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I found an SSD that I thought I'd lost and decided to do try an Arch Linux build. I've got an ASUS mobo with the proprietary UEFI and the machine was bought from a store with a Windows license (unsure if that will affect booting so I thought I'd bring it up).

Firstly, here's an lsblk:

NAME    MAJ:MIN    RM    SIZE    RO    TYPE    MOUNTPOINT

sdc       8:32      0   111.8G    0    disk

|_sdc1    8:33      0     512M    0    part    /boot

|_sdc2    8:34      0      12G    0    part    [SWAP]

|_sdc3    8:35      0    99.3G    0    part    /

And a cat /etc/fstab:

# /dev/sdc1 UUID=<sdc1_uuid>

UUID=<sdc1_uuid>     /boot  vfat    rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro    0 2



# /dev/sdc2 UUID=<sdc2_uuid>

UUID=<sdc2_uuid>      none  swap    defaults    0 0



# /dev/sdc3 LABLE=system

UUID=<sdc3_uuid>      /     ext4    rw,relatime,data=ordered    0 1

And my device list item from fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/sdc: 111.8 GiB, 120034123776 bytes, 234441648 sectors

Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disklabel type: dos

Disk identifier: 0xbb103c57



Device    Boot    Start    End    Sectors    Size    Id    Type

/dev/sdc1 *        2048  1050623  1048576    512M     b    W95 FAT32

/dev/sdc2       1050624 26241023 25190400     12G    83    Linux

/dev/sdc3      26241024 234440703 208199680  99.3G   83    Linux

I'm at the Bootloader step of the Arch Linux Beginner's Guide and thought that I needed to follow the systemd-boot steps as well. I then started reading the automount article, and thought about asking where the kernel and initramfs files that are mentioned in step 4 are located, but after reading I'm unsure of if systemd-boot will attempt to replace the UEFI firmware I've already got, or if it's required for my UEFI firmware to automount my boot partition and subsequently communicate with my SWAP and / partitions as well?

Or do I not need to worry about it because I've already designated a boot partition and ran the following?

# mkdir -p /mnt/boot

# mount /dev/sdc2 /mnt/boot

If I've already ran the above and finish without bothering with the boot loader, will I simply be able to select the SSD from my UEFI boot options (as I'm intending) because I've already got a designated boot partition formatted and ran pacstrap? Or will it be unbootable without a live Linux disc so I can mount the partitions manually?

Or am I completely misguided?

I've tried to forgo the Boot loader steps and run bootctl --path=/dev/sdc1 install, but get the following error:

File system "/dev/sdc1" is not a FAT EFI System Partition (ESP) file system.

If all of my disk utilities are showing that the requirements are met (i.e. it has /boot, is fat32 formatted, and shows as vfat in my fstab), why am I getting an error that says the disk isn't the format that the other tools show that it is?

Make sure to create filesystems on your partitions

There is one more requirement for the EFI System Partition: it should have type EF00 or GUID C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B. This GUID is the type of the partition, a fixed value, not the GUID of the partition itself.

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFI_System_Partition