[solved] Can't set up dual boot Arch + Win 7 on separated disks

Hello everybody,
I'm new to this amazing project as I installed Arch just two days ago (and everything works like a charm in linux).
Anyway I have a problem and I'm very sorry to bother you with another question such this, but I tried everything and I accurately read the wiki.
The problem is that I can't manage to create a dual boot in grub with Arch on the first sata disk and Windows 7 on the second disk.
Before trying Arch I used ubuntu 10.10 dual boot with the same Windows 7 on the same secondary disk (the pc is a dell XPS L702X 17' laptop with, of course, dual disk bay) using GRUB2 which was automatically installed during ubuntu installation.
I tried to chainload windows disk in grub using map command to let windows think it's on the primary disk and not on second one.
At start I just had "BOOTMGR missing" error, then I put windows disk as primary removing arch disk and I repaired its bootloader: windows could boot then.
When I substituted disks and tried to boot, Windows 7 loading screen appeared and immediately I had a blue screen of death (or something similar) which anyway disappeared in less than a second (I was not able to read anything from that screen)
Now, when I try to boot windows either with grub or trying to enable boot straight from second hard drive in BIOS, I receive an error stating that it is necessary to use the windows repair disk to fix problems.
My question is: how can I finally fix this situation?
It would be quite important, for me, to not format neither of the disks, and I could even accept to renounce booting windows from grub as it would be ok even changing BIOS priority every time I need to use windows 7.
I really apologize for my annoying question but I really tried everything I could find without success; sorry for my poor english, too.
Anyway, this distribution seems just amazing to me! Thanks for your time.
Luca
Last edited by enigmatichus (2011-12-27 02:05:14)

It worked!!! Actually I don't know what changed, I proceeded removing the first disk (arch) WITHOUT, this time, changing the position of the windows disk. I used windows 7 DVD to repair the second disk. It tooks several attempts since it failed without specifying the problem. Eventually, I was able to boot windows 7, everything worked. Then, I plugged the primary linux hard drive and booted into arch, where I used "grub-install /dev/sda" as root. It executed without errors, but when I checked menu.lst file, surprisingly I discovered that it was not changed at all by grub-install.
Anyway it must have detected windows on /dev/sdb, since I am now able to boot both arch and windows without problems.
It was a weird situation, but anyway it worked well!! Thank you for the support, I really appreciate!
Luca

Similar Messages

Dual booting Arch and Ubuntu

Hi, I would like to dual boot Arch and Ubuntu using GRUB2.
I already have Arch, set up as it's described in the Beginner's Guide, with GRUB2 installed. How would I go about dual booting Ubuntu, preferably without overwriting the existing bootloader?
I haven't tried anything yet, but the problem that I can see is resizing my /home; is this possible on the Ubuntu liveDVD? If not, would I be able to resize /home with my gParted liveCD?
Unfortunately, I have no backup media to use, so I wouldn't be able to transfer anything away as a backup.
Here is my partition table:
%lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 30G 0 part /
├─sda2 8:2 0 12G 0 part [SWAP]
├─sda3 8:3 0 5M 0 part
└─sda4 8:4 0 889.5G 0 part /home
sda1 is my root partition, sda2 is swap, sda3 is GRUB's boot partition, which I was told that I needed in the guide, and sda4 (/home) occupies the "rest of the disk".
I am using a GPT-partitioned drive, as I read this has many advantages and I do not plan to triple-boot Windows.
So, can someone tell me what I do if I want to dual boot Ubuntu? I'm very sorry if this should have been posted on the Ubuntu forums, but I'm just more familiar with Arch, and I already have it installed. Please ask if you need any other files like my fstab. I have my Ubuntu liveDVD, GParted live CD (and Arch CD) at hand.
Thanks in advance, rberyl.
(Also, does anyone else think it's a bit of a backwards thing to put the output of "date -u +%W$(uname)|sha256sum|sed 's/\W//g'" as a sign-up question? )
Last edited by rberyl (2012-12-29 11:45:23)

Hi rberyl,
You can change your partitions using an inbuilt tool like cfdisk, or if you'd prefer a GUI gparted can be installed from the Arch repos. This will allow you to shrink sda4, and set up the new partitions for your Ubuntu OS. Although this shouldn't cause any data loss, its best practice to back up just in case.
When installing Ubuntu, be sure to opt-out of bootloader creation. I think you have to use the alternate installation media to get this option. You can add your Ubuntu partition to the existing bootloader by running osprober (available from the repos) and then running grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg . Alternatively, you can manually edit your GRUB config. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … NU.2FLinux for instructions.
Good luck!
Last edited by smazza (2012-12-29 16:04:08)

