Hi, i been trying to install Solus Plasma 4.1 (Budgie, and Plasma) this week in my UEFI system, alongside with a windows 10 installation.
Afeter a "succesful" install (liveiso installed everything and says "restart now"), Solus won't boot.
Looking at the UEFI boot entrys, there is a "UEFI Os" entry that i think is the one that is meant
for booting Solus, anyway that one is the only i can choose apart from the "Windows boot manager". However when i choose it, i just get a black screen, and after a few seconds the
interface reboots and sends me to motherboard UEFI settings.
I already had Windows 10 installed before trying to install solus.
For the install, i created a usb bootdrive with rufus using dd.
I created a 520mb fat32 partition for the bootloader (and installed the bootloader on it), and a 140gb ext4 partition for using it as \root.
I tried flagging the fat32 partition with a "boot, esp" flag, and i unflagged it too. Tried to flag and unflag
the windows esp, and all the possible combinations, but had no luck and the same results.
Secure boot is disabled and i played with almost every UEFI option to try to make it work.

These are the things that i've already tried:

. Using efibootmgr to play with the boot entrys

  • Based on:
    I tried deleting the already existing solus entrys using efibootmgr from a liveboot usb drive, a recreating it.
    Also tried another solution, posted there trying to link de entry directly to the solus kernel and initrd.
    Efibootmgr simply doesn't seem to modify ANYTHING at all, no modifications were made on my EFI boot menu.

. Using the reFind EFI Shell to re-create boot entrys:

I downloaded a liveboot image for reFInd.
Used the UEFI using the bcfg command to delete the existing entrys, and creating new ones.
I tried linking the kernel to boot the entry, located (in my case) in
fs6:\EFI\com.solus-project
Also created an "options.txt" text file to link the kernel to it's init ram disk.
I am no expert in this subject, i think that by this method, i'm trying tu use the kernel
itself as the bootloader, it's something called EFI Stub from what i read. I can't find info
if the solus kernel itself is compatible at all with EFI Stub.
Anyways, reFinds works at creating the new entrys and i definately can see them in the EFI boot menu.
When i attemp to load the OS from new created entry, it starts booting but at some point it just says "Failed to start Switch Root" and the process stops there.
Trying to boot directly from the "reFind menu" (i mean, choosing one of the bootloaders detected automatically by reFind in it's own menu)
results in the same "Failed to start Switch Root" error.

. Tried to "Boot rescue"

The command
sudo eopkg up
tries to upgrade everygthing wich takes a long time. The upgrade list includes upgrades for systemd and crl-boot-manager among many others. However afeter succesfully installing everything, no changes are observed after rebooting and trying to boot Solus.

The command
sudo eopkg check | grep Broken | awk '{print $4}' | xargs sudo eopkg it --reinstall
doesn't seem to do anything at all (it just returns how to use the command properly)

Finally the command
sudo usysconf run -f
Gives a long checklist, where it has succes on most like:
[✓] Syncing filesystems success
[✓] Updating dynamic library cache success

But skips many (like the boot manager ones):
[ ] Updating clr-boot-manager skipped
[ ] Updating clr-boot-manager skipped
[ ] Registering QoL migration on next boot skipped
[ ] Reloading systemd configuration skipped
[ ] Re-executing systemd skipped
[ ] Compiling and Reloading AppArmor profiles skipped
[ ] Compiling and Reloading AppArmor profiles skipped
[ ] Reloading udev rules skipped
[ ] Reloading udev rules skipped

Probably this has something to do with systemd, but i already tried other OS's that uses systemd
like PopOS! that boot fine, so i'm really clueless.
If someone has a clue to get around this problem, or an alternative to properly boot solus on my system, i would really apreaciate it.
Thanks in advance.

