Here is my current GPT/MBR partition table:
Current GPT partition table:
# Start LBA End LBA Type
1 40 409639 EFI System (FAT)
2 409640 663646255 Mac OS X HFS+
3 663646256 664915791 Mac OS X Boot
4 664915968 1164914687 Basic Data
5 1164914688 1169649663 Linux Swap
6 1169649664 1465149134 Unknown
Current MBR partition table:
# A Start LBA End LBA Type
1 1 409639 ee EFI Protective
2 409640 663646255 af Mac OS X HFS+
3 663646256 664915791 ab Mac OS X Boot
4 * 664915968 1164914687 07 NTFS/HPFS
The above is information I got from the 'Partition Inspector' on Mac OS X. Here is the situation:
Partition2: I have Mac OS X 10.7 installed
Partition4: I have Windows 8 Release Preview installed
Partition6: I have Arch installed (without boot loader)
I have rEFIt installed.
This is what I am able to do:
- Boot into Mac and Windows using rEFIt.
- Boot into the Arch setup on my USB drive and chroot into the installed system.
This is what I am not able to do:
- Boot into the installed Arch system and/or install a boot loader.
So what I basically need is to install a boot loader. I followed the instructions given in the Arch manual, but installing both grub-bios and grub-efi-x86_64 is not working.
-
Installing grub-bios gives an error 'Cannot identify filesystem on /dev/sda' and grub-efi-x86_64 gives an error saying 'Fatal: Couldn't open either sysfs or procfs directories for accessing EFI variables. Try 'modprobe efivars' as root'. I tried
mod probe efivars
, but it didn't help the situation. I get the above error when I run the command:grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=arch_grub --recheck
My basic question is what options do I have to setup my triple boot.. since I am almost there.
PS
Is it possible for me to simply boot from rEFIt? Like how I would do it from grub by specifying the root, kernel and initrd parameters?
Best Answer
You do not need to install a bootloader for Arch here.
EFISTUB
has been in the kernel for a long time. You can boot it directly from rEFIt, though you really should use rEFInd. Also, please stop using GRUB 2, especially blindly.Configure whatever EFI boot manager you end up choosing, to also allow you to chose to boot Arch Linux. In my
/EFI/archlinux/archlinux.conf
(as seen from the Mac, no separate ESP, file included by/EFI/refind/refind.conf
), I have something like the following.Adjust accordingly.
Please understand what boot loaders and boot managers are before following instructions blindly. Here is some suggested reading on EFI
efivars
hasn't been used by Arch Linux in a relatively long time. It's not even in the stock kernel config.efivarfs
should already be mounted anyhow.