Trying to boot arch from win7 with EasyBCD; "boot device not found"

Question

EDIT: title was 'Dual boot with Win7, easybcd + syslinux, getting "Boot error"'. Narrowed down the issue to something unrelated to Arch, and felt this was more accurate. The Arch install is sound, it's getting win7/EasyBCD to load it that's the issue.
I got a new work computer and am trying to recreate my formerly successful setup, which I documented here some time ago. Unfortunately... I'm having issues. Just a note up front from scouring the internet for ideas: I cannot use syslinux (or any other bootloader) to chainload Win7 vs. the other way around! The computer drive is encrypted with McAfee Endpoint Encryption, and doing anything whatsoever with the MBR from outside of Windows will brick my computer. Just wanted to add that, as almost all issues involving dual boot inevitably bring about the suggestion to "just chainload windows from grub/syslinux/etc."
With that out of the way, here's the process I used:
drive setup
Here's the partition scheme:
- /dev/sda1: SYSTEM (pre-existing)
- /dev/sda2: C:, Win7 (pre-existing)
- /dev/sda3: /boot, ext2 (created)
- /dev/sda4: /, encrypted Arch root, cryptsetup/ext4 (created)
My process for creating the partitions is as follows:
- shrunk C: down from the Win7 built-in partition utility
- created two unformatted partitions with no drive letter using Minitool Partition Wizard, setting the partition ID to 0x83 for both
- booted from USB drive of the Arch installation .iso (downloaded Friday 5/29)
- booted x86_64 arch
# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 238.5 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x1e6513b3
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 * 2048 2101247 2099200 1G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 2101248 177278975 175177728 83.5G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 177278976 177541119 262144 128M 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 177541120 500103167 322562048 153.8G 83 Linux
# modprobe dm_crypt
# cryptsetup -c aes-xts-plain64 -s 512 -h sha512 -i 5000 -y luksFormat /dev/sda4
# cryptsetup open /dev/sda4 root
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/root
# mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda3
installation
I just followed the Arch installation guide but documented my steps to a text file just to be sure...
# mount /dev/mapper/root /mnt
# mkdir /mnt/boot
# mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/boot
### connect to internet
# pacstrap /mnt base
# genfstab -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
# arch-chroot /mnt
# echo arch_zbook > /etc/hostname
# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago /etc/localtime
### uncomment en_US.utf-8 in /etc/locale.gen
# locale-gen
# echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
### add encrypt before "filesystem" in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf hooks
# mkinitcpio -p linux
# passwd
# pacman -S syslinux
# cp -r /usr/lib/syslinux/bios/*.c32 /boot/syslinux
# extlinux -i /boot
### the above echoes "/boot is device /dev/sda3"
Then I edited /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg:
LABEL arch
MENU LABEL Arch Linux
LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux
APPEND root=/dev/mapper/root cryptdevice=/dev/sda4:root crypto=sha512:aes-xts-plain64:512:: rw
INITRD ../initramfs-linux.img
EDIT: I deleted the contents of /boot, reinstalled syslinux, linux, and mkinitcpio, and repeated the above with `extlinux -i /boot/syslinux`, noting that syslinux.cfg points to ../vmlinuz-linux. Same result.
Just to double check proper syslinux setup, here's the dir contents:
# ls /boot
initramfs-linux-fallback.img
initramfs-linux.img
ldlinux.c32
ldlinux.sys
lost+found
syslinux
vmlinuz-linux
# ls /boot/syslinux
cat.c32
chain.c32
cmd.c32
cmenu.c32
config.c32
cptime.c32
cpu.c32
cpuid.c32
cpuidtest.c32
debug.c32
dhcp.c32
disk.c32
dmi.c32
dmitest.c32
elf.c32
ethersel.c32
gfxboot.c32
gpxecmd.c32
hdt.c32
hexdump.c32
host.c32
ifcpu64.c32
ifcpu.c32
ifmemdsk.c32
ifplop.c32
kbdmap.c32
kontron_wdt.c32
ldlinux.c32
lfs.c32
libcom32.c32
libgpl.c32
liblua.c32
libmenu.c32
libutil.c32
linux.c32
ls.c32
lua.c32
mboot.c32
meminfo.c32
menu.c32
pci.c32
pcitest.c32
pmload.c32
poweroff.c32
prdhcp.c32
pwd.c32
pxechn.c32
reboot.c32
rosh.c32
sanboot.c32
sdi.c32
sysdump.c32
syslinux.c32
syslinux.cfg
vesa.c32
vesainfo.c32
vesamenu.c32
vpdtest.c32
whichsys.c32
zzjson.c32
EasyBCD and boot attempt
At this point, exited the arch-chroot, unmounted/closed my partitions, and rebooted into Win7. Using EasyBCD, I added a entry for a syslinux bootloader, pointing it to "Partition 3 (Linux - 128MiB)."
I reboot, get the EasyBCD menu, but then the lone words "Boot error" on a black screen. Any key press takes me to some sort of BIOS boot thingy which tells me to "Please install an operating system!" I think this is something built into the laptop BIOS, not anything from the syslinux side. Selecting "Boot existing OS" from the Arch install USB doesn't give me any options at all.
From what I can tell, I'm using the same procedure that I ended up with on this former troubleshooting exercise.
Thoughts
I'm really struggling to understand what I'm doing wrong. I originally had a couple variations on logical/extended partitions since I need my eventual setup to hold a shared TrueCrypt partition so I can access my work files from both Win7 and arch. I tried /boot as primary and Arch/TC as logicals, as well as a primary TC partition with boot/root as a logical drive combination. I've simplified to just primary partitions (as shown above) to troubleshoot.
It's quite difficult to troubleshoot as I don't know if this is an installation issue or an EasyBCD one. Is there a way to manually try and boot my HD arch install from the install USB? I wanted to try that using the "Boot existing OS" option, but am wondering if it fails since only /dev/sda1 features a bootable flag and it's encrypted so only the HP BIOS can handle it? I thought about making /dev/sda3 bootable, but from my reading I can only have one bootable flag on a Windows system.
On that note, I checked my BIOS settings and the MBR is set to "Legacy mode" vs. the othe UEFI alternatives, so I don't think that's an issue. I also used blkid to confirm that it's using an MBR (output was "dos").
I will try UUIDs in /etc/fstab and syslinux next, as there are some other posts (example) talking about this as a potential issue (and, indeed, I sometimes get my HD as /dev/sdb* when booting from the arch USB drive. I can also try grub2 in case it's a syslinux issue.
Thanks for any ideas/suggestions. Does anything look awry in my description/setup above? I can chroot and do stuff just fine... so I think the install appears to be sound; it's just booting it!
Last edited by jwhendy (2015-06-06 04:38:09)