Dual booting arch (usb) and ubuntu (grub2)

Greetings,
I'm trying to dual boot Arch linux (installed without a bootloader on a USB SSD) and Ubuntu 10.04 (installed on a hdd with GRUB2) but can't get Arch to boot. (Oh and I already have windows dualbooted)
The entry grub autogenerated:
menuentry "Arch Linux [/boot/vmlinuz26] (on /dev/sdb3)" {
insmod ext2
set root='(hd1,1)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 95d9208a-44e4-48ba-abd2-a365d1ac25ff
linux /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /kernel26.img
Why did it input root=/dev/sda3 as it says (on /dev/sdb3)?
The entry I figured would work:
menuentry "Arch Linux" {
set root=(hd1,0)
linux /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdb3 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
Output from fdisk -l:
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xbc4264d9
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 13 5286 42353664 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 5286 19458 113831937 5 Extended
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda5 18971 19458 3905536 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 5286 6502 9764864 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 6502 18971 100155392 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order
WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdb'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
Disk /dev/sdb: 8019 MB, 8019509248 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 974 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 14 111 787185 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb3 112 685 4610655 83 Linux
/dev/sdb4 686 974 2321392+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 is the root partition
The content of /dev/sdb1
grub
kernel26-fallback.img
kernel26.img
lost+found
System.map26
vmlinuz26
- If I try to edit the root=/dev/sda3 to /dev/sdb3 it begins booting but doesnt find /dev/sdb3.
Thanks in advance for any help,
Oskar

Greetings,
I'm trying to dual boot Arch linux (installed without a bootloader on a USB SSD) and Ubuntu 10.04 (installed on a hdd with GRUB2) but can't get Arch to boot. (Oh and I already have windows dualbooted)
The entry grub autogenerated:
menuentry "Arch Linux [/boot/vmlinuz26] (on /dev/sdb3)" {
insmod ext2
set root='(hd1,1)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 95d9208a-44e4-48ba-abd2-a365d1ac25ff
linux /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /kernel26.img
Why did it input root=/dev/sda3 as it says (on /dev/sdb3)?
The entry I figured would work:
menuentry "Arch Linux" {
set root=(hd1,0)
linux /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdb3 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
Output from fdisk -l:
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xbc4264d9
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 13 5286 42353664 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 5286 19458 113831937 5 Extended
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda5 18971 19458 3905536 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 5286 6502 9764864 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 6502 18971 100155392 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order
WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdb'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
Disk /dev/sdb: 8019 MB, 8019509248 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 974 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 14 111 787185 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb3 112 685 4610655 83 Linux
/dev/sdb4 686 974 2321392+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 is the root partition
The content of /dev/sdb1
grub
kernel26-fallback.img
kernel26.img
lost+found
System.map26
vmlinuz26
- If I try to edit the root=/dev/sda3 to /dev/sdb3 it begins booting but doesnt find /dev/sdb3.
Thanks in advance for any help,
Oskar

How to install Arch for dual-boot with Win 7 (on 2 hard drives)?

Hello,
the TLDR first: how exactly should I proceed when setting up GRUB for 2 hard drives to dual-boot Arch (64 bit)and Win 7 (64 bit)?
Long version: So, I have the following hard drive & partition layout:
On my first hard drive (250 GB big) I have: Win 7 64 bit, all the programs for Windows and of course the EFI partition
My second hard drive is 1 TB big and formatted in NTFS and it only contains data. It has 2 partitions, one is about 750 GB big and used for simple storage.
Sidenote 1: sometimes my disk management (Windows' own gparted) shows either the little disk or the big one as disk 0. Don't know what exactly this means, but I have never ever experienced any problems whatsoever during use.
Sidenote 2: the UEFI motherboard (ASRock H67M) cannot boot into Legacy mode.
I want to install Arch on a ~200 GB partition on the second hard drive (the one with 1 TB). (click here if you want to see a screenshot) I am posting this because I am confused with how exactly I should deal with the whole "2 hdds & UEFI" thing.
So how exactly should I proceed when setting up GRUB for this setup?
For partitioning I suppose I would have to use fdisk or cgdisk. I used cgdisk before and found it to be straightforward. Then, because I have experienced my fair share of problems with rEFInd, I'd like to use GRUB.
Last edited by jones (2013-06-29 14:36:56)

First thing you should do is become familiar with your motherboard.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/manual.asp?Model=H67M
This will probably help you out in understanding the sidenote 1 thingie (hdd's on sata3 and/or sata2 connectors)
As on sidenote 2, according to the manual it seems to be possible to boot legacy mode, see Storage Configuration.

