#Txt based grub only after bios update

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

swift phoenix
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Got dumped into 2.06 grub after bios update. Running Ubuntu 22.04.02 LTS. Cant load Grub menu, Esc gives me new Grub line, Shift + Esc just after bios new lines of grubs, boot gives me new grub line, reboot works & restarts machine, ls give me 4 harddrives, 2 CD drives 2 Harddrives exactly whats in the machine. Checked the Bios for Boot order conflicts Ubuntu hard drive is set for first prioity. I know its missing its config file, im just not sure how to go about finding it when each command i through at it says command not found.

cyan berry
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So, first of all, why did you do a BIOS update?
Second, what do you mean "dumped into a 2.06 grub"?
EFI stores configuration generally on the same EFI partition, so all your configuration for grub, to load the basic information, would be on the EFI filesystem itself.'

long yacht
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thats why i updated my bios recently

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idk about this guy

cyan berry
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I updated my BIOS recently for a Zen2->Zen3 CPU upgrade. 🙂

long yacht
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or girl seemingly

cyan berry
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With this situation, specifically, it would seem like the EFI Boot Order's changed, cleared, reset, or something, and isn't autodetecting entries properly, at first thoughts.

long yacht
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maybe this is a different instance of grub

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ive had different grub instances on systems where i installed different distros

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they were still there in the bios

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@swift phoenix are there different ubuntu entries in the settings in bios

cyan berry
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This is a valid point. Multiple grub instances installed on different drives, as 4 HDD's were specifically mentioned.

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I'd try the BBS bootloader selector.

swift phoenix
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All i get when i boot is txt based grub -- i cant get it to do anything else. I updated the bios beccasue as @long yacht noted there were recent backdoors in gigabyte that were closed & the first thing i check was for multiple entries of ubuntu in the bios and theres only the 1. The EFI is on an NVME & the Grub isnt specifying it.

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as i listed above there are 2 cd drives as well -- i have check the boot order & Ubuntu EFI is listed as HD0

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Ive tried to select a boot device on startup & my motherboard based boot options come up & i select my harddrive and i get txt based Grub -- i cannot access Ubuntu's Grub menu. (shift & esc) as noted above.

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I cant get to advanced options -- or memtestx86 or anything.

swift phoenix
cyan berry
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Define "text based grub" because Grub, by default, literally is always "text based"

swift phoenix
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not rescue mode -- not headless mode -- doesnt recongnized sudo as a valid command

cyan berry
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grub doesn't run programs, like sudo.

swift phoenix
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cant get to the Grub menu

cyan berry
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So a grub prompt?

swift phoenix
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thats its

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it*

cyan berry
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Okay,. So what I was talking about earlier is it sounds like you may have grub or EFI on a different HDD than what's currently booting. Use the boot selection thing and try different options until the correct one works, have you even tried that?

swift phoenix
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yes

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i get nothing

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i land in grub everytime

cyan berry
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Then. I got nothing. GRUB doesn't just "stop working" from a BIOS/UEFI update.

swift phoenix
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thats why i came here

cyan berry
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You could possibly try Rescutux, and see if that can help repair your setup.

swift phoenix
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cause it should do that

cyan berry
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If at the very least, it can boot your system itself, and you can re-install grub with it running.

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Alternatively, it can attempt to find the grub setup needed, and do it.

swift phoenix
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ok

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is there a way to make grub list out the volumes of a harddrive?

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cause vol isnt working

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and GPart isnt working

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ls gave me the harddrives but im now concered ive lost a harddrive.

cyan berry
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You have 4 hdd's.

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What makes you concerned "you've lost a hard drive?"

swift phoenix
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when i run ls it list out the volumes for only some of the hds

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i actually have 2 harddrive for some reason grub is reading the CD drives as HDDs

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worse i have one 1 actual HDD the other is an NVME

kindred mulch
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ls isn't meant to be used for identifying missing drives. It simply lists files.

