Arch on UEFI

UEFI boot is weird, mostly because of backwards compatibility. Here’s a simple guide to setting up UEFI on GPT, assuming you already know how to do a [typical Arch install]({% post_url 2016-02-11-arch-setup %}).

Partitions

Gdisk supports GPT, so we’ll use that to partition our system disk.

gdisk /dev/sda

Press o to create a new GPT partition table, overwriting any existing contents.

Then, use n to create new partitions:

• Root partition (8300), full disk size - 1.5 GB.
• EFI partition (EF00), 1024 MB

Type p to output your new partition layout, and w to write the changes.

Finally, refresh the disks.

partprobe

Filesystems

Create filesystems for the new partitions:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1
mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda2

Mount the new filesystems

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot

Bootloader

First, mount efivarfs if not already mounted:

mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

We’ll use systemd-boot, as it’s included within systemd.

bootctl install

We’ll need to write a few new config files in /boot/loader:

vim /boot/loader/loader.conf

default arch
timeout 3
editor  0

vim /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf

title   Arch Linux
linux   /vmlinuz-linux
initrd  /initramfs-linux.img
options root=/dev/sda1 rw

Finishing Up

exit # ^D is always superior :P
umount -R /mnt
reboot