[Solved] Grub Update

[vital crane]

I saw the post on the archlinux website. Could someone clarify what I need to do after running pacman -Syu? I just need to run the two commands listed on the website to prevent my system from being bricked?

[pseudo dew]

what website

[vital crane]

https://archlinux.org

[calm eagle]

he meant this https://archlinux.org/news/grub-bootloader-upgrade-and-configuration-incompatibilities/

[pseudo dew]

yeah but replace grub-install ... with
you know

[vital crane]

Can I mount the EFI partition while the computer is running?

[pseudo dew]

yeah

many people have it always mounted

beats me why but you can technically do it

[vital crane]

I have a /boot/EFI directory, is that it?

It might be already mounted by default

[vital crane]

So I should run:

$ sudo pacman -Syu
$ grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/EFI --bootloader-id=GRUB
$ grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

right?

[pseudo dew]

mhm

[vital crane]

Got it

[vital crane]

grub-install: error: /boot/EFI doesn't look like an EFI partition.

[hushed nova]

run lsblk -f

what's the output?

[vital crane]

NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID                                   FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sda                                                                           
|-sda1
|    vfat   FAT32       4B95-E7F5                                             
`-sda2
     LVM2_m LVM2        KGrk8P-sxLR-r2bO-Rxhd-6GSV-Aaov-c8y6j6                
  |-volgroup0-lv_root
  |  ext4   1.0         6e51680b-0108-4b0e-93a8-9688047ace06        1G    91% /
  `-volgroup0-lv_home
     ext4   1.0         dd7f016d-f500-458b-a029-efeae6fdb983      875G    46% /home

[hushed nova]

your boot partition is likely on

/dev/sda1

how are you mounting it?

what's your fstab (cat /etc/fstab)

[vital crane]

I tried running mount /dev/sda1 /boot/EFI, but got an error

[hushed nova]

what error

[vital crane]

❯ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /boot/EFI
mount: /boot/EFI: unknown filesystem type 'vfat'.
       dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

[hushed nova]

what's your fstab (cat /etc/fstab)

[vital crane]

# /dev/mapper/volgroup0-lv_root
UUID=6e51680b-0108-4b0e-93a8-9688047ace06    /             ext4          rw,relatime    0 1

# /dev/mapper/volgroup0-lv_home
UUID=dd7f016d-f500-458b-a029-efeae6fdb983    /home         ext4          rw,relatime    0 2

/swapfile none swap sw 0 0

[hushed nova]

your boot partition doesn't seem to be mounted anywhere

only your main root partition is

[vital crane]

Alright

[hushed nova]

is there a boot directory in

ls /

[vital crane]

Yes

[hushed nova]

what's in it

[vital crane]

EFI grub initramfs-linux-fallback.img initramfs-linux-lts-fallback.img initramfs-linux-lts.img initramfs-linux.img intel-ucode.img vmlinuz-linux vmlinuz-linux-lts

[hushed nova]

hmmm

[vital crane]

EFI and grub are folders

[hushed nova]

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

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

[vital crane]

EFI is empty, grub has stuff in it

[hushed nova]

try installing grub to /boot

instead of

/boot/EFI

oh wait hold on

is your pc

uefi or bios

probably uefi given the fact

[vital crane]

uefi I'm pretty sure

[hushed nova]

you have a vfat?

[vital crane]

sda1 is vfat

[hushed nova]

ok try the commands i've given to install and configure grub to /boot

[vital crane]

does it matter what's in /boot/grub?

[hushed nova]

no that's where the configuration files for grub are normally stored

[vital crane]

grub-install: error: /boot doesn't look like an EFI partition.

[hushed nova]

what's mounted currently?

[pseudo dew]

huh???

[hushed nova]

cat /proc/mounts

[pseudo dew]

what does configuration have to do with where you install

[hushed nova]

most people have their grub config files

in /boot/grub don't they

[vital crane]

proc /proc proc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
sys /sys sysfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
dev /dev devtmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,size=16385868k,nr_inodes=4096467,mode=755,inode64 0 0
run /run tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,mode=755,inode64 0 0
efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars efivarfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
/dev/mapper/volgroup0-lv_root / ext4 rw,relatime 0 0
securityfs /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,inode64 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000 0 0
cgroup2 /sys/fs/cgroup cgroup2 rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,nsdelegate,memory_recursiveprot 0 0
pstore /sys/fs/pstore pstore rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
bpf /sys/fs/bpf bpf rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700 0 0
systemd-1 /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc autofs rw,relatime,fd=30,pgrp=1,timeout=0,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct,pipe_ino=19026 0 0
hugetlbfs /dev/hugepages hugetlbfs rw,relatime,pagesize=2M 0 0
mqueue /dev/mqueue mqueue rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
tracefs /