[Success] Dual Booting Arch and Windows 7 [Advice / Confirmation]

So I have been trying to get Starcraft II to work with wine and no luck.
I have decided to install windows back on my computer, besides it might come in handy since I'm heading back to school soon.
Anyways I have tried dual booting arch and windows in the past, and my results have never been stable.
Today I will try using the program gparted.
Let me give you my thoughts on how I plan to go through this and please give me some advice so I don't loose everything I have worked for on my linux box
1.Currently I have two hard drives, one for all my main programs and one for my media files (mounting usb, dvd, etc, and it actually has no files in it xD).
I plan to use gparted to re-size my second harddrive (media drive), create an extended partition, and a logical ntfs partition within it.
2.I pop in my windows cd that I recieved with my laptop and install it on the space I have partitioned for windows.
3. If my grub gets wiped out my windows (which I hope it doesn't not sure how the MBR stuff works) I insert a Ubuntu live cd and do
sudo grub
> root (hd0,0)
> setup (hd0)
> exit
4.Configure grub to boot windows 7.
5.Be happy with no headache.
SO....
If someone with past experience with dual booting windows and arch could please give me some advice, as I do not want to lose all my data, start over, and have another headache.
I know I must learn to backup arch, which I will before september.
But if anyone has any protips, or sees a flaw in my plan please point it out!!!
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this and even more if advice has been given to boost my confidence!
For now I will wait
Thank you fellow archies.
Last edited by Jabrick (2011-07-03 01:29:36)

satanselbow wrote:
1) Windows must be installed to a primary partition - attempting to install it to an logical partition will result in an epic fail
2) Physically disconnect the harddrive you do not want windows on as windows typically installs the bootloader on the 1st hardisk (ie /sda) regardless of installation drive (ie /sdb)
3 / 4) Complete the windows installation then reattached your Arch drive and edit /boot/grub/menu.lst (as root) pointing the W7 entry to (hd1,0) - no need to reinstall grub
5) Hey it's windows - anything could happen
If you create an NTFS partition right at the beginning of the the drive before you start the W7 install you can prevent it greedily using up 2 of you 4 primary partitions - I would also completely update you new W7 installation past SP1 before reattaching the other drive to further prevent W7 going mental
satanselbow thank you so much!
Everything works great I had no stumbles, and I hope no problems in the future!!
I will post exactly what I did in case someone has the same issue.
1. Partition you're secondary harddrive as primary ntfs with gparted
2. Reboot, and if you get a file system check error, check you're udev rules. (For my case in particular I had to change the udev rules I got for auto mounting usb, ext harddrive, etc.
3.Power off your computer and physically remove the harddrive that contains all your linux goodies
4. Plug in your windows cd and install in the partition you created
5. Update your windows OS
6. Plug in Ubuntu live CD and reboot
7. Use commands to get grub to overwrite the windows boot loader (In my case I put grub everyone hd0,0 hd0,1 just to be sure, but you might want to do things cleaner)
8. Reboot and see if grub loads up
9. Use Ubuntu live CD again and launch Gparted, select the boot to your extra linux space (if you had one, not sure if this is needed)
10. Plug in your linux harddrive and reconfigure /boot/grub/menu.lst and your good to go
Once again shout outs to satanselbow!!! For without him I might've failed brutally!
Cheers!

Can Tiger run a dual boot system with the two internal hard drives

Can Mac run a dual boot system with the two internal hard drives both running Tiger?
Dual 2.5GHz G5
I am wanting to use one hard drive with Tiger to run my graphics stuff and then reboot and use the other hard drive for video.

