Unable to install EnOs

my setup:
asus uefi bios, sata set to ahci
1tb hard drive

How I am setting up my partitions:

  1. fat32 1gb boot partition fs tag boot, /boot mount
  2. ext4 8gb swap partition no fs tag, no mount
  3. ext4 950gb root partition fs tag root, / mount

My procedure:
run endeavouros from live media usb.
gparted, and wipe all prior attempted partitions into unallocated space.
run the installer from the gui.
select online mode
go thorugh the keyboard, desktop (selecting kde) and packages, using the default.
selecting grub bootloader
Manual partitioning
designate my partitions, tags, and mount points.

Nothing works, I am always met with either a black screen, unable to find bootable device, or the hard drive being unidentifiable.
The drive works great.

I have tried all of the following

  • gpt table
  • mbr table, with legacy enabled - install works and bios doesnt recognize the drive as bootable
  • efi on in the bios with grub set to /boot/efi - gives grub error mid install and crashes
  • New harddrive with the same series of above permutations. - same issues

At best I am met with
Reboot and Select proper boot device
or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key

Have you taken a look at this wiki ? Maybe this helps.

I would set the bios to UEFI only.
Then choose the automatic install. Let the installer do its thing.

No need to pre-partition. The installer will create the apropriate partitions, set the appropriate flags and mountpoints.

You don’t need a swap partition. Choose a swapfile. It works the same and is more flexible. You could resize/remove it post install if you want too.

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the installer will set the /boot to be in the same partition as the root, and I want a seperate boot partition. Set to UEFI only. same issue.

Any particular reason for this?

I think my prior issue was unable to be resolved due to permissions with luks and the /boot directory.
I want to be able to mess with /boot if an issue arises and reformat or try a new bootloader without reformatting my root and home

I would suggest the following:

Set the BIOS to UEFI only

256 MiB FAT32 flag boot/esp mountpoint /boot/efi

2048 MiB EXT4 no flag mountpoint /boot

The rest of the disk EXT4 no flag mountpoint /

Bootloader GRUB

Any swap device can be made post-install. My suggestion would be to make a swapfile.

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Isn’t 256MiB very small for an efi partition, I thought the installer defaulted to 2GiB?

still installing, but worst case cant i re-point the /boot/efi to the 2gb /boot partition later on?

THIS WORKED! I don’t know why, how or what specifically, but I was able to boot.
Thank you once again for your time.
I’m back to EnOs, and the funniest thing is my windows laptop I was writing these posts on bluescreened midway through.
Glad to be back. thanks yall. o7

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It is more than enough, using Grub, in this case. Grub’s boot files and folders wont take more than 10 MiBs (give or take) in many cases.

The installer default to 2GiB when systemd-boot is used since it needs to have the kernels and initramfs under /efi (ESP) also.

For @motoclaw’s explicit wish, a separate EXT4 partition of 2048 MiB was created to be mounted at /boot. That’s where kernels and initramfs will live.

Otherwise, boot directory would be part of the / .

You don’t need to because of what I described above. The ESP (the FAT32 256 MiB partition) mounted at /boot/efi and the 2048 MiB EXT4 partition mounted at /boot have different purpose on your system now.

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So for grub it does things differently. Gotcha! It’s definitely worth finding out about as I’m thinking of reinstalling with grub instead of systemd-boot in the not too distant future.

You might even get away with less than 256 MiB for ESP if Grub is used.

In many cases in dualboot systems with Windows, where the ESP is shared between two systems, it has a size of 100 MB.

With that said, I don’t know what EOS defaults to when it comes to the size of ESP when Grub is used in monoboot systems if automatic installation is chosen.

You can have a look at ArchWiki’s ESP article for the recommendations. However in practice things seems to be working differently. It looks like one of the “YMMV” situations.

As far as I know Eos defaults to 2g because my install was with Grub as a bootloader.

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I’m at a loss for words.
I’m back at "reboot and select proper boot device.

I dont know what to do.
I put my gpu back in and that was about it.
Bios sees the drive. efi priority is still set and ahci is still set. nothing changed but me putting in my gpu

You would need to install the system with all the hardware you will be using for it to install the necessary drivers and configure the system properly.

If you need a proprietary driver for example for Nvidia, there is a boot menu entry on the live usb. That is the one you need to choose to boot your system.

You could still install those drivers.

I would suggest to open a new thread for it as your initial issue is now resolved.
Give the spec of your graphics card. I cannot be of help there as I don’t do Nvidia.

its a run of the mill amd rx580.
the drive, card, and ram all work fine.

made sure to get vulkan and mesa when i did my first pacman -syu

Try to boot off of a fallback image from your Grubs boot menu.

I can’t even get there.
grub is on the drive, but the bios cant boot the drive, or doesnt register it as a bootable device

Do you still see endeavouros boot option in your BIOS?