[SOLVED] Installation on UEFI from usb stick

Question

Greetings,
I'm trying to figure out this uefi thing and install arch on my laptop.
I swear, I've been trying so many times now that I have a headache. My girlfriend too because of all my ranting.
I downloaded the latest arch iso and "burned" it to a usb stick (my laptop lack a cdrom).
I booted with the first option and went through the whole installation progress to the grub installing part MANY times before realizing I was doing it all wrong and I had to start from a UEFI shell.
Now I started from the UEFI shell and I just have no idea what I'm doing, the beginner guide doesn't seem to explain this.
I should probably wait until my headache pass and I'm fresh and ready to start over but I'm one stubborn guyif there is one and I had enough of failing, I want it to work.
What do I do from the UEFI shell?
Do I have to reinstall everything from scratch, partitioning and all or I can just get back to the part where I have to install grub? What do I do?
Thanks in advance and sorry if I'm asking stupid questions or something but, honestly, I failed so many times that my frustration is seriously high.
Last edited by arkindal (2013-08-13 23:13:11)

Answer 1

Hi,
this is basically what I followed and it worked for me:
make an archlinux uefi usb stick (it's a bit different than a normal one). Use a live ubuntu cd or something, so you don't have to use windows:
#format your usb key on /dev/sdXY to fat32 (replace XY with the right device, in the following code too)
sudo su
wget http://mirror.us.leaseweb.net/archlinux/iso/2013.08.01/archlinux-2013.08.01-dual.iso
mkdir -p /mnt/{usb,iso}
mount -o loop archlinux-2013.08.01-dual.iso /mnt/iso
awk 'BEGIN {FS="="} /archisolabel/ {print $3}' /mnt/iso/loader/entries/archiso-x86_64.conf | xargs mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/sdXY -n
mount /dev/sdXY /mnt/usb
cp -a /mnt/iso/* /mnt/usb
sync
umount /mnt/{usb,iso}
full instructions here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … B_from_ISO
now you have the instalation usb ready.
When I did this, i could still go to choose my boot device and i had a normal usb key boot option and an uefi shell usb key option, see if you have something like that to be sure you have the uefi boot. you should see an uefi shell and it should boot automatically as a normal archlinux live usb. if it doesn not (happend to me before) run ./start.sh or something like that (it should say in the uefi shell what to run). If that doesn not work, then the uefi usb key didn't work.
okay if you've successfully booted the uefi usb you have to format your drive so it has the uefi boot partition mounted inside the grup folder, so there has to be a ef00 partition on the begining
This is my actuall install script, it will wipe your drive, make 5 partitions (uefi boot, boot, swap, root, home) and then mount them, install arch and then chroot into that
modprobe efivars
#configure this as you wish
SWAPSIZE=4G
ROOTSIZE=50G
DRIVE=sda
#these two lines are horrible, you could manually use gdist and format the drive as you wish, as this will just wipe it clean and make the partion table that I have.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$DRIVE bs=1M count=1k
echo "2\no\ny\nn\n\n\n+100M\nef00\nn\n\n\n+100M\n\nn\n\n\n+${SWAPSIZE}\n8200\nn\n\n\n+${ROOTSIZE}\n\nn\n\n\n\n\np\nw\ny\n" | gdisk /dev/$DRIVE
mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/${DRIVE}1
mkfs.ext2 -L boot /dev/${DRIVE}2
mkswap -L swap /dev/${DRIVE}3
mkfs.ext4 -L root /dev/${DRIVE}4
mkfs.ext4 -L home /dev/${DRIVE}5
swapon /dev/${DRIVE}3
mount /dev/${DRIVE}4 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/home
mount /dev/${DRIVE}5 /mnt/home
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/${DRIVE}2 /mnt/boot
#this is the magic uefi part for grub
mkdir /mnt/boot/efi
mount /dev/${DRIVE}1 /mnt/boot/efi
pacstrap /mnt base base-devel zsh
genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt
After doing that, you have can install the system as you wish and for the grub I do this:
I had problems a few times if i copy pasted all these lines at once, so now i copy paste them one at a time, (I know it should not make a difference but still, sometimes it didn't work)
# i do this in chmod too, though I'm not sure if it's really necessary
modprobe efivars
mkinitcpio -p linux
echo "installing efi grup thingy"
pacman -S --noconfirm efibootmgr grub-efi-x86_64
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=arch_grub --recheck --debug
mkdir -p /boot/grub/locale
cp /usr/share/locale/en\@quot/LC_MESSAGES/grub.mo /boot/grub/locale/en.mo
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
and this is all i have in my install script file and uefi works fine.  I hope you'll get it running soon
Last edited by zidarsk8 (2013-08-09 00:25:20)