Yes, you can set that configuration up.
(26293)

Dual Boot Arch & Mac OS X(Boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds)

I was trying to Dual Boot Arch & Mac OS X on my new Mac book pro, I followed the steps (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBookPro)
Dual Boot (Arch & Mac OS X)
Two possibilities:
- Install Bootcamp, resize the Mac OS X partition
When Mac OS X installation is finished. Go on http://refit.sourceforge.net and download rEFIT (Mac disk image)
To install rEFIT, mount the rEFIT.dmg file (it is normally automatic).
There is an other way (refer to rEFIT documentation) but you can open a terminal then you copy /Volumes/rEFIT/efi/ to /
# cp -r /Volumes/rEFIT/efi /
To install rEFIT :
# cd /efi/refit/
# ./enable.sh
Now we can synchronized MBR with GPT partition table thanks to rEFIT so you restart your computer. You can see rEFIT, you press down key to access to the Partitioning Tool. You press y to accept.
Put your Arch Linux CD in the CD-ROM drive first then restart the computer. You can press C to boot from the CD or you can choose it in the rEFIT menu.
Now it is the typical Arch Linux installation.
So I burn the archlinux-2010.05-core-i686.iso to an blank disc on mac then restart the computer , press C to boot from the CD.
After choose to boot Arch linux and then I got this
Waiting for 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH-201005...
ERROR:boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds...
Falling back to interactive prompt
You can try to fix the problem manually, log out when you finished /bin/sh: can't access tty;
job control turned off
[ramfs /]#
[ramfs /]#
Any ideas?
Thanks!

heleos wrote:
This line:
Waiting for 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH-201005...
You need to make sure that's the exact name of your iso disc. If it's not, it isn't a big deal. I've run into problems on this with my arch USB drive.
Once you get to the [ramfs /]# prompt, type in:
mv /dev/disk/by-label/(insert name of the current cd here) /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH-201005
exit
It should then be able to boot from the cd
did:
mv /dev/disk/by-label/(insert name of the current cd here) /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH-201005
exit
shows:
ERROR: mounting was successful, but /bootmnt/isomounts file doex not exist.
Then I checked:
cd /bootmnt
ls
archlinux-2010.05-core-i686.iso
exit
shows another problem /boot/init does not exist
exit
kernel panic!

Help - How to install Win XP in dual boot with Win 7 (first installed)?

Hi everybody!
I'm having some difficult in install a win xp in dual boot with win 7 (which came with the G550 notebook).
I modified the D: (Lenovo) partition to a primary partition to install the XP. Also I installed the EasyBCD to manange the boots and both S.O. load fine.
The problem is that Win XP is seeing a partition (the first partition on disk) with 200MB that is hidden for Win 7 ! So this partition takes the C: letter in XP and mess all the configuration once that many programs uses the C: as a default letter.
The disk is divided in (aprox):
200 MB hidden partition (from factory)
160GB with Win 7 installed
40GB with Win XP installed
19GB hidden partition (Recovery - from factory)
Is anyone has some idea who to solve this problem or make install XP from the beginning without problems?
Thank a lot!

jay4baps wrote:
Are you sure VMWare Fusion 6 is Launched??? give me link then i download it...
It's version 3.1

Can you dual-boot arch linux with Windows 7 ?

Here is my current dilemna; I have Windows still on my netbook for the only reason that I use it for gaming .
Other than that I have Linux Mint dual-booted with it .
Now my question is, can I just instruct arch to install into the already existing linux partition, formatting it and making it it's home, or do I have to delete it, thus rendering my computer inoperable until I successfully dualboot arch with it ? o_O
Or should I take a different approach altogether, and triple boot my netbook with arch, mint, and windows, and then from there delete the mint partition and allocate the free space accordingly using easeus partition master (another reason I still have windows) ?
Please help . D:
PS. I HATE Windows but only kept it because apparently not everyone shares the Linux view of technology . >.>
Last edited by AstarothMastemaRavenclaw (2011-02-06 16:42:35)

if youre happy with your partition layout u can just install arch ofc.
while installing you will be prompted to select mount points and create filesystems ( you can skip the partition step )
select your current / partition for, well, /
and /home for.. /home.
the installer will then create new filesystems there (formatting those partitions) and set mountpoints

Dual boot Arch and Windows XP (arch installed first) [solved]