Answer 1

A bit of progress, though this couldn't be much more awful in my opinion. Installed Arch to an sdcard to use as a bootloader, only to find that I can't boot from an sdcard, even though the HP docs say there's an sdcard boot option in the BIOS (which there's not). If the BIOS were in UEFI mode, there is an sdcard option listed in the boot order, but not in legacy mode. Sigh.
I don't have another sdcard laying around that's big enough to install Arch on, as I'm using my sole 8g drive for the installation media (and no optical drive). Sigh.
I did, however, through trial and error get my sdd arch install to boot using the installation drive's "boot existing OS" option! Took me a while to figure it out. In my opinion the drive/partition numbering is quite odd. Using the Hardware Information tool, the usb stick shows up as the first drive (so I'd assume hd0), but it can't be as "hd0 3" got me into the sdd installation. I'd have assumed hd0 0 was /dev/sda1, but that must be incorrect, as hd0 3 is /dev/sda3.
So, where I'm at now:
- going to re-partition how I originally intended (with truecrypt shared storage as a primary partition and boot/root as logical partitions)
- reinstall arch
- try to boot using the above procedure from the installation media
If that goes well, I'll try to find some teensy tiny usb stick to use as a bootloader device unless someone has any insights on why I can't boot by chainloading from Windows. I think at this point I've narrowed it down to a BIOS or drive numbering or EasyBCD issue, so maybe this post isn't a good fit for the Arch forums after all. Sorry for all the noise/updates... just wanted to provide the updated information as I uncovered it.
Thanks if you have any ideas or things I could try.