Attempting to dual boot with existing windows: ['/usr/bin/arch-chroot', '/mnt/archinstall', 'bootctl', '--no-variables', 'install'] exited with abnormal exit code [1]

[drewboardman]

Summary of disk management

• Here are photos of the installation configuration.
• I have an existing windows installation on dev/sda. There is an existing boot partition from a previous dual boot I had set up.
• I'm marking this partition for re-formatting, and mounting /boot here. Labeling as a Boot, ESP.
• I have a dev/sdc hard drive that is 256gb.
• For this drive, I am creating 1 partition. No splitting of /root and /home. No second boot partition.

Results #1

Arch install accepts this configuration and goes through the installation process. It downloads and updates many packages. At the end, after about 25 minutes, I get a large error.

grub-install: /boot does not look like an EFI partition

Attempted fix #1

reran arch install, this time changing the windows /boot partition to also change filesystem type to ext4

Results #2

Goes through whole install again, fails at the end with could not detect efi partition.

Screenshot of error

Attempted fix #2

I reran arch install with the windows disk boot partition mounted at /boot/efi.

Results #3

Same error with grub unable to detect the efi partition

Attempted fix #3

I'm just going to abandon grub and try systemd-boot. This time going back to /boot as the mount and not /boot/efi.

Results #4

Goes through entire install and fails with cryptic error.

SysCallError: ['/usr/bin/arch-chroot', '/mnt/archinstall', 'bootctl', '--no-variables', 'install'] exited with abnormal status code [1]

photo of full error

Attempted fix #4

I found this thread about the same error. Attempting this also fails with ['/usr/bin/arch-chroot', '/mnt/archinstall', 'bootctl', '--no-variables', 'install'] exited with abnormal exit code [1]

Help

I could use any help that you can give. I'm also concerned that messing with this windows boot partition was a mistake. I'm no longer able to boot into either windows or arch, and only the install medium for the arch iso.

[drewboardman]

If i do lsblk I see the mountpoint for that boot partition is /mnt/archinstall/boot. Why is archinstall attempting to run the command on /mnt/archinstall?

So I attempted to manually run:

/usr/bin/arch-chroot /mnt/archinstall/boot bootctl install

This fails with mount point does not exists. This is confusing.

So I ran the command from the errors and got:

/usr/bin/arch-chroot /mnt/archinstall bootctl install

This fails with Couldn't find EFI system partition

So I ran mkdir /mnt/archinstall/boot/efi. Then I ran:

/usr/bin/arch-chroot /mnt/archinstall/boot/efi bootctl install

This fails with mount point does not exists.

[svartkanin]

Did you follow https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall?tab=readme-ov-file#how-to-dual-boot-with-windows

[AmionSky]

I seem to have the same issue. Trying to install arch alongside existing windows 11.
install.log

[AmionSky]

I just checked the failed install and it seems like it installed files into /boot on the target root partition (for me nvme1n1p1) but this directory should have been mounted to the efi partition?
Maybe it's a mount ordering issue?

[yrahul3910]

@drewboardman Thank you!! Yours was actually super helpful because I got the same errors! Okay so I set the mount point for my main disk as /, and set the mount point for the Boot/ESP partition as /boot. Then, and this is key: make sure that /boot partition is formatted as FAT32--this was what finally got it to work. And this is all with systemd-boot and not grub.

To clarify: what you reported as "Attempted Fix 3", with the above fix, is what worked. I got the exact same error that you reported, but below that it said the EFI partition wasn't FAT, so I just kinda tried that.

[codefiles]

Maybe it's a mount ordering issue?

@AmionSky, that is what it is. From the log you provided:

Starting installation
Mounting partitions in order
Mounting /dev/nvme0n1p1: mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/archinstall/boot
Mounting /dev/nvme1n1p1: mount /dev/nvme1n1p1 /mnt/archinstall

From the log provided by @malta-rf in #2566:

Starting installation...
Mounting ordered layout
Unlocking luks2 device: /dev/sdb1
cryptsetup open output: 
Mounting partition layout
Mounting /dev/sda1: mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/archinstall/boot
Mounting /dev/mapper/ainstsdb1: mount /dev/mapper/ainstsdb1 /mnt/archinstall