directories in http://chakra-project.org/repo: desktop, apps
I also added these two directories.
[desktop]
Server=http://chakra-project.org/repo/desktop/i686
[apps]
Server=http://chakra-project.org/repo/apps/i686

Reinstalling Arch. Need suggestions for older laptop.

Hello!
Recently I revived my old HP Pavilion zv6000 by buying a $5 charger off of Amazon. It works quite well, surprisingly.
Specs:
- AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0 GHz CPU
- ATI Xpress 200M w/ 128 MB dedicated VRAM VGA
- 512 MB DDR RAM 333 MHz
- 80 GiB 4200 RPM HDD
Now, right when I got it I installed Arch. I used x86_64, JFS for / and XFCE as my DE. This combination didn't turn out very well. I would run out of usable RAM all the time and would start swapping like crazy, which would eventually lock up my computer and force me to hard reboot. During one of these reboots, I lost several files. Also, I would always have 100% CPU usage in any file operations. From un/archiving things, to just downloading big files, I would always hit 100% CPU usage, reducing my computer to an unusable state. I even tried the 2.6.38 (with the 200-line 'miracle' patch) kernel out of the testing repository, and while this did help with multi-tasking a little bit, my computer was still pretty unusable, sadly. I couldn't go on having it do this. I needed it to be in a semi-usable state.
Anyway, I installed the OEM Windows XP back on it (Ugh...) and it runs really good. Downloading files takes no CPU, and I have enough RAM to function pretty well with Firefox. Unfortunately, I prefer Linux much more then Windows, and I only installed Windows as a stop-gap solution until I figured out my re-installation game-plan. The problem is, I don't know what was wrong with my setup in the first place. I was thinking about falling back to i686 this time, and I will probably use LXDE as my DE instead of XFCE. This should cut down on the RAM usage. I was considering using JFS again, but I have lost my loyalty to it as of late because of the aforementioned problems.
So, I wanted to consult people smarter than I am on this issue. The Arch community seems very helpful. I would like to complement you guys on your fine wiki and distribution. Ever since I've used Arch (about a year ago), I have stuck with it. I am just having a difficult time getting this old-ish machine to run well. I am not expecting too awful much, all I really want to be able to do on it is browse the web with Firefox comfortably, maybe a bit of C/++ coding with Geany, edit some documents using OO.org and listen to music. Kinda like a netbook. An 8 pound netbook.
All recommendations are welcome. Thank you!

Thank you for your suggestions and quick reply Inxsible. I am surprised that you have that machine running well! That gives me some definite hope that I can get this machine running well.
Google Docs is interesting. I did not think of that. I'm not too big on 'cloud' computing, but I do suppose OO.o had gotten hefty lately. I will look into using alternatives to OO.o. Would Abiwod and Gnumeric be a good choice, or would they still be too heavy, do you think?
As far as the file manager goes, I could probably use the command line fairly well, although it's always nice to have a GUI file manager around for certain things. I'll look into XFE. I liked PCManFM the last time I tried it, and it seemed to be very light. I like the fact that it can manage my desktop too.
JFS seemed to perform poorly for me. I will likely follow your suggestion and use ext4.
I really like Firefox, and it'd be very difficult for me to not use it anymore. It's the one thing that I'd have a hard time giving up. This computer will be 90% web browsing, so Firefox is really important to me.
Leafpad looks solid, nice and lightweight. I like Geany as well, having used it a bit lately it seems very fast and lightweight, but has all the features I care about in a development environment.
I'm not too sure about my music player. I will certainly consider deadbeef. I didn't look at it too closely, though it looks really good from what I saw.
-Andrew

Reinstalling arch linux

Hi all,
i'm an happy user of archlinux since a lot of years but i think my system is a bit messed up right now.
i'ld like to reinstall it, so can you suggest me what configuration files i can save for the installation? so i don't have to reset them properly
thanks a lot
Nico

tracuboTL wrote:for as reguard /etc... they are too much. i just need to save the 3-4 important archlinux configuration files...
So pick the ones you've edited e.g:
- rc.local
- rc.conf
- mkinitcpio.conf
- makepkg.conf
- inittab

Dual boot Windows 7 (64) and Arch Linux (64) problems

Hello:
I am new to Arch Linux and just finished installing the 64bit on my laptop. It had a prebuilt Windows 7 (64) installed which I kept but split the hdd from 160Gb to 80Gb and 80Gb. I installed Arch there and set 4 partitions, all of them as Logical - a 64 MB ext2 /boot partition; a 512 MB swap partition; a 15 GB root partition; and the rest as my /home partition. My partitions look like this:
Disk Drive: /dev/sda
Size: 160041885696 bytes, 160.0 GB
Heads: 255 Sectors per Track: 63 Cylinders: 19457
Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB)
sda1 Primary Unknown (27) 12889.02
sda2 Boot Primary NTFS 106.93
sda3 Primary NTFS [] 73915.11*
sda5 Logical Linux ext2 65.81*
sda6 Logical Linux 509.97*
sda7 Logical Linux ext2 15002.92*
sda8 Logical Linux ext2 57549.55*
The install was succesful(this was running from the core install cd) and I installed GRUB to my /boot but when I restarted it loaded Windows 7. I have used Knoppix USB disc to boot and see my Arch Linux install files and edited the /boot/gur/menu.lst file.
In Windows I installed EasyBCD 1.7.2 and tried to get NeoGrub bootloader working as a dual boot. I tried getting rid of the boot flag for Windows with cfdisk and setting it to my (Logical) sda5. That did not work. So far the only way I have booted into my Arch Linux install has been by going to the Live CD, choosing "Boot from Existing Linux Install" and editing the command files there.
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /kernel26.img
My goal is to get a dual boot working for Windows 7 and Arch Linux 64 and continue installing the Xorg and KDE to Arch. I just don't know what the problem is here. I don't mind reinstalling Arch if something went wrong, but I would like to keep my Windows running in order and add Arch on.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I ran the LiveCD and chose "Install to MBR hd0". I ended up with this:
setup hd(0,1)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists.....yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/iso9660_stage1_5" exists.....yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/iso9660_stage1_5 (hd0,1)".....failed(this is not fatal)
Running "embed /boot/grub/iso9660_stage1_5 (hd16)".....failed(this is not fatal)
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 d (hd0,1) /boot/grub/stage2 p (hd0,1) boot/grub/menu.lst".....failed
Error 31: File is not sector aligned
My entry for Windows into the menu.lst looks like this:
# (0) Arch Linux x64
title Arch Linux x64
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/3841273c-d91e-41d6-9dbf-716a15d03a01 ro
initrd /kernel26.img
# (1) Arch Linux x64
title Arch Linux x64 Fallback
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/3841273c-d91e-41d6-9dbf-716a15d03a01 ro
initrd /kernel26-fallback.img
# (2) Windows 7
title Windows 7
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Trying to boot arch from win7 with EasyBCD; "boot device not found"

