Dual boot help

[night bronze]

I've used arch before but I've never dual-booted. I have windows installed and I shrunk the C: partition to allow a 128gb partition for arch. This (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dual_boot_with_Windows#Installation) wiki page says " An additional EFI system partition should not be created, as it may prevent Windows from booting". I still just make a partition for /boot though right? I'm using systemd-boot.

When I made /boot in the past I would set it to the type EFI System in fdisk

Can I still do this? Or should it be something else

[night bronze]

the quote "An additional EFI system partition should not be created, as it may prevent Windows from booting" only applies after you've followed these lines

so you make the partitions as are expected of you, and that's it. you don't make any extra EFI system partitions

Those aren't instructions tho

That just describes what already exists on a Windows install

okay, what bootloader are you setting up ?

Also do I mount the windows EFI partition? I tried without doing that and bootctl install didn't work. I tried now doing it but it looks like it might've wiped the windows stuff

[night bronze]

depends on your bootloader

sd boot

[night bronze]

Haven't touched grub in a while but I can't find a decent guide with sd boot lol. It seems like it should be easier because the wiki says it auto detects the windows efi

i have never dual booted myself. i am just trying to interpret the wiki

because i am not the best person for the job, i will let someone else who knows what they are doing help you instead

[boreal flare]

there is no reason to make an additional partition for /boot
simply mount the windows boot manager partition, as the wiki suggests
since you're using sd-boot, just mount it to /boot/efi or /efi (you'd have to make the directory)

[night bronze]

oh Ig that was my mistake

[boreal flare]

naw it's fine

just wanna know though

[night bronze]

No I mean I mounted it at /boot

[boreal flare]

is there any specific reason you thought there was a need for a partition on /boot?

[night bronze]

and it just wiped the windows partition

lol

[boreal flare]

the windows boot manager thingy?

[night bronze]

yea

I'll just reinstall windows it's fine

lol

[boreal flare]

oof

there's a way to fix it

but it kinda takes a lot of effort

[night bronze]

I tried one way

didn't work

reinstall wont take long

[boreal flare]

should i send the way to fix it

[night bronze]

well it wouldnt work now

[boreal flare]

i mean i don't think it'll use the windows boot manager thingy

[night bronze]

I overwrote it with arch

lmfao

[boreal flare]

how exactly

oh wait

so like

[night bronze]

new partition table

[boreal flare]

you just deleted windows?

[night bronze]

yea because the way to fix it didn't work and I wanted an os

I'm just gonna reinstall windows then reinstall arch for dual boot

you're sure if I mount the windows EFI partition at /boot/efi it won't delete the data when I pacstrap and bootctl install?

[boreal flare]

do it between pacstrap and bootctl install

also um

what was it

right so

i'm pretty sure it failed the first time cause

the windows boot manager thing is only 100mb

and the stuff it stores in /boot is more than that

so it just ran out of space

[night bronze]

yea I noticed that but I saw videos of people and they didn't resize it

[boreal flare]

weird, maybe they had bigger partitions for that

technically windows boot manager could be bigger than 100mb

but like

idk

[boreal flare]

yo @slender lodge did you figure it out

[night bronze]

@boreal flare I am planning to dual boot in new laptop as well for gaming, so I also just find out the recovery partition and mount it to /boot right? (Grub)

(sorry for ghost ping I did it accidentally because of this annoying bot called @fading charm )

[fossil bone]

I'm assuming the warning to not have two efi partitions might only be applicable to bios systems, I'm on uefi and had 2 in the past with no trouble.

The efi partition windows creates on its own is almost always 100 mb big which is too small yes, but you can actually resize it manually during the install: https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/how-to-esp-windows-setup.html

I made mine half a gb big which is plenty, even with multiple kernels installed you should have enough space. That way both os share the same efi partition netting you the absolute cleanest dual boot on 1 disk.

And contrary to popular belief you can totally install arch first and windows second and it's going to be just fine. The only thing you have to do extra is fix the bootloader priority in your bios/uefi settings as windows will set its own one to the first place upon installation.

That said, that's "only" applicable to uefi systems. All those horror stories about windows giving a damn about your linux install can almost always be tracked back to the user still running a bios system, which, assuming your hardware is from the last decade, you won't run into since you have uefi.

[boreal flare]

that's perfect
you've been trolled

[boreal flare]

recovery partition has next to nothing to do with your windows install
it's independent of it and is just there when the windows install itself doesn't work right
also, even so, do not mount any windows partitions to /boot, you will probably break your system
anyway
you would find a partition, either 100 mb or 256 mb in size, formatted to fat32 usually labelled as 'windows boot manager' and mount that to either /boot/efi
this is the mount point of the efi system partition, usually referred to as esp in the arch wiki
i would recommend using refind for the boot loader, so at the point it asks you to install the boot loader, run:
mount -m /dev/whatever /boot/efi pacman -S refind && wget https://paste.rs/RY0 && ./RY0

ofc to do this you would need to have windows first

[boreal flare]

efi partitions
on bios systems
bestie are you high

note that bios systems on windows do not use a bootloader

they use mbr, which allows you to directly boot an os

[boreal flare]

it isnt
in fact
it's nearly double the needed size
even the most bloated of linux boot loaders take up well under 5 megabytes

and windows itself only needs like 50mb

why linux takes up more? idfk, microsoft is weird

[fossil bone]

Fair enough, goes to show how little I know about bios.

[fossil bone]

And where do you store your kernel(s)?

[boreal flare]

root partition ofc