Arch Linux UEFI won't boot

Question

My motherboard is the following model with the latest bios: https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/CROSSHAIR_V_FORMULAZ/

I followed the standard Arch Linux instructions for configuring the EFI to boot using the kernel as an EFISTUB. This is something that had worked fine for me for over a year on the same hardware but when i tried to change my kernel parameters I seemed to have broken something. None of the usual approaches worked.

First I tried using the efibootmgr with the following command:

efibootmgr -d /dev/sda -p 1 -b 0000 -g -c -l \vmlinuz-linux -L "Linux" -u "root=/dev/mapper/default-root rw initrd=initramfs-linux.img"

this added the following entry revealed using efibootmgr -v

Boot0000* Linux HD(1,GPT,76dd039b-764a-4b07-81ed-61921dfdab62,0x800,0x800)/File(\vmlinuz-linux)r.o.o.t.=./.d.e.v./.m.a.p.p.e.r./.d.e.f.a.u.l.t.-.r.o.o.t. .r.w. .i.n.i.t.r.d.=./.i.n.i.t.r.a.m.f.s.-.l.i.n.u.x...i.m.g.

When I try to boot to this entry I get a BIOS level error that no bootable devices can be found.

Next I tried using the bcfg tool in the live CD's UEFI shell v2.

For this I had to create a kernel-opts text file on /boot therefore I executed the following.

echo "boot=/dev/mapper/default-root rw initrd=initramfs-linux.img > /boot/kernel-opts

I then booted up the UEFI Shell v2 from the live CD and in the shell I executed the following.

bcfg boot add 0 fs1:\vmlinuz-linux "Arch Linux"
bcfg boot -opt 0 fs1:\kernel-opts

Using efibootmgr -v I again inspected the new entry.

Boot0000* Arch Linux    PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x4,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Sata(0,65535,0)/HD(2,GPT,5cec78ae-39af-4434-9b57-9c08b8032147,0x1000,0x200000)/File(\vmlinuz-linux)root=/dev/mapper/default-root rw initrd=\initramfs-linux.img

This time when booting the boot device is detected but a kernel panic ensues when it can't find the root fs.

Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

CPU: 0 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 4.11.3-1-ARCH #1

I had concluded that the bcfg was getting the first part correct, the location of the kernel, but the arguments were incorrect, specifically because they weren't encoded in unicode. I tried several variations of arguments for each tool but I couldn't get ether tool to work as-is.

Answer 1

Ultimately I found a solution, but it feels like a hack. I just wanted to post it here for others until a better solution comes around.

By converting the kernel-opts file from the question into UTF-16 (unicode) and using that instead I was able to solve the problem. I also had to drop the first two bytes of the converted file; not sure why iconv adds those bytes. I used the following command to convert to UTF-16.

iconv -f ASCII -t UTF-16 kernel-opts | dd bs=1 skip=2 > kernel-opts-unicode

Next I deleted the old boot entries, booted back to the Live CD's UEFI Shell v2 and executed the following commands.

bcfg boot add 0 fs1:\vmlinuz-linux "Arch Linux"
bcfg boot -opt 0 fs1:\kernel-opts-unicode

This produced the following entry according to efibootmgr -v

Boot0000* Arch Linux    PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x4,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Sata(1,65535,0)/HD(2,GPT,e5f7abe4-75bf-4c63-a76b-504c17eb5460,0x1000,0x200000)/File(\vmlinuz-linux)r.o.o.t.=./.d.e.v./.m.a.p.p.e.r./.d.e.f.a.u.l.t.-.r.o.o.t. .r.w. .i.n.i.t.r.d.=.\.i.n.i.t.r.a.m.f.s.-.l.i.n.u.x...i.m.g.

The system was then able to boot without any warnings or errors.