Hard freeze at Limine bootloader

[zainphp]

hi,

yesterday i've installed Omacrhy and it's comes with limine and the bootloader cannot be changed. installation process was smooth, no problem at all (confirmed by repeatedly reinstall during debuging) but when i reboot my laptop. it instanly freeze after the limine shows, it is not responding anything from my keyboard and the countdown is stuck at 5 seconds not decreased. ive already tried just wait for one hour still no good sign.

i've also tried fresh install vanilla archlinux + limine and it is also instantly freeze when limine starts. then ive tried to install vanilarch + systemd and it got no problem at all.

previously i tried ubuntu, pop_os, and cachyos (without limine) and it works on my laptop.

now i am suspected that the problem is limine is not fully compatible with my potato laptop which only support UEFI and got no legacy.

my potato:

• Acer Aspire ES1 132
• Intel Celeron N3350 Dual-Core 1.1 GHz (up to 2.4 GHz they said)
• RAM 2GB onboard + 8GB DDR3
• SSD 128GB
• other specs: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-aspire-es-es1-132/

i've spent like 6 hours to solve this, tried so many workarounds like basecamp/omarchy#3236 and i am still stuck at the same place.

but later i will try to change the .efi file based on #530 disscusion.

or someone has other solutions or ideas, please let me know. thanks!.

[iczelia]

my initial suspicion would be that pit_sleep_and_quit_on_keypress in the loop in common/menu.c never returns. systemd-boot works because, judging by the code, it polls instead of trying to use the broken event system. the hardware seems very old and thus the EFI implementation being broken would go in line with our suspicions.

possibly there is a clean fix for this that doesn't entail dropping the timer entirely.

[iczelia]

Try recompiling with this patch and let me know if it fixed your issue.

0001-lib-getchar-EVT_TIMER-pooling-to-make-bad-EFI-happy.patch

[zainphp]

Try recompiling with this patch and let me know if it fixed your issue.

0001-lib-getchar-EVT_TIMER-pooling-to-make-bad-EFI-happy.patch

i have 0 knowledge about booting and bootloader. i usually just use anything out of the (OS) box. right now ive spent 6 hours more to trying what youve said (again, with my potato brain). i cant figuring out how to recompile nor install it to my /sda1. i give up.

can you help and guide me with the most convenient way? i really appreciate it ❤️

[iczelia]

BOOTX64.EFI.gz

Ingredients:

• A USB stick (4 GB+) flashed with the Arch Linux live ISO. You likely already used one to install Omarchy, so you have one. If not: download archlinux-x86_64.iso from archlinux.org/download and write it with dd or Rufus on another machine.
• The new BOOTX64.EFI file (the one I just built; make sure to ungzip before use). Get it onto a second USB stick formatted FAT32, or copy it onto the same Arch USB by mounting the ISO writable, or scp it over from another machine.

Limine on your machine is a single file living somewhere on the ESP of your Laptop. The gist is that you boot some live environment (the Arch USB), find that file, save a backup, and overwrite it with the new one. Reboot, see if Limine is unstuck. If it doesn't work, we restore the backup and you're back where you started.

Steps:

1. Plug in the Arch USB, power on the laptop and enter the BIOS; manually boot the live USB and find yourself in a root shell.
2. Run lsblk -f. You should see a relatively small partition of type FAT; this is most likely sda1 in your case but we just double-check.
3. Mount the ESP: mkdir -p /mnt/esp, mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/esp; look at what's there: ls -R /mnt/esp/EFI. You're trying to find a BOOTX64.EFI file to replace, whereever it is. Now plug your other USB drive and mount it (find the letter via lsblk, then mount via mkdir -p /mnt/usb, mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb, sanity check via ls /mnt/usb); on it you will should see the new BOOTX64.EFI.
4. Replace the "BOOTX64.EFI" file with the one attached while making a backup:

  cp /mnt/esp/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI /mnt/esp/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI.backup
  cp /mnt/usb/BOOTX64.EFI /mnt/esp/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI

5. Unmount cleanly and reboot: umount /mnt/esp /mnt/usb, sync, reboot; pull the USB sticks out as it reboots.

[zainphp]

hi @iczelia, thankyou for your help, i really appreciate you very clear awesome tutorial. ive replaced the BOOTX64.EFI, but sadly I got blank screen with little cursor/dot on top-left.

ive seen this this screen/behavior before, it is same with when i install arch + limine before.

[iczelia]

I just booted this and it seemed to work.

It is same with when i install arch + limine before.

How did you end up fixing this?

[zainphp]

I never fix it, i reinstall it to arch + systemd-boot.

[zainphp]

all files on my /sda1 right now:

i restore the BOOTX64 backup and the "omarchy bootloader" is show and stuck again