efifs VS archinstall

See also UEFI drivers that can read a bunch of other file systems (btrfs, ext2/3/4, HFS, ISO, NTFS, UFS/FFS, XFS, ZFS, etc):

* https://efi.akeo.ie

* https://github.com/pbatard/efifs

The UEFI spec specifies (§13.3) that firmware is only required to read FAT32/16/12, which is generally why your /boot/efi is VFAT/FAT32.

In theory you would still need a FAT32 efi 'stub' partition with the exFAT filesystem drivers which you have to load before loading the WinPE loader (bootmgfw.efi).

I am pretty sure that that I am doing something incorrectly with the configuration files for the rEFInd bootloader, but everything else should be correct. However, as I write this, I barely realized did I not use the following commands recommended from the "Usage" section from the aforementioned website where I downloaded the zfs_x64.efi driver file for rEFInd:

I found the drivers here https://efi.akeo.ie/ . Which means, that any EFI bootloader able to load them will be able to use them. They are not for bootloader, but it is the firmware which will use them. As i said, i am little bit afraid that it will not work on any board as some manufacturers have pretty buggy firmware when talking about infrequently used features. Also i am bit unsure they will work with secure boot as they are gpl3 thus will be never signed by Microsoft and i don't know what UEFI requirements for drivers are in this regard.

Even for those using systemd-boot with custom efi drivers to provide functionality, it's worth noting that those drivers are being developed downstream of GRUB.

I think you can also add btrfs filesystem support for sd-boot by including the EFI drivers for it on the EFI partition instead, from https://github.com/pbatard/efifs/releases I think. Haven't tried it myself though.

EFI doesn't actually mandate FAT for the system partition. The system partition can be any filesystem that the firmware supports.

Of course, pretty much all EFI implementations only support FAT, so it's a bit of a moot point; the only one I'm aware of that supports anything else is the one on Intel Macs, which also understands HFS+.

You can find a huge selection of EFI filesystem drivers at https://efi.akeo.ie/ but they're derived from GRUB and hence GPL, so don't expect the likes of American Megatrends to be bundling these any time soon.

In any case, have you studied https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall and https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall. While archinstall is new and has the expected bugs, I've not had your issues before. You might try an earlier ISO, like Oct 2023, though it's not clear if you're using an ISO or the archinstall installed package.

I'm using my laptop as dual boot between Manjaro and Windows 10, I tried for months to install ArchLinux using archinstall tool but the operation always fails with random errors, because I want to install it on a single ext4 partition like how Manjaro is installed. Is there any trusted GUI installer that uses calamares and can install pure ArchLinux ?

The related issue https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/issues/1111 implies it's fixed, but either way, you can just securely delete your password after the install.

Mount that partition as /efi. Change this in your /etc/fstab as well. This is a good time to remove all the weird carriage returns that archinstall puts in your fstab file (https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/issues/1399).

Most distros have a nice graphical installer which does make things less of a hassle. But these days Arch also bundles archinstall which is quite easy to use and supports a few display environments for automatic setup right out the gate which is nice.

Or just use archinstall which is official part of the iso file.

You can post an issue at: https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall to get the attention of the developer. He's represented here but I forget his user id.

If you're still suffering with this problem: Maybe try to find the file/module on your system. If it's present, you might want to try to run this pacman -Sy python archinstall (found it here: https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/issues/1810) to reinstall python and the archinstall script. I hope that this helps you.

Still feels that it is in rapid development phase, rather than just maintenance, last month I encountered this bug