Installing arch from a vm onto disk, cant see free space

[marble knoll]

You see the 40GB of space, I cant find that on anything other than parted, I had to select the disk using parted only to see the 40gbs of space, is there any way to mark it so i can access it later onwards, would a flag work
(im trying to duel boot arch)
Also this is running in virtualbox, i added the disk image to my vm, like this:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/67445/install-arch-linux-to-external-hard-disk-using-a-virtual-machine

I created the image using vbox commands, then i added it, so i have access to the whole disk and it can see 40gbs, I just need to be able to use it

[tepid pike]

I beg your pardon? Can you speak more coherently? What do you want to achieve?

[marble knoll]

Is there any way to sorta, flag my free space, because currently i can only see it on parted, and I dont know if i can continue my arch install or make a user and a boot partition in the 40gbs of free space

[tepid pike]

What is the reason for this? What do you want to do with it?

[marble knoll]

I want to be able to actually use it

like I dont think i can create partitions using it

or anything

if with cfdisk i cant really see it

Like only on parted its showing my sdb disk

so my end goal is to create arch

on the 40gbs of free space

my user and boot

[tepid pike]

Excuse me, I have to guess as it's not clear what you're doing.

• Are you trying to install Arch from a VM onto a physical drive?
• Are you trying to install Arch to a virtual drive?

[marble knoll]

1 is correct

"Are you trying to install Arch from a VM onto a physical drive?"

yes

[tepid pike]

https://xyproblem.info/

[marble knoll]

I told you my end goal

to install arch

from a vm

onto a physical drive

it does not go deeper than that

[tepid pike]

Sorry for any frustration caused. I would suggest editing the original post and title to more accurately convey your goal, as I mentioned the XY problem because the original post was unclear regarding your goal of installing Arch Linux on a physical drive from within a virtual machine. Thanks for understanding.

[left egret]

realspiderunderyourbed received a thank you cookie!

[marble knoll]

Installing arch from a vm onto disk, cant see free space

[tepid pike]

This is the partition layout of /dev/sda, did you notice? In the original post, the parted output is from /dev/sdb

[marble knoll]

yes, thats the confusing bit, only parted shows my second disk

cfdisk only shows sda

[tepid pike]

As you can see there are two different discs, sda is 256GB and sdb is 32GB.

[tepid pike]

What parameters do you use to call cfdisk?

Can you post the output from

fdisk -l

[marble knoll]

Here is what windows shows

[marble knoll]

ok

[tepid pike]

Please invoke cfdisk with

cfdisk /dev/sdb

[tepid pike]

Please invoke cfdisk with

cfdisk /dev/sdb

[marble knoll]

Ah that works

so is the free space

being treated as space between partitions

[tepid pike]

Don't hesitate to ask if you have any more questions.

[marble knoll]

Thank you

[marble knoll]

Uhh

can I duelbooth without efi support @tepid pike

im testing inside virtualbox

idk if they just dont have it

in virtual machines

[tepid pike]

Virtual machine does not have access to your host nvram

[marble knoll]

how do i confirm i have efi support?

maybe smthin from windows

i have uefi

ah

[tepid pike]

You can simply install it in the UEFI fallback path and your firmware will reconfigure it.

The fallback path is \EFI\boot\bootx64.efi

on the ESP

[marble knoll]

my systems uefi

i can install as normal

right?

[tepid pike]

What boot loader do you plan to use?

[marble knoll]

grub

i mean

do i really have a choice

[tepid pike]

If you don't want to bother with boot loaders, the Linux kernel can boot without one.

[marble knoll]

i think i could set up libreboot if i wanted too

[marble knoll]

yeah i rather that

pressing f12 works

for me

[tepid pike]

You can use this mkinitcpio preset to generate a UKI to fallback path

# mkinitcpio preset file for the 'linux' package
# vi: ft=bash
# shellcheck disable=SC2034

### OPTIONS
_kernel=linux
_esp="/boot/efi"
###

_efi_dir="$_esp/efi/boot"
[[ ! -d "$_efi_dir" ]] && mkdir -p "$_efi_dir"

PRESETS=("default")
ALL_kver="/boot/vmlinuz-$_kernel"
ALL_microcode=(/boot/*-ucode.img)

default_image="/boot/initramfs-${_kernel}.img"
default_uki="$_esp/efi/boot/bootx64.efi"
default_options="--splash /usr/share/systemd/bootctl/splash-arch.bmp"

The system would boot regardless of the state of the nvram.

[marble knoll]

is this the autogenerated one made by mkinitcpio -P

[tepid pike]

Yes, use mkinitcpio -P to generate the UKI