I recently moved over to arch from Ubuntu, and would like to install Windows XP so that I can dual-boot between the two. However, my arch install created four partitions on my disk, and I can not create another one.
I would rather not have to reinstall arch, as setting it back up would take days on my current network connection. Is this possible? While I have installed XP over Ubuntu in the past (and am more than able to reform the MBR after the XP install) I have absolutely no experience with disk-partitioning, so concise instructions would be very much appreciated.
errata: my laptop has 4 gigs of RAM, so I don't think I need the SWAP partition. I am hesitant to delete it outright however.
this is a Gparted screenshot, running off of a Ubuntu live CD. The 60 gigs of unallocated space is where I was hoping to install windows.
Last edited by spotdart (2009-02-05 17:13:55)

What's on /dev/sda4? If you can blow away the last partition, turn the whole thing into an extended partition and then you can set up as many logical partitions as you want inside the extended partition. I suppose Arch is probably on sda4 and if that is the case you could move arch to sda3 first--there are lots of posts in the forum about how to move an installation of arch from one place to another.
Edit: Beat to the punch again. Yeah like he said you might want to delete the swap partition and then incorporate it into the 1st or third partitions so you can free up that last one.
Last edited by bgc1954 (2009-02-05 15:27:21)

[SOLVED] Dual-boot Arch/Windows - 2 hard drives

Hi Everyone
I've just installed Arch and I'm having a bit of a problem dual-booting between Arch and Windows XP, which are each on a seperate Hard drive.
I've done this successfully before with Mepis Linux and Windows XP, but for some reason it's not working this time.
The difference is that I've recently purchased a new computer and both Windows and Arch are on SATA drives whereas last time they were both on IDE drives. Also I'm not sure whether or not to enable SATA AHCI mode in the BIOS (apparently it doesn't work with XP anyways), or SATA port 0-3 Native mode. Although I've tried all possible combinations and it doesn't seem to work at all.
Here is my menu.lst file:
# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/0df05d3b-537c-4576-ad36-1f90a6b01ec0 ro vga=773
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
# (1) Windows
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
When I boot into Arch from Grub it works fine, but when I try to boot into Windows from Grub, I get this:
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
and then nothing....No error message or anything. It just hangs. Does anyone have any ideas as to what's happening? Thanks in advance.
edit: It seems I solved the problem by adding these lines to the menu.lst file:
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
root (hd1,0)
I can now boot into either Arch or Windows from the Grub menu
Last edited by axle (2008-09-30 02:35:54)

This is a question that can very easily be answered by doing a simple google serach. Google is your friend. I suggest you start there and come back if you run into issues.

[SOLVED] Lenovo T530 UEFI Arch/Ubuntu Dual boot - Arch fails to boot.

Hi All,
I have installed Arch to my Lenovo T530 to dual boot with Ubuntu using UEFI and Grub.
After installation, Arch is presented to me as an option when my laptop fires up. However, if I select it, the loader goes to a purple screen and then hangs.
I have attached here the bootloader scripts for my Arch installation (not working), my Ubuntu installation (working) and the output from sudo lsblk -o name,mountpoint,label,size,uuid.
Please let me know if there is more useful information I can provide. (I have output from Bootinfoscript available but it is quite extensive).
I am hoping to find out if there is an easily fixable error in the booting scripts used by Grub. If not, I have seen the section on dual booting with Arch in the wiki. My worry is that if I resort to it, UEFI looks to be temperamental at best and I risk breaking my currently working Ubuntu installation.
Thanks and regards,
Simon
Arch boot script (not working):
setparams 'Arch (on /dev/sda4)'
insmod part-gpt
insmod ext2
set root= 'hd0,gpt4'
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd0,gpt4 -\
-hint-efi=hd0,gpt4 -hint-baremetal=ahci0,gpt4 729b5164-22c4-4c21-8212-\
66038d60943e
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 729b5164-22c4-4c21-821\
2-66038d60943e
fi
linux /boot/vmlinuz root=UUID=ad4103fa-d940-47ca-8506-301d\
8071d467 rw quiet
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
Ubuntu boot script (working)
setparams 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.13.0-24-generic'
recordfail
load_video
gfxmode $linux_gfx_mode
insmod gzio
insmod part-gpt
insmod ext2
set root= 'hd0,gpt2'
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd\
0,gpt2 --hint-efi=hd0,gpt2 -hint-baremetal=ahci0,gpt2 542bf27c-0fd5-42\
4a-b4d8-107f7cf97b75
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 542bf27c-0fd5-\
424a-b4d8-107f7cf97b75
fi
echo 'Loading Linux 3.13.0-24-generic ...'
linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-24-generic root=UUID=5\
42bf27c-0fd5-424a-b4d8-107f7cf97b75 ro quiet spash $vt_handoff
echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-24-generic
Output from sudo lsblk -o name,mountpoint,label,size,uuid
NAME MOUNTPOINT LABEL SIZE UUID
sda 119.2G
├─sda1 /boot/efi BOOTLOADER 524M 9360-2939
├─sda2 / Linux_Ubuntu 34.6G 542bf27c-0fd5-424a-b4d8-107f7cf97b75
├─sda3 [SWAP] Swap 9.8G 7768ae01-6e37-450b-bf0c-d873e3fd06a1
├─sda4 Linux_Arch 32.7G 729b5164-22c4-4c21-8212-66038d60943e
├─sda5 /media/Data Data 33.2G 5a971a77-685b-43d5-a8e6-c7b407a4c2ff
└─sda6 Misc_Data 8.5G b165990d-bd25-458f-b2d6-63fae28d0870
sdb 1T
└─sdb1 1024G a1ee2f60-007a-4292-982b-7d5f8375fc7e
sr0 1024M
Last edited by simon_sjw (2015-03-22 10:43:03)

