[GTALUG] New Build Computer?

[Peter King]

On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 10:15:15PM -0400, Jamon Camisso via talk wrote:

> 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?

I put in 32GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR-4 3600.  Seems to be more than
enough.

> > 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 think the motherboard recognizes the need for "emergency" booting and
will allow a UEFI flash drive to run -- but not to access/modify the disks
at a low level.  It is curious.  Then again, I don't know anything about
Secure Boot, and maybe this is exactly what it does...

> 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

I used rEFInd some years back, to manage a recalcitrant Apple laptop boot,
but since then I've used EFI-stub booting, since I don't dual-boot and only
run one kernel at a time.  Perhaps not the best choice, though it does make
for extraordinarily low boot times.  If I can't get this problem solved
I'll try rEFInd, though I suspect it is just waiting for something with a
Microsoft signature.

> ---
> 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.

I did do a chroot into the system on the NVMe disk, which is set up with
an EFI partition, from the flash drive -- and indeed that ran fine; I used
pacman to update various packages, changed the microcode, and so on.  It
just won't boot from the NVMe drive (or from the old SSD drive either).

> 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.

I haven't tried accessing the firmware UEFI shell, and past very bad
memories of using the GRUB shell to boot make me desperately not want
to do this.  But, again, I'll do it if other things fail.


Thanks for the very detailed reply!

-- 
Peter King			 	peter.king at utoronto.ca
Department of Philosophy
170 St. George Street #521
The University of Toronto		   (416)-946-3170 ofc
Toronto, ON  M5R 2M8
       CANADA

http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/

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