Boot loaders
Related articles
The boot loader is the first piece of software started by the BIOS or UEFI. It is responsible for loading the kernel with the wanted kernel parameters, and initial RAM disk before initiating the boot process. You can use different kinds of bootloaders in Arch, such as GRUB and Syslinux. Some bootloaders only support BIOS or UEFI and some support both.
This page contains a short introduction about bootloaders available in Arch. For detailed information see the corresponding pages of each bootloader.
Contents
Both BIOS and UEFI boot loaders
GRUB
See GRUB.
Syslinux
See Syslinux.
BURG
See BURG.
UEFI-only boot loaders
Linux Kernel EFISTUB
The Linux kernel can be booted directly using the built-in EFI stub loader. See EFISTUB.
Gummiboot
Gummiboot is a UEFI Boot Manager which provides a text menu for booting EFISTUB kernels. See Gummiboot.
rEFInd
rEFInd is a UEFI Boot Manager which provides a graphical menu for booting EFISTUB kernels. See rEFInd.
Clover
Clover is a UEFI Boot Manager which provides native resolution GUI for booting EFISTUB kernels. See Clover.
ELILO
ELILO is the UEFI version of the BIOS-only LILO. Its config file elilo.conf
is similar to LILO's config file. Upstream provided compiled binaries are available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/elilo/ and an AUR package at elilo-efi.
BIOS-only boot loaders
GRUB Legacy
GRUB Legacy (also known as grub-0.97), is the legacy, BIOS-only branch of GRUB. See GRUB Legacy.
LILO
See LILO.
NeoGRUB
NeoGRUB provides a means to boot Arch from the Windows boot loader without installing an additional boot loader. See NeoGRUB.
Booting Arch from NeoGRUB has not been tested yet from Windows 8 and/or UEFI systems.
Troubleshooting
On some UEFI motherboards like boards with an Intel Z77 chipset, adding entries with efibootmgr
or bcfg
from the EFI Shell will not work because they don't show up on the boot menu list after being added to NVRAM.
This issue is caused because the motherboards can only load Microsoft Windows. To solve this you have to place the .efi
file in the location that Windows uses.
Copy the bootx64.efi
file from the Arch Linux installation medium (FSO:
) to the Microsoft directory your ESP partition on your hard drive (FS1:
). Do this by booting into EFI shell and typing:
FS1: cd EFI mkdir Microsoft cd Microsoft mkdir Boot cp FS0:\EFI\BOOT\bootx64.efi FS1:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi
After reboot, any entries added to NVRAM should show up in the boot menu.