My system specs:

  • Motherboard: Asrock Fatal1ty x370 Gaming-ITX/ac
  • Processor: Ryzen 2200g
  • Ram : 16gb DDR4
  • GPU: Nvidia GTX 1060 3gb

Go in to the BIOS and look witch drive its booting first, when i installed Solus with UEFI i needed to set the EFI boot partition on top in order to boot in to Solus. Hopes this might help

    After the installation Solus entry in BIOS should be by default called Linux Boot Manager, so that UEFI Os probably is unrelated.
    What command did you use when recreating an entry with efibootmgr?

    I install Solus (i tried Budgie and Mate) almost the same way as you. First i make 512MB FAT32 partition with boot and esp flags on a separate disk with gparted, then i manually create two ext4 and one swap parition with gparted on the same disk. Then i would just mark them manually which one is root (/), which one is home and etc. during installation process and make sure bootloader gets installed in that FAT32 partition which i just created.

    But there is a common issue that i almost always get when installing Solus in EFI mode in dual boot scenario. After installation there is no Linux Boot Manager entry in BIOS (in my case only Windows Boot Manager is in BIOS). Then i would boot the same usb with solus, install efibootmgr and use command (as found in https://www.reddit.com/r/SolusProject/comments/9iglk9/solus_entry_not_showing_up_on_uefi_boot_menu/) like this sudo efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sda -p 1 -l "\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi" -L "Linux Boot Manager" of course you need to check what disk Solus is installed on, sda or sdb and etc. If everything was correctly typed in, then after reboot there would be a newly created Linux Boot Manager option to boot to.

      Tjay Hi Tjay thanks for kind answer. Unfortunately that's the first thing i tried, i tried again now to check if this has something to do, but same results : /.

        DNI_R Hi DNI_R. thanks for your kind answer.
        Thanks for the link and the commands, however that was the post that inspired me the most to start playing with the boot entrys.
        I tried now again, it surprised me that these time i was able to add and remove entrys easily with efiibootmgr.
        However i still can't boot, same 2 seconds black screen and then it sends me out to the uefi settings.
        Here are the outputs of efibootmgr:

        Before:
        live@solus ~ $ efibootmgr
        BootCurrent: 0035
        Timeout: 1 seconds
        BootOrder: 002E,002F,0032,0033,0034,0035,0022,0036
        Boot0022* Windows Boot Manager
        Boot002E* Hard Drive
        Boot002F* USB
        Boot0032* UEFI: VerbatimSTORE N GO 5.00, Partition 1
        Boot0033* UEFI: VerbatimSTORE N GO 5.00, Partition 2
        Boot0034* UEFI: MXT-USB
        Boot0035* UEFI: MXT-USB, Partition 2
        Boot0036* UEFI OS

        After:
        live@solus ~ $ sudo efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sdb -p 4 -l "\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi" -L "Linux Boot Manager"
        BootCurrent: 0035
        Timeout: 1 seconds
        BootOrder: 0000,002E,002F,0032,0033,0034,0035,0022,0036
        Boot0022* Windows Boot Manager
        Boot002E* Hard Drive
        Boot002F* USB
        Boot0032* UEFI: VerbatimSTORE N GO 5.00, Partition 1
        Boot0033* UEFI: VerbatimSTORE N GO 5.00, Partition 2
        Boot0034* UEFI: MXT-USB
        Boot0035* UEFI: MXT-USB, Partition 2
        Boot0036* UEFI OS
        Boot0000* Linux Boot Manager

        So it effectively makes the entry, boot no succesful boot using that entry.
        Regarding the "UEFI OS" entry i tried removing with efibootmgr, and also with rEFInd, but it just recreates itself.
        According to the EFI shell i use when i boot rEFInd, the "UEFI Os" entry is definitely linked to the boot esp (checking the PARTUUID), boot it tries to boot from "\EFI\boot\bootx64.efi" instead of "\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi"
        Anyways, the same results are observed from both methods.

        The closest thing i ever attemped to got close to a boot is linking the kernel itself to the boot entry (following what "Clearstaff" posted in the reddit post you mentioned). But i could not get any result using efibootmgr, so i used rEFInd EFI shell to make that link.
        As i mentioned when trying to boot that way i get a "failed to start Switch Root" error. Maybe i can upload a photo of that error.
        I think i wasted all my basic user options here : / .