linux /boot/vmlinuz root=UUID=ad4103fa-d940-47ca-8506-301d8071d467 rw quiet
Change the UUID here. Where did that come from?
EDIT: curiously, if you DuckDuckGo search this exact UUID, it comes up a bunch of times and has caused people headaches before. If you fix that you should be okay. If anyone knows why this same exact UUID would incorrectly be created on multiple systems, I'd love to know. Seems like some kind of issue with dual/triple booting and OS-prober.
2nd EDIT: this UUID is in the default in grub.cfg. For some reason, it sometimes won't be replaced by grub-mkconfig... Maybe the user didn't run grub-mkconfig, but edited the file him or herself? simon_sjw?
Last edited by nullified (2015-03-22 03:12:36)

[SOLVED] Dual booting arch onto an SSD that already has W7 in MBR?

I currently have windows 7 64bit installed onto a 256gb m4 SSD. I would like to be able to dual-boot W7 and Archlinux, but so far I've been getting wildly varying accounts of doom and data deletion from every source that I've looked at- and unfortunately, the Archwiki's guide to dualbooting is out of date.
So here's the questions:
First, is UEFI something I need to look at? At the moment W7 seems to be on MBR. I'm getting conflicting accounts on whether this is not even an issue or if it will attempt to make my computer eat my dog.
Next, what is going on with sectors and alignment and such? Some people ignore them, some people delve so far into it that I think I vaguely know they're still talking about a hard drive.
Which leads me into partitioning, and not doing it in a way that's terrible. I can't find any information on this anywhere that isn't buried within the above-mentioned posts, along with incredibly vague warnings of GParted moving a partition, spoken of in a way as if that data is lost to the twilight zone.
Finally... pulling all this together is the largest issue.
Do any of you know good, factual resources where I can look into this stuff?
Last edited by ilar (2013-04-03 03:53:31)

1) If you knew what UEFI was you should have known it wasn't an option, and shouldn't have asked about it.
2) (G)parted and gdisk (if you go with GPT at some point) handle SSD sector alignment automatically, and have for some time. A google search could have revealed that.
3) Whether one uses an SSD or HDD, dual-booting will be the same: 2+ partitions devoted to separate operating systems. While SSDs and HDDs may be fundamentally different constructs, booting from them is not different at all. That's why you aren't finding anything saying such.
4) As for the wiki being out-of-date, the specific reason (as stated page's in the header) is that GRUB legacy is no longer officially supported in Arch. Disregard that information and use GRUB2/Syslinux/LILO and the process remains the same: Install the operating systems side-by-side and chainload the secondary OS. It doesn't matter one bit: I've dual-booted every Linux distro I've used over the past four years with Windows, from Ubuntu to Mint to SuSE to Sabayon to Arch to whatever, and I've done it all the exact same way, using HDDs and an SSDs and both in combination. There's plenty of information out there on this, and your time could better have been spent looking it up rather than arguing with people here.
5) Welcome to Arch.

