[SOLVED] UEFI with gummiboot: somtimes (!) just black screen

Question

Hi,
since two days I'm trying to get UEFI work on my Lenovo T420. The problem is that there's only a black screen when activating the "Arch Linux" entry in gummiboot if I have not plugged in the installation medium (as a USB drive). If it's inserted sytemd starts booting but stops at a certain point complaining there are starting jobs running on /dev/sdc (the USB drive); then I get to the rescue shell. If it's not inserted there's just a black screen. To start the system I have to leave the USB drive plugged in and fastly remove it when systemd starts booting after selecting "Arch Linux" in gummiboot. I don't know why, but the system does boot then.
This is what I have done:
In BIOS I changed the settings that it's booting with UEFI "and" BIOS at least trying first BIOS and then UEFI. I followed the installation instructions of the Beginner's Guide (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide) installing a system with LVM (ensuring that the install medium is booted in UEFI). I followed the recommendations of https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 3#p1240883 concerning partitioning. This is the setup I have:
niklaas@len-t420-arch ~ % lsblk --output +UUID
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT UUID
sda 8:0 0 238,5G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 100M 0 part
└─sda2 8:2 0 238,4G 0 part
sdb 8:16 0 119,2G 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 0 512M 0 part /boot D3F0-DA3E
├─sdb2 8:18 0 512M 0 part d66ae708-051f-43f8-bae8-b35a985cd75f
└─sdb3 8:19 0 118,2G 0 part Loovu6-pH7j-Ou8r-HiH0-yJFm-Riq7-Pbsi4s
├─VolGroup00-lvroot 254:0 0 25G 0 lvm / 349e5a88-72ca-40cb-8e44-0b67b85ffee4
├─VolGroup00-lvvar 254:1 0 15G 0 lvm /var 46980ec6-f2f3-4a08-a350-f6621a23054f
├─VolGroup00-lvswap 254:2 0 8G 0 lvm [SWAP] 156243f8-f374-4e27-86f0-d442850c6c3f
└─VolGroup00-lvhome 254:3 0 70,2G 0 lvm /home ae86bb5c-2829-4af9-9ffb-0206d10f02a4
(/dev/sda is Windows 7)
Please note that I /dev/sdb1 is the EFI System Partition and there's also another partition (/dev/sdb2) I created just in case I want to use a separate /boot partition. (Currently there's syslinux on it because I was experimenting whether I get the system to boot normaly, which means without the USB drive, by using Legacy BIOS and syslinux. But I was not successful: Screen also stays black.) This is what /boot looks like and the contents of /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf and /boot/loader/loader.conf:
niklaas@len-t420-arch ~ % tree /boot
/boot
├── EFI
│   ├── BOOT
│   │   └── BOOTX64.EFI
│   └── gummiboot
│   └── gummibootx64.efi
├── initramfs-linux-fallback.img
├── initramfs-linux.img
├── loader
│   ├── entries
│   │   └── arch.conf
│   └── loader.conf
└── vmlinuz-linux
niklaas@len-t420-arch ~ % cat /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
title Arch Linux
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
options root=UUID=349e5a88-72ca-40cb-8e44-0b67b85ffee4 rw
niklaas@len-t420-arch ~ % cat /boot/loader/loader.conf
timeout 3
default arch
Additionally to the strange USB-drive-needs-to-be-plugged-in issue there is another one: Because there's a Windows 7 installation (unfortunately I need it) on /dev/sda with Truecrypt I decided to install two bootloaders: one is on /dev/sda and the other one on /dev/sdb. So I can "manually" switch between operating systems by using the boot manager that is provided by the BIOS of the motherboard which makes it possible to change boot priority quite simply. After the installation of gummiboot there was (of course) another entry created, so there are three:
1. Linux Boot Manager
2. ~first SSD (with Windows; /dev/sda)
3. ~second SSD (with Arch Linux; /dev/sdb)
When I select the first entry, even the USB-drive-trick does not work. There just resides the black screen. This I do not understand at all because, as already described above:
If I select the third option, gummiboot gets loaded and I can select "Arch Linux". Then, as already mentioned, there are three options: (a) USB-drive is inserted > I plug it off immediately after systemd starts > system boots (b) USB-drive is inserted > I don't (!) plug it off > systemd complains about starting job running on /dev/sdc > I get the rescue shell (c) USB-drive is not (!) inserted > I just get a black screen.
I hope the issue I have is quite understandable. Otherwise, please ask and I'll try my best to clarify things. Any help is really appreciated,
Niklaas
niklaas@len-t420-arch ~ % uname -a
Linux len-t420-arch 3.10.6-2-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Aug 13 09:47:01 CEST 2013 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Last edited by niklaas (2013-08-18 07:02:01)

Answer 1

srs5694 wrote:My hunch is that you're running into the bug that's under discussion here. If so, you may be able to get it working more reliably by switching boot managers (to rEFInd or to the version of rEFInd that's built with GNU-EFI) or boot loaders (to GRUB or ELILO).
OK. I decided to use syslinux and installed it from the AUR. After installation was successfull, I copied all files as described in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UE … LINUX_6.xx to /boot/syslinux and ran command
# efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sdb -p 1 -l /EFI/syslinux/syslinux.efi -L "syslinux"
to create an entry. And I could just successfully boot without USB-drive. Thank you.
cfr wrote:I don't know why it would work at all in this case but are you sure that you can specify root= like that on the command line? Rather than e.g. root=/dev/VolGroup00/lvroot, for example?
I guess, I also tried this before having the same outcome.
But I still do not understand what's happening when I select my second SSD; because there's still gummiboot loaded and I can still boot the system with the USB-drive. Does anybody know what's happening there? I'm totally clueless why the system is somehow accessing the flash drive?!
Last edited by niklaas (2013-08-18 07:02:31)