          6 days later

          I've been having the same issue, and have tried all of the steps above.
          EDIT
          After struggling all night with this I finally resolved the issue by creating a separate EFI fat32 partition specifically for the solus installation. I tried everything to get it to work with a single EFI partition since I don't believe any guides or advice indicated that you needed multiple EFI partitions, but in my case it was the only thing that worked.

            Geronimo Glad you solved, it's a tricky installation process, i think the should be a guide contemplating many possible errors.

              Well i managed to solve this, so the problem was quite simple, but really hard troubleshoot.
              The sistemd boot screen thath enables one to choose the kernel never showed up because it behaves this way by default.
              One can press the space bar to force it to show the boot options, but the timing to do so was so specific that i never got it, at least on my first trys, and i early concluded that that wasn't the problem. So from there i tried all that already has been said above.
              When i read again about accesing the boot menu with the space bar, i tried again many times. The timing was to press the space key EXACTLY afeter choosing the UEFIbootentry with the Enter key, like with almost no delay, pressing both of them almost at the same time.
              There (in the systemd boot menu) i saw that the default option selected was "Reeboot to system settings" (or something similar). This never changed although it is supposed to default the Solus Kernel option, or at least it defaults it after succesfully booting the kernel one time.
              So i was so happy to finally boot into Solus.
              But trying to change the default option in the systemd menu wasn't so easy. First i tried doing it changing the file "loader.conf" directly inside the OS, but had no effect at all.
              So to choose the default option, one must be in the systemd menu, highlight the default option (like the solus kernel) and press the "d" key.
              Also one can change the time before systemd selects automatically the default option, by pressing the "t" key to make this time bigger. Also the Shift+t combination can be used to have a smaller time.
              So this workaround works, however i think there are some catches that can be improved, although this issues are motherboard specific (at least on my asrock fatal1ty x370 gaming-itx/ac) but are worth summarizing:

              • Systemd will choose "reboot to system settings" as the default boot option.
              • Systemd won't assign some time to show the Os select boot screen, so it makes it difficult to troubleshoot the real problem. It just runs the default option.
              • Trying to change systemd setting from the Os itself have absolutely no effect (changing loader.conf), seems that EFI written related values override these Os values.
              • Default OS entry won't show in EFI as "Linux Boot Manager". As many mentioned, this is often not created by default, however i discovered that my motherboard creates automatically some entry for detected boot devices (in this case named "UEFI OS"), so this is the most logical explanation that i can propose (it creates one too for aditional pendrives with bootrecords for example).
              9 months later

              Oh geez, here I am re-installing a year later and forgot I need a separate EFI partition. If anyone else is having the issue that your bootloader is not finding solus, you'll need to follow these steps.

              1.) In the solus live boot, open gparted
              2.) Disable the boot flag on your windows EFI partition
              3.) Create a new fat32 EFI partition and turn on the boot flag
              4.) Run the solus installer
              5.) It should automatically pick your new EFI partition so just complete the installer as normal
              6.) When the install is complete turn the windows EFI partition boot flag back on

              7 months later

              I have a similar problem, but my partitioning scheme is MBR. I have a GRUB menu entry for Solus, but the OS fails to boot, the cursor keeps blinking forever. Does anyone have any idea how to fix it?

              Note: it somehow booted for one only time after install, from the second attempt, and today it won't again.

                popov654 I have a similar problem, but my partitioning scheme is MBR. I have a GRUB menu entry for Solus,

                This thread is about EFI/GPT and you have BIOS/MBR meaning a totally different problem 🤔

                Did you check the doc (link is in the top navigation bar)? More particularly
                https://getsol.us/articles/troubleshooting/installation-issues/en/#i-cant-boot-into-solus-after-installation
                and
                https://getsol.us/articles/troubleshooting/general-troubleshooting/en/#boot-failure