[SOLVED] MacbookPro 8,1 13" - Dual boot with Mac OS X #rEFIt

Hi everyone, I want to share my experience and request for help regarding my attempt to install Arch on my MBP 8,1. I can't count the times I've tried to install it this week.
What have I done?
So I followed the Beginner's Guide to aid me in the installation, with some exceptions:
* I used Linux Mint 14 to use GParted. The reason I used it is because rEFIt won't sync the GPT and MBR tables properly when I try and use `mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdaX` inside the Archiso. With Archiso, the filesystem types are considered to be "Unknown" (#wtf no. 1), whereas with Mint that doesn't happen.
* In fstab I had something like:
# /dev/sda4
UUID=c35d9121-a3f1-4cd6-ab53-61fe0f474eee / ext4 rw,noatime 0 1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=390185f6-6d55-430c-a9ba-d3d0b4c7798b /home ext4 rw,relatime,codepage=437 0 2
The wiki mentioned the noatime and codepage flags for the respective partitions and so I complied.
One thing to notice is I have no /boot mount because syslinux apparently doesn't like that.
* Installing syslinux (along with gptfdisk), I issued:
syslinux-install_update -iam
, and reviewed /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg like this:
LABEL arch
MENU LABEL Arch Linux
LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux
----APPEND root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/c35d9121-a3f1-4cd6-ab53-61fe0f474eee ro----
APPEND root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/c35d9121-a3f1-4cd6-ab53-61fe0f474eee ro **still doesn't work, it's not found**
INITRD ../initramfs-linux.img
LABEL archfallback
MENU LABEL Arch Linux Fallback
LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux
----APPEND root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/c35bod9121-a3f1-4cd6-ab53-61fe0f474eee ro----
APPEND root=/dev/disk/by-partuuid/c35d9121-a3f1-4cd6-ab53-61fe0f474eee ro **still doesn't work, it's not found**
INITRD ../initramfs-linux-fallback.img
I used UUID's to avoid the mess on sdaX discrepancies.
Results
* rEFIt correctly shows Arch as a boot option. It boots correctly to Syslinux.
* The kernel load fails due to something like:
Unknown filesystem 'vfat'
... and/or ...
Waiting 10 seconds for /dev/sdaX ...
This stroke me as #wtf no.2. VFAT?? Has anyone experienced this before?
For now this is all I have. I was hoping the community could give me helpful pointers on solving this as I intend to contribute with documentation on this setup in the wiki.
I'll be updating this post with newer information. Thanks for helping!
Last edited by josemota (2012-12-31 18:05:09)

I don't have much experience with SYSLINUX or booting a Mac in BIOS mode, but I can help answer a couple of your questions and offer some alternative approaches....
josemota wrote:
Hi everyone, I want to share my experience and request for help regarding my attempt to install Arch on my MBP 8,1. I can't count the times I've tried to install it this week.
What have I done?
So I followed the Beginner's Guide to aid me in the installation, with some exceptions:
* I used Linux Mint 14 to use GParted. The reason I used it is because rEFIt won't sync the GPT and MBR tables properly when I try and use `mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdaX` inside the Archiso. With Archiso, the filesystem types are considered to be "Unknown" (#wtf no. 1), whereas with Mint that doesn't happen.
This issue is a limitation of the "gptsync" program that's included with rEFIt, not with rEFIt itself. It's also not caused by mkfs; gptsync doesn't even look inside the partitions, AFAIK. Instead, it looks at partition type codes. It understands just a few of them, including the one that all but the very latest versions of libparted use on Linux filesystem partitions. The trouble is that the libparted developers long ago "borrowed" that code from Windows, but they shouldn't have done so. That's being corrected, and gdisk can use the correct code for Linux ("8300" in gdisk). In the future, libparted will use this code, too; the support is already present but isn't yet widely distributed. You could have set the type code to "0700" in gdisk from Arch and gptsync would have worked.
You may be interested to know that gdisk can do the same job that gptsync does, and gdisk can do so much more flexibly. You can read more in the gdisk hybrid MBR documentation. Be aware that hybrid MBRs (which is what gptsync creates) are ugly and dangerous hacks. Sadly, they're necessary to dual-boot Windows and OS X on Macs, but you may be able to dual-boot OS X and Linux without a hybrid MBR. The trick here is to install an EFI boot loader for Linux rather than a BIOS boot loader for Linux. Macs use EFI natively, so this is the superior way to get started, at least theoretically.
The Arch wiki has a number of pages on EFI issues, such as:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … _Interface
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UEFI_Bootloaders
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB_EFI_Examples
The main problem with booting a Mac in EFI mode is that some systems won't activate all their hardware in this way, so with some models you can end up with a network adapter or video display or sound that doesn't work. Other models are fine, though; you'll just have to give it a try and see if it works.
Personally, I think the best way to do it is to use the kernel's EFI stub loader in conjunction with an EFI boot manager like rEFInd or gummiboot. Both are available as Arch packages, but it's better to install from OS X, and that process is much better documented for rEFInd than for gummiboot (although you could adapt the rEFInd documentation for gummiboot, if you liked). rEFIt can work, too, but only if the kernel includes built-in command-line options and is renamed with a ".efi" extension. These are awkward requirements, and since rEFInd is a continuation of rEFIt development, there's not much point in trying to get rEFIt to do the job.