Also GRUB has no way to know which storage mediums are exactly which, i.e. if you have an IDE HDD, a (legacy) SCSI HDD, a SATA HDD, and NVMe all in one machine, that would all count as "hd" in GRUB, and would total to four.

swift phoenix
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cd drives included?

cyan berry
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This is what I was referring to earlier, Rescutux.

swift phoenix
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yes i grabed it already

kindred mulch
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I am pretty certain only old GRUB versions may have issue with that, exactly which version escapes me. Modern GRUB no longer does that, even with those capable of (re-)writing optical media.

If your CD drive is misidentified as storage drive, and that you're using a modern GRUB, you should report this as an issue.

swift phoenix
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i can only tell you what my verison of GRUB is

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2.06

kindred mulch
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It's new enough. So it could either be a configuration issue or an actual bug that needs to be reported. The former could be easily done by try booting into a live Linux medium and dry running GRUB commands to see what boot entries it will add to its menu. The latter is more involved, and would require actual CD drive specifications along with actual reporting to the relevant upstream, in which this case it would be canonical.

swift phoenix
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a simple update to the bios should not have changed the EFI config file at all especially given that it both GRUB & the bios can see the drives.

kindred mulch
swift phoenix
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@kindred mulch yes oviously it caused the issue. Why did it cause the issue. A Bios update should not have cause this issue especially given that the update worked. Correctly.

kindred mulch
swift phoenix
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i understood you the first time this wasnt grub and it wasnt the grub devleopers. I came to ask if anyone else had seen or run into this. A bios update that frieds a EFI partition.

cyan berry
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I still don't think it has much of anything to do with the UEFI update (what you're calling BIOS). It may've wiped some of the settings uot that you were using, like AHCI vs standard, boot order and not re-detecting it. The data's still on the EFI partition almost certainly.

long yacht
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at least when i did it

cyan berry
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SOmetimes. I did the same thing recently on my ASRock mobo, EFI was fine.

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Just depends on how the UEFI Firmware is done.

long yacht
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It was incredibly fucking annoying that it did that because i manually did all my memory timings

cyan berry
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Heh, yeah. Apparently ASRock stores settings in memory, flashes, and tries to restore settings back, as part of the process. When I did mine, it was all back exactly like it was.

kindred mulch
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I haven't run into this sort of issue, no. Other than old laptops with optical drives, I have not had a machine that still has an optical drive attached.

There's no transparency with what these hardware vendors do with their firmware. Some can cause issues with booting (e.g. gigabytes' case), some can cause secure boot keys to be wiped when disabled, etc. Sure the ESP (EFI System Partition) will still remain intact as that sits on the storage medium that is external (e.g. not soldered on) to the motherboard. Though that doesn't mean the vendor could not implement weird things like with device enumeration, and how it makes GRUB treat optical drives as a fixed storage medium (e.g. HDD/SSD).

That said there's not enough information to any of this.

  • How does it show up as a HDD when it's supposed to be CD remains a mystery (no grub-mkconfig output for instance),
  • What CD drives are we talking about here, I am talking about brand name and model, not just "CD drive", that's not descriptive,
  • What brand and model is this machine, and if it's custom built, what is the brand and model of motherboard are we talking about here.

It's not a generic case that all machines have this issue, it's a specific issue, and when you have specific issue, it helps to clarify with what we're dealing with here, rather than being ambiguous, leading others into assumptions.

swift phoenix
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@kindred mulch this is what leads me to think hardware failure as noted above as CD drives shouldnt do this. However as noted by @cyan berry older versions of GRUB see disk drives as just another drive Now to answer your questions its a desktop, custom build MSI x570 Tomhawk wifi AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, The CD drives are generic burners, without brandnames on them -- if i took them out im sure theyd have brands but i didnt want to disassemble the machine. the machine has exactly 2 drives 1 HHD Seagate 4 TB and one nvme The NVME is a Baracuda 1TB , 4 sticks of GSkill, 32 GBs totall. If booted from a flash drive the drives are recongized and will mount in Gpart. the EFI partition is the first section of the correct drive & it is hd0 when i boot of the flash drive. when i boot into grub and look for it GRUB cant find it even when given the exact path. error please load kernal. Attempted the download that was suggestd above -- would not boot in the machine. if i can give any more info please let me know

kindred mulch
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@swift phoenix and have you tried Rescutux as outlined before? What was conclusion with that? I am drawing the same conclusion as Psi-Jack.

swift phoenix
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@kindred mulch Rescutux wouldnt boot

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I can boot into a flashdrive for live linux -- so i believe that the iso didnt build right for rescutux & im gonna try it again.

