Hello everyone,

I’m having trouble getting rEFInd to boot Arch Linux directly from an ISO. I installed rEFInd on a USB drive (using refind-flashdrive), set up refind.conf file and wrote the ISO file to separate partition, but I’m encountering issues when trying to boot into it.

Here’s the output of the lsblk command:

NAME   FSTYPE  FSVER            LABEL       UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sdb                                                                                             
├─sdb1 vfat    FAT12            REFIND      B28E-9C53                                           
└─sdb2 iso9660 Joliet Extension ARCH_202508 2025-08-01-13-39-26-00                              

Menuentry from refind.conf

menuentry "Arch Linux" {
    icon     /EFI/refind/icons/os_arch.png
    volume   "ARCH_202508"
    loader   /arch/boot/x86_64/vmlinuz-linux
    initrd   /arch/boot/x86_64/initramfs-linux.img
    options  "root=UUID=2025-08-01-13-39-26-00 rw"
}

When I select the Arch Linux entry in rEFInd, I receive the following output:

:: running early hook [udev]
Starting systemd-udevd version 257.7-2-arch
:: running early hook [archiso_pxe_nbd]
:: running hook [udev]
:: Triggering uevents...
:: running hook [memndisk]
:: running hook [archiso]
:: running hook [archiso_loop_mnt]
:: running hook [archiso_pxe_common]
:: running hook [archiso_pxe_nbd]
:: running hook [archiso_pxe_http]
:: running hook [archiso_pxe_nfs]
Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-uuid/2025-08-01-13-39-26-00 ...
:: Mounting '' to ’run/archiso/bootmnt’
ERROR: '' device did not show up after 30 seconds...
Falling back to interactive prompt
You can try to fix the problem manually, log out when you are finished
sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
[rootfs ~]#

The only way I found that worked was to use the loader /EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.EFI in configuration, which works but is not what I want.

I would appreciate any guidance on how to resolve this issue.