mjhjmtu

For the past few days I have been trying to install arch linux but have not succeeded in doing so. The installation goes completely fine but when I restart the computer I don't get GRUB and it doesn't even appear in boot options.

I have done tons of research but I haven't found a solution that worked. I am not sure if this is the root of the problem, but in /boot/efi/EFI there is no arch folder after doing grub-install and grub-mkconfig (there was an ubuntu folder when I had ubuntu).

I am pretty sure fstab is correctly configured. I followed all the steps in the arch guide and I have no idea what could have gone wrong.

Edit: secure boot is disabled and it boots directly into Windows. If I make the boot menu appear (pressing F12), I only get the windows option. The output of efibootmgr -v is the following:

BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 2001,0001,2002,2003
Boot0000* USB HDD: USB Flash Disk PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(0,0)/USB(1,0)/HD(1,MBR,0x72539,0x800,0xf00000)RC 
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager HD(1,GPT,88f77a3e-99ca-42d8-9191-96d66428a9f6,0x800,0x32000)/File(EFIMicrosoftBootbootmgfw.efi)RC
Boot0002* GRUB HD(1,GPT,88f77a3e-99ca-42d8-9191-96d66428a9f6,0x800,0x32000)/File(EFIGRUBgrubx64.efi)
Boot0004* arch HD(1,GPT,88f77a3e-99ca-42d8-9191-96d66428a9f6,0x800,0x32000)/File(EFIarchgrubx64.efi)
Boot2001* EFI USB Device RC
Boot2002* EFI DVD/CDROM RC
Boot2003* EFI Network RC

The efibootmgr output indicates the first non-USB boot item listed in BootOrder is 0001, which corresponds to Boot0001 line - which is the Windows bootloader. So Windows 10 has just promoted itself to the top of the list, as it sometimes does during major updates.

First, identify your EFI System Partition using the UUID listed in the efibootmgr output:

# blkid | grep 8f77a3e-99ca-42d8-9191-96d66428a9f6

This should identify the Linux device (probably something like /dev/sd*) corresponding to the actual ESP used by the firmware. Make sure it is mounted at /boot/efi; some Linux distributions actually leave it unmounted by default.

Then verify that either /boot/efi/EFI/GRUB/grubx64.efi or /boot/efi/EFI/arch/grubx64.efi exists.

If neither of those actually exists, run grub-install <disk device reported by blkid>: that should fix it.

If either of those grubx64.efi files exists, you can add Linux back to the boot order with:

# efibootmgr -o 2001,0002,0004,0001,2002,2003

(This corresponds to "try first an UEFI boot from a USB HDD, then EFIGRUBgrubx64.efi from the ESP partition, then EFIarchgrubx64.efi from the ESP partition, then fall back to Windows bootloader and the DVD and network boot options.")

Typically the last step would be the only thing you'll need after a major Windows update, but if something has actually caused the ESP partition contents to be completely rewritten, you may need the grub-install step too.

I know it is my own question but I solved it and decided to add the answer in case anyone else comes across this problem.

I reset my PC following Microsoft's instructions here. Then, I erased the linux home and root partitions to do a fresh install. In the process I had to mount the EFI system partition on /boot/efi and I realised that even after resetting the PC /boot/efi/EFI/GRUB and /boot/efi/EFI/arch still existed. I erased those directories in case they were corrupt and that was the problem in my previous attempts.

The install had no problems whatsoever but Windows still wouldn't let me boot to arch so I had to run from the windows cmd the following as administrator

bcdedit /set bootmgr path EFIGRUBgrubx64.efi

I was then able to boot into arch from the boot menu (pressing f12 at startup).

I still don't know what the exact problem was. If anyone could explain it please add an answer.