[solved] Bootloaders (syslinux/Grub) not loading on new installation

Question

Hi,
I´m trying to install arch on a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 (UEFI). I installed grub as described in the wiki, but grub does not start up at all when the machine is powered on. sda is partitioned (GPT) as follows:
1. 512 MB: ESP (EF00) = sda1
2. remaining space: LVM (8E00)
a.) boot (300 MB)
b.) Swap (4 GB)
c.) root (25 GB)
d.) home (remaining space)
fstab:
LABEL=root / ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 1
LABEL=home /home ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2
LABEL=boot /boot ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2
/dev/sda1 /boot/efi vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,codepage=437;iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro 0 2
/dev/mapper/lvm-spwap none swap defaults 0 0
I installed grub via
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=arch_grub --recheck --debug
No errors were reported, x86_64-efi is now present in /boot/grub. /boot/efi is now populated by the folder EFI/arch_grub, which contains grubx64.efi
grub.cfg was generated within the chroot by
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
This command gives somes warnings:
WARNING: Failed to connect to lvmetad: No such file or directory. Falling back to internal scanning.
/run/lvm/lvmetad.socket: connect failed: No such file or directory
done
If I try to activate lvmetad.service by systemctl I get the error:
Running in chroot, ignoring request.
Leaving the chroot (lvmetad is running), 'grub-mkconfig -o /mnt/boot/grub/grub.cfg' results in:
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+/memtest.bin
/usr/bin/grub-probe: warning:unknown device type dm-0
done
After rebooting I just get a blank screen, grub is not loading at all. I have absolutely no idea, what went wrong during the installation, therefore I would be glad if you gave me some input. Thanks!
EDIT: I just installed arch with the legacy BIOS enabled instead of UEFI. The problem is very similar with this configuration. Instead of a loaded Grub I only get a blinking cursor.
Last edited by tyr0 (2014-02-17 00:05:41)

Answer 1

Yes, sdb is a gpt disk. It was partitioned with gdisk. Actually the gpt format is the only thing, which all variants tested had in common.
To sum it up: Regardless of using bios legacy or UEFI, I am not able to start a boot loader (tested syslinux, grub) when the machine is powered on. I only get a black screen.
EDIT: I have to apologize. I did a fresh install on the system with UEFI enabled, now syslinux is showing up (most likely because edited /boot/efi/EFI/syslinux/syslinux.cfg and not /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg :-) ). Nevertheless, syslinux can´t boot arch because of:
../../../../vmlinuz-linux... failed: No such file or directory
vmlinuz-linux and initramfs-linux.img are present in /boot.
My /boot/efi/EFI/syslinux/syslinux.cfg looks like:
UI menu.c32
PROMPT 0
MENU TITLE Boot Menu
TIMEOUT 50
DEFAULT arch
LABEL arch
MENU LABEL Arch Linux
LINUX ../../../../vmlinuz-linux
APPEND root=/dev/sda2 rw
INITRD ../../../../initramfs-linux.img
LABEL archfallback
MENU LABEL Arch Linux Fallback
LINUX ../../../../vmlinuz-linux
APPEND root=/dev/sda2 rw
INITRD ../../../../initramfs-linux-fallback.img
I have to say that I created a separted boot partition:
sda1 (ESP) -> mounted to /boot/efi
sda2 -> mounted to /boot
sda3 (LVM) -> mounted to /
Last edited by tyr0 (2014-02-16 19:50:48)