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I intend to start hardward diagnostics by unplugging all unnessessary drives internally, see if i get a better responce from the machine with rescuetux

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hardware*

swift phoenix
swift phoenix
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RescueTux wont mount

IMG_2146.jpg
cyan berry
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How are you trying to make the device you're using with Rescutux, as in what software, what medium, etc.?

swift phoenix
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Ive used both a USB & a DVD Ive used both rufus & imgburn two dvds & 3 different USBs the USBs are 2.0s not 3.0s and USBs are funtioning for other things

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Also couldnt get supergrub2 to mount -- -- yes i check the functionality of legacy devices in the bios -- i can boot to 22.04 thumb drive

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Can i fix GRUB from within a linuxlive USB?

swift phoenix
kindred mulch
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@swift phoenix For writing Rescutux via USB, have you tried flashing it using something like I dunno, win32flasher?

Also have you checked the checksum to make sure it matches? those errors seem unpromising.

swift phoenix
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Ive formatted the USBs & yes I have checked the checksum

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I got the machine booted see link

kindred mulch
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You don't need formatting when you're flashing it, the tool is to overwrite whatever data that exists with the image supplied.

swift phoenix
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I know that -- but its not working so sometime i take the extra step

kindred mulch
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The extra step wasn't necessary, and you could have said that. There's loads of buttons on rufus tool that makes it seem like it's a cool tool, it's not.

swift phoenix
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I got super grub2 disk to load & can get the machine to boot

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I use rufus to make all of my bootable flashdrives for windows & linux & hirens & any other resuce tool ive used -- ive never had an issue -- anyway its not the point once i got the machine booted Ive tried to repair the GRUB using the same guid that got it booted to start with & its denying me access even at root

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This is not a dual booted system -- i repeat this is not a dual booted system

IMG_2164.jpg
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we do have winehq & crossover installed for certain windows programs

cyan berry
cyan berry
swift phoenix
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execpt that it didnt work

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it reboots into grub

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grub-install /dev/sda

Installing for i386-pc platform.
Installation finished. No error reported.

IMG_2165.jpg
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finished installing grub -- and restarted as instructions from link suggest -- and here i am again

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All i can figure is that the grub configuration isnt getting updated properly because os-prob isnt being loaded into the configuration file because it thinks this is a dualbooted system -- but theres only Ubuntu

cyan berry
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os-prober only runs for things not of the current running OS.

swift phoenix
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theres only one os

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so the question is why isnt the machine booting and why am i exaclty where I was just after the bios update

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obiously the command did not update the configuration file or didnt update the correct configureation file oh and Rescatux will not boot with secure boot just FYI I finally got an error message other than just a blue ok on the screen

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Super Grub2 Disk boots thought.

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I found my problem -- this is an MBR formated drive with an EFI partition

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its an UEFI instalation but its not an GPT formated drive its an MBR formatted drive

cyan berry
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Yeah, that's a mess. 😉

swift phoenix
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yes yes it is

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so im gonna try and use mini tools to update from MBR to GPT

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after i backup everything i need

cyan berry
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YOu... can't change msdos partitions to gpt without loss.

swift phoenix
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there are programs that do it -- ive done it a couple times -- in windows that is

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Minitools is my personal favoirte for attemping it -- ergo why i say im goona back up the drive first.

swift phoenix
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Update @cyan berry @kindred mulch Minitools boot media was able to convert the MBR to GPT without data loss. 🙂 now To update grub and make it perminate and ill be all set