Migrating from Arch to Dual Boot (Arch 64 + Win8.1 64).

Hello my friends.
I used to have a dual boot system (MBR, if I'm not mistaken), with Arch Linux on hda (1TB) and Windows 7 on hdb (300GB). I did this installation more than 3 years ago.
The disk with windows died recently, and because I need it for work (virtual machine is not an option), I decided to make a "refresh" on my machine.
I bought two new disks, a 240GB SSD and a 3TB HDD.
What I would like to do is to install both Windows 8.1 and Arch Linux on the SSD disk (100GB for Windows, 140GB for Arch, my main system), and use the 3TB (for Arch) and the 1TB (for Windows) disks as storage.
While doing a research on how to do the installation, some questions arised.
I know that I must (or at least should, for make the processe easier) install Windows first. I will install in the EFI mode, as my machine alread has it.
1. Which boot loader I should use when installing Arch Linux?
From what I'd read, to keep things simple, I should opt for a bootloader like gummyboat, that will recognise the Windows without manual intervantion. Is this right?
2. Will I have problems with the Windows Update?
I read here https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=187194 that when Windows update, it mess with the EFI partition and will make the Arch stop booting (the boot will enter directly on Windows). Is this correct? Is this related only to "automatic" updates (and manual updates can be made without problem)? There is any way to avoid this?
3. After installing both systems, will Arch Linux recognize my 1TB disk?
My 1TB disk has my actual Arch linux installation, and data. I would like to copy this data to the 3TB disk and then, under Windows, format it to serve as my Windows storage disk.
I can do this BEFORE installing the system, or after. But the second option causes me some concerning regarding the rights and so on, so that I do not know if my "new" system" will be able to copy things from the old system.
Should I make the copy before installing Arch Linux?
I think this is it.
If you could helping me with these questions and pointing problems/flaws with my approach, I'll be immensely gratefull.
Chhers,
Eduardo.

Hello elken
While I could maintain the system under BIOS/MBR, and I don't had any problem with this in the last 2 years, I want to change my system to EFI/GPT.
I found that Windows under EFI must be under GPT (As pre-installed Windows 8.1), while under BIOS it must be under MBR. So, as my system is (will be) a DUAL one, and It is not a MAC system (that would allow to the EFI/GPT loader to chain a BIOS/MBR, I have to choose between EFI/GPT or BIOS/MBR.
Because my system can be setup under EFI/GPT, and because sooner or later BIOS/MBR will start to disappear, I want to change it now. This will mke it easier in the future to upgrade my system, I think.
Not to mention that GPT has some nice advantages over MBR. For example, GPT can handle my 3TB disk without problems, while MBR not. (At least, fdisk wasn't able to deal with it).
So, you could say that despite BIOS/MBR being fully funcional right now, it's a matter of personal taste (and learning) to me, this desire to completely change my system to EFI/GPT
For now, I decided to mantain the LINUX and WINDOWS separated (as they are now), i.e., on separate disks. This should solve the problem of windows messing with the boot loader when upgrading (point 2).
About the bootloader, I think I'll change to gummybot, to test it. I think I could still use grub 2 (I'm not entirely sure), but Gummybot seems simple and fair enough.
As an aside, I think I will try to migrate my system to the new HDF using rsync and making the necessary adjustments (like in fstab).
It seems not to difficult, and there are many documents out there on how to do this.
When I finish, I'll post here how I did and what worked and what not
Cheers,
Eduardo

[solved] Can't set up dual boot Arch + Win 7 on separated disks

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