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Topic: I can only start Artix with my USB flash drive. (Read 1402 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: I can only start Artix with my USB flash drive.

Reply #15 –
The Arch wiki has some good if often more detailed than strictly required pages regarding the boot process and UEFI, e.g.:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_system_partition

Your problem is you have no FAT formatted EFI partition - ie a drive partition as made by Gparted or whatever. With UEFI boot, the BIOS starts up and looks for this partition. The bootloader stub in there then passes control onto your OS in the main partition, and the initcpio kernel image in /boot. The Artix  ISO includes an EFI partion and then can pass control onto itself, or another OS. If you had 2 Linux's installed then one would not even need Grub to be booted by another in theory, although recent Grub os-prober's seem to have difficulty sometimes without a grub.cfg to copy. This FAT efi partion should be mounted on /boot/efi (the Arch wiki page actually suggests /efi but I haven't seen that used before)

Traditional non-efi boot did something similar but the BIOS looked in the MBR which was always present for the first stage then was directed onwards from there. Here you need to make a space for the bootloader yourself before installing it.

If you look carefully at the instructions on the Artix wiki it should help:
https://wiki.artixlinux.org/Main/Installation#Partition_your_disk

BIOS >>> EFI partion (FAT32)  >>> Linux partition (EXT / BTRFS / ZFS or whatever)

Re: I can only start Artix with my USB flash drive.

Reply #16 –
Quote from: user_abc – on

I also used:
mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/nvme0n1p1 --> mkdir /mnt/boot --> mkdir /mnt/boot/efi --> mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/efi


that will not work.  I alreadu SAID that the partition has to point to /boot/efi


Quote
I used "fdisk -l" and the USB device (/dev/sda) shows its disklabel type as "dos" and its subdirectories like this:
Device       Boot  Start        End          Sectors    Size       Id  Type
/dev/sda1  *        64           1613511  1613448  787.8M  0   Empty
/dev/sda2           1613512  1621703  8192        4M        ef  EFI (FAT-12/16/32)

fdsik will not work correctly.  cfdisk.


Re: I can only start Artix with my USB flash drive.

Reply #17 –
Quote from: user_abc – on

I used "fdisk -l" and the USB device (/dev/sda) shows its disklabel type as "dos" and its subdirectories like this:
Device       Boot  Start        End          Sectors    Size       Id  Type
/dev/sda1  *        64           1613511  1613448  787.8M  0   Empty
/dev/sda2           1613512  1621703  8192        4M        ef  EFI (FAT-12/16/32)


NOTE: On UEFI systems with a GPT-partitioned disk, there must be an EFI system partition (ESP). The suggested size is around 512 MiB.
https://wiki.artixlinux.org/Main/Installation#Partition_your_disk

Here I have :
Code: [Select]
df -hT /dev/sda4
Sys. de fichiers Type Taille Utilisé Dispo Uti% Monté sur
/dev/sda4        vfat    99M     58M   42M  58% /boot/efi

Re: I can only start Artix with my USB flash drive.

Reply #18 –
Quote from: ####### – on
The Arch wiki has some good if often more detailed than strictly required pages regarding the boot process and UEFI, e.g.:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_system_partition

Your problem is you have no FAT formatted EFI partition - ie a drive partition as made by Gparted or whatever. With UEFI boot, the BIOS starts up and looks for this partition.

there is no bios with efi

Re: I can only start Artix with my USB flash drive.

Reply #19 –
Yes, sorry, that is an outdated way of looking at it and inaccurate terminology. On modern UEFI systems the code stored in the ROM (BIOS) chip is now also called the UEFI, but you still have to go into the BIOS / setup / UEFI menu using the relevant F? keys and get it to point to the EFI partition you have made on the hard drive or use efibootmgr to do that from the OS, and that aspect of the UEFI resides on the mobo ROM not on the HDD because you can access it without any HDD. Despite assertions to the contrary it must have some BIOS like stage though - how can it access a FAT32 partition on the HDD otherwise? That requires software (although it could be firmware  embedded in hardware) to decode even if most of the older BIOS functions are offloaded.

Re: I can only start Artix with my USB flash drive.

Reply #20 –
The battle is lost with BIOS / UEFI terminology. It used to bug me but I've almost accepted the fact that people using 'BIOS' to describe 'UEFI' isn't going away.

If you have a UEFI chip on a motherboard really you are "going into" the "Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)" not the BIOS.

And from a support point of view, when people are talking about bootloaders grub etc, the difference between the two matters.
If someone is taking about, for example, how to enable the cpu's virtualisation in the UEFI or BIOS then not so much.

But with motherboard vendors still listing 'BIOS' updates and 'BIOS' revisions on the support pages of their UEFI boards and most of the big tech youtubers still talking 'BIOS' settings and "Going into the BIOS" on UEFI boards there is no hope to any reduction in the confusion imho except the passage of time whereby the likelihood decreases that those saying 'BIOS' actually have a BIOS chip because those boards are not made any more.

And I'm guilty of using the wrong terminology myself at times.

They do say language evolves. How many people have to use the wrong word before it becomes the right word ?

Edit: Maybe it's come to this because BIOS is simpler to say ?
Edit2: If they had gone with Firmware Unified Central Interface Terminal I suspect that might have caught on?

Re: I can only start Artix with my USB flash drive.

Reply #21 –
Quote from: gripped – on
The battle is lost with BIOS / UEFI terminology. It used to bug me but I've almost accepted the fact that people using 'BIOS' to describe 'UEFI' isn't going away.

If you have a UEFI chip on a motherboard really you are "going into" the "Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)" not the BIOS.

I largely agree in causaul conversation but when your in the weeds of tech support, it is not that easy to ignore.

But it matters to understand what the heck they are talking about because the patitioning is different and the compuer can be switched to BIOS.

Re: I can only start Artix with my USB flash drive.

Reply #23 –
Quote from: ####### – on
Despite assertions to the contrary it must have some BIOS like stage though - how can it access a FAT32 partition on the HDD otherwise? That requires software (although it could be firmware  embedded in hardware) to decode even if most of the older BIOS functions are offloaded.


Because it has a fully functional watered down and programable version of JAVA running from the ROM...

That is likely a major reason for the push for secure boot.