EDIT: title was 'Dual boot with Win7, easybcd + syslinux, getting "Boot error"'. Narrowed down the issue to something unrelated to Arch, and felt this was more accurate. The Arch install is sound, it's getting win7/EasyBCD to load it that's the issue.
I got a new work computer and am trying to recreate my formerly successful setup, which I documented here some time ago. Unfortunately... I'm having issues. Just a note up front from scouring the internet for ideas: I cannot use syslinux (or any other bootloader) to chainload Win7 vs. the other way around! The computer drive is encrypted with McAfee Endpoint Encryption, and doing anything whatsoever with the MBR from outside of Windows will brick my computer. Just wanted to add that, as almost all issues involving dual boot inevitably bring about the suggestion to "just chainload windows from grub/syslinux/etc."
With that out of the way, here's the process I used:
drive setup
Here's the partition scheme:
- /dev/sda1: SYSTEM (pre-existing)
- /dev/sda2: C:, Win7 (pre-existing)
- /dev/sda3: /boot, ext2 (created)
- /dev/sda4: /, encrypted Arch root, cryptsetup/ext4 (created)
My process for creating the partitions is as follows:
- shrunk C: down from the Win7 built-in partition utility
- created two unformatted partitions with no drive letter using Minitool Partition Wizard, setting the partition ID to 0x83 for both
- booted from USB drive of the Arch installation .iso (downloaded Friday 5/29)
- booted x86_64 arch
# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 238.5 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x1e6513b3
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 * 2048 2101247 2099200 1G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 2101248 177278975 175177728 83.5G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 177278976 177541119 262144 128M 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 177541120 500103167 322562048 153.8G 83 Linux
# modprobe dm_crypt
# cryptsetup -c aes-xts-plain64 -s 512 -h sha512 -i 5000 -y luksFormat /dev/sda4
# cryptsetup open /dev/sda4 root
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/root
# mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda3
installation
I just followed the Arch installation guide but documented my steps to a text file just to be sure...
# mount /dev/mapper/root /mnt
# mkdir /mnt/boot
# mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/boot
### connect to internet
# pacstrap /mnt base
# genfstab -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
# arch-chroot /mnt
# echo arch_zbook > /etc/hostname
# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago /etc/localtime
### uncomment en_US.utf-8 in /etc/locale.gen
# locale-gen
# echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
### add encrypt before "filesystem" in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf hooks
# mkinitcpio -p linux
# passwd
# pacman -S syslinux
# cp -r /usr/lib/syslinux/bios/*.c32 /boot/syslinux
# extlinux -i /boot
### the above echoes "/boot is device /dev/sda3"
Then I edited /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg:
LABEL arch
MENU LABEL Arch Linux
LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux
APPEND root=/dev/mapper/root cryptdevice=/dev/sda4:root crypto=sha512:aes-xts-plain64:512:: rw
INITRD ../initramfs-linux.img
EDIT: I deleted the contents of /boot, reinstalled syslinux, linux, and mkinitcpio, and repeated the above with `extlinux -i /boot/syslinux`, noting that syslinux.cfg points to ../vmlinuz-linux. Same result.
Just to double check proper syslinux setup, here's the dir contents:
# ls /boot
initramfs-linux-fallback.img
initramfs-linux.img
ldlinux.c32
ldlinux.sys
lost+found
syslinux
vmlinuz-linux
# ls /boot/syslinux
cat.c32
chain.c32
cmd.c32
cmenu.c32
config.c32
cptime.c32
cpu.c32
cpuid.c32
cpuidtest.c32
debug.c32
dhcp.c32
disk.c32
dmi.c32
dmitest.c32
elf.c32
ethersel.c32
gfxboot.c32
gpxecmd.c32
hdt.c32
hexdump.c32
host.c32
ifcpu64.c32
ifcpu.c32
ifmemdsk.c32
ifplop.c32
kbdmap.c32
kontron_wdt.c32
ldlinux.c32
lfs.c32
libcom32.c32
libgpl.c32
liblua.c32
libmenu.c32
libutil.c32
linux.c32
ls.c32
lua.c32
mboot.c32
meminfo.c32
menu.c32
pci.c32
pcitest.c32
pmload.c32
poweroff.c32
prdhcp.c32
pwd.c32
pxechn.c32
reboot.c32
rosh.c32
sanboot.c32
sdi.c32
sysdump.c32
syslinux.c32
syslinux.cfg
vesa.c32
vesainfo.c32
vesamenu.c32
vpdtest.c32
whichsys.c32
zzjson.c32
EasyBCD and boot attempt
At this point, exited the arch-chroot, unmounted/closed my partitions, and rebooted into Win7. Using EasyBCD, I added a entry for a syslinux bootloader, pointing it to "Partition 3 (Linux - 128MiB)."
I reboot, get the EasyBCD menu, but then the lone words "Boot error" on a black screen. Any key press takes me to some sort of BIOS boot thingy which tells me to "Please install an operating system!" I think this is something built into the laptop BIOS, not anything from the syslinux side. Selecting "Boot existing OS" from the Arch install USB doesn't give me any options at all.
From what I can tell, I'm using the same procedure that I ended up with on this former troubleshooting exercise.
Thoughts
I'm really struggling to understand what I'm doing wrong. I originally had a couple variations on logical/extended partitions since I need my eventual setup to hold a shared TrueCrypt partition so I can access my work files from both Win7 and arch. I tried /boot as primary and Arch/TC as logicals, as well as a primary TC partition with boot/root as a logical drive combination. I've simplified to just primary partitions (as shown above) to troubleshoot.
It's quite difficult to troubleshoot as I don't know if this is an installation issue or an EasyBCD one. Is there a way to manually try and boot my HD arch install from the install USB? I wanted to try that using the "Boot existing OS" option, but am wondering if it fails since only /dev/sda1 features a bootable flag and it's encrypted so only the HP BIOS can handle it? I thought about making /dev/sda3 bootable, but from my reading I can only have one bootable flag on a Windows system.
On that note, I checked my BIOS settings and the MBR is set to "Legacy mode" vs. the othe UEFI alternatives, so I don't think that's an issue. I also used blkid to confirm that it's using an MBR (output was "dos").
I will try UUIDs in /etc/fstab and syslinux next, as there are some other posts (example) talking about this as a potential issue (and, indeed, I sometimes get my HD as /dev/sdb* when booting from the arch USB drive. I can also try grub2 in case it's a syslinux issue.
Thanks for any ideas/suggestions. Does anything look awry in my description/setup above? I can chroot and do stuff just fine... so I think the install appears to be sound; it's just booting it!
Last edited by jwhendy (2015-06-06 04:38:09)

A bit of progress, though this couldn't be much more awful in my opinion. Installed Arch to an sdcard to use as a bootloader, only to find that I can't boot from an sdcard, even though the HP docs say there's an sdcard boot option in the BIOS (which there's not). If the BIOS were in UEFI mode, there is an sdcard option listed in the boot order, but not in legacy mode. Sigh.
I don't have another sdcard laying around that's big enough to install Arch on, as I'm using my sole 8g drive for the installation media (and no optical drive). Sigh.
I did, however, through trial and error get my sdd arch install to boot using the installation drive's "boot existing OS" option! Took me a while to figure it out. In my opinion the drive/partition numbering is quite odd. Using the Hardware Information tool, the usb stick shows up as the first drive (so I'd assume hd0), but it can't be as "hd0 3" got me into the sdd installation. I'd have assumed hd0 0 was /dev/sda1, but that must be incorrect, as hd0 3 is /dev/sda3.
So, where I'm at now:
- going to re-partition how I originally intended (with truecrypt shared storage as a primary partition and boot/root as logical partitions)
- reinstall arch
- try to boot using the above procedure from the installation media
If that goes well, I'll try to find some teensy tiny usb stick to use as a bootloader device unless someone has any insights on why I can't boot by chainloading from Windows. I think at this point I've narrowed it down to a BIOS or drive numbering or EasyBCD issue, so maybe this post isn't a good fit for the Arch forums after all. Sorry for all the noise/updates... just wanted to provide the updated information as I uncovered it.
Thanks if you have any ideas or things I could try.

[Solved]How can I create a bootable backup of my arch linux partition?

I'm trying to get my arch linux installation to have a gui, specifically KDE. I downloaded Xorg and the nvidia proprietary driver 340.24. After installing the nvidia driver and rebooting, my screen stays black and I can't see my console. I can still login and reboot but I just can't see my screen. I've also tried booting into the arch linux fallback listed in the grub bootloader but that also had a black screen. At this point, I just reinstalled Arch Linux since I didn't really have anything on it anyway but this time I hope not to run into this problem. I will try installing a different driver but if I do run into the same problem, I want to be able to just copy over a backup of my OS and just boot off of that instead of completely reinstalling the system. Thanks in advance.
Edit: I read up a bit on the dd command and learned that it can effectively copy an entire partition including the master boot record. Could this be the possible solution? I just wanted to post this edit here to make sure.
Last edited by Firephyz (2014-07-19 20:06:00)

Backing up using dd
When you clone your entire disk the MBR will also be copied over. The wiki just states you can back up just the MBR itself if need be.
I strongly do not recommend just reinstalling your system in the future unless it's needed, you learn nothing from it and it can drive away other users from helping you. Especially if its just and issue to do with Xorg.
Last edited by Kartious (2014-07-18 10:20:23)

Reinstalling arch

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