[SOLVED, kind of] UEFI bootable USB from ISO doesn't start

Question

Hi there,
out of curiosity I wanted to create an UEFI bootable usb stick with the latest Archiso 2013.01.04. I've followed https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UE … B_from_ISO
and created two directories
# mkdir -p /mnt/{usb,iso}
Then I've mounted Archiso to /mnt/iso
# mount -o loop Download/ISO-Images/archlinux-2013.01.04-dual.iso /mnt/iso
After this I used cfdisk to create a FAT32 filesystem /dev/sdb1 on the usb stick, followed by
# awk 'BEGIN {FS="="} /archisolabel/ {print $3}' /mnt/iso/loader/entries/archiso-x86_64.conf | xargs mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1 -n
Then I've mounted /dev/sdb1 to /mnt/usb and copied all iso-files there:
# mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb
# cp -r /mnt/iso/* /mnt/usb
Followed by:
# umount /mnt/{usb,iso}
# sync
After rebooting and hitting F11 I was presented with the UEFI firmware-tool from which I can choose UEFI (and other) applications to start. I could choose my usb stick in UEFI mode, but - only the screen turned blank for the blink of a second and the UEFI tool was on again.
Because my system is already booting in UEFI mode using rEFInd, I wanted to try rEFInd on the usb stick instead of gummiboot.
Following https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UE … B_from_ISO I've copied /usr/lib/refind/refind_x64.efi (from refind-efi 0.6.4-1) to /mnt/usb/EFI/boot/bootx64.efi and created a /mnt/usb/EFI/boot/refind.conf with this text:
timeout 5
textonly
showtools about,reboot,shutdown,exit
# scan_driver_dirs EFI/tools/drivers_x64
scanfor manual,internal,external,optical
scan_delay 1
dont_scan_dirs EFI/boot
max_tags 0
default_selection "Arch Linux Archiso x86_64 UEFI USB"
menuentry "Arch Linux Archiso x86_64 UEFI USB" {
  loader /arch/boot/x86_64/vmlinuz
  initrd /arch/boot/x86_64/archiso.img
  ostype Linux
  graphics off
  options "pci=nocrs add_efi_memmap archisobasedir=arch archisolabel=ARCH_201301"
menuentry "UEFI x86_64 Shell v2" {
  loader /EFI/shellx64_v2.efi
  graphics off
menuentry "UEFI x86_64 Shell v1" {
  loader /EFI/shellx64_v1.efi
  graphics off
And yes, I've checked the "loader" and "initrd"-Paths - they are correct, as well as the archisolabel
But - again - after rebooting and hitting F11 I could select my usb stick as UEFI boot device, but all that happened was the screen going blank for the glimpse of a second and returning to the UEFI chooser.
Even my last attempt - keeping the original name refind_x64.efi in /mnt/usb/EFI/boot didn't help.
Via efibootmgr I can see:
$ sudo efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 5 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,0002,0007,0005,0006
Boot0001* rEFInd 0.6.4-1
Boot0002* rEFInd_recover
Boot0005* Hard Drive
Boot0006* USB
Boot0007* UEFI: TOSHIBA TransMemory PMAP
with "Boot0007" as my usb stick.
So my question is: Did I miss something or have I found a bug ?
Last edited by swordfish (2013-01-13 12:43:33)

Answer 1

Hm, funny thing - now it's working, but I don't know why
I've tried to convert the partition table of the usb stick from MBR to GPT using cgdisk. There I had a problem with setting the partition type to EF00. It worked under cgdisk, but then I couldn't mount my usb stick (dev/sdb1) anymore to /mnt/usb. Then I've tried to set the partition type to vfat, but couldn't identify what is vfat under cgdisk . I've tried different types of "Windows" but whatever I tried, the usb stick won't mount on /mnt/usb.
Journalctl always says:
Jan 13 12:23:03 sushi sudo[727]: nihonto : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/nihonto ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/cgdisk /dev/sdb
Jan 13 12:23:03 sushi sudo[727]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by nihonto(uid=0)
Jan 13 12:23:11 sushi sudo[727]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 13 12:24:00 sushi su[972]: (to root) nihonto on /dev/pts/0
Jan 13 12:24:00 sushi su[972]: pam_unix(su:session): session opened for user root by nihonto(uid=1000)
Jan 13 12:24:18 sushi kernel: loop: module loaded
Jan 13 12:24:18 sushi kernel: ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A
Jan 13 12:24:35 sushi kernel: EXT4-fs (sdb1): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
Jan 13 12:24:35 sushi kernel: EXT4-fs (sdb1): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
Jan 13 12:24:35 sushi kernel: EXT4-fs (sdb1): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
Jan 13 12:24:35 sushi kernel: FAT-fs (sdb1): bogus number of reserved sectors
Jan 13 12:24:35 sushi kernel: FAT-fs (sdb1): Can't find a valid FAT filesystem
Jan 13 12:24:35 sushi kernel: ISOFS: Unable to identify CD-ROM format.
So I tried it again with cfdisk which nagged about "unsupported GPT" but kept working. This time I choose "0C W95 FAT32 (LBA)" as partition type - maybe this did the trick because in my earlier attempts I did choose "0B W95 FAT32".
Anyway - after following the advice stated in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UE … B_from_ISO and installing rEFInd to the usb stick I could boot the usb stick in UEFI mode
But - as I said earlier - I don't know what did the trick
Last edited by swordfish (2013-01-13 12:38:18)