[GTALUG] New Build Computer?

[Jamon Camisso]

On 2020-07-25 21:06, Peter King via talk wrote:
> So in the end I went with a Ryzen 3700X CPU and the Asus Prime X570-Pro
> motherboard, adding in an NVMe drive as well for my boot/root device.  The
> results have been mixed.

Nice choice, been eyeing something similar myself. How much RAM and what
speed did you go with?

> Any, and all, suggestions welcome.  I don't have any experience with the
> Secure Boot option, if that might be the culprit.

That the bootable USB works is curious, and makes me wonder if secure
boot is really the issue.

I've had great success using rEFInd to manage booting various OSes on my
desktop. So my suggestions:

---
1. Try installing rEFInd - it will detect quite a few different bootable
drives. http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/installing.html#installsh

---
2. If you find that after running the install script rEFInd installs to
the USB stick, try the manual steps on that page, from within your chroot.

---
3. Or, combine both. Bind mount /proc, /sys, and /dev from the USB stick
into the chroot and then try the install script that way.

---
4. Otherwise, the more labour intensive option: your USB stick works, so
hit escape while it is in the grub screens and examine all the arguments
for the working installer kernel.

You may be able to do something like run your own grub commands: `set
root=(hdx,1)` (where you tab complete after the 'hd' part and you'll get
a list of partitions to choose from). Once you're pointing at your Linux
boot partition, load the kernel and initrd using the usual arguments for
your previously working Arch+Grub.

One thing to watch out for is that you get the correct root=LABEL=foo,
or root=LABEL=$UUID, or root=/dev/nvmXXX argument right, otherwise
you'll end up in your init recovery shell.

Once you're in that way, you can try installing rEFINd again.

Of course, messing with bootloaders, make a backup of your working
bootable partition(s) if you don't have one already, ideally using dd.

For reference, here's the EFI partition that I use with rEFInd and Grub
as seen by fdisk:

fdisk -l /dev/nvme0n1
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 960 EVO 500GB
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: gpt
Disk identifier: C56F030C-9CDB-2A45-ABDE-A64263DFC0F4

Device           Start       End   Sectors  Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1    2048    526335    524288  256M EFI System
. . .

And by findmnt:

findmnt -u /boot/efi
TARGET SOURCE FSTYPE OPTIONS
/boot/efi
/dev/nvme0n1p1
vfat
rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro