Grub and OS Prober in Arch Linux

July 5, 2022

This guide is tailored to people that are dualbooting Linux and Windows. The exact same steps can accomplish adding another Linux OS to the bootloader.

Prerequisites

sudo pacman -S grub efibootmgr os-prober ntfs-3g

Mounting Windows Drive

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda2 /mnt

Don’t just copy this command. Make sure you use the correct drive. You can find each drive by name when using lsblk. Usually you want to mount the smallest partition. That will contain the boot manager for that specific operating system. For Windows mine was the second partition, but that may change, so just check yours just in case.

Enable OS Prober

Edit /etc/default/grub and uncomment:

GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

This allows OS Prober to scan for other operating systems and add them to the bootloader.

Making Grub the bootloader

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Generate grubs config, OS Prober should do it’s thing and add all detected operating systems to Grub. If it misses one, make sure you have it mounted.

sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=grub --recheck

This makes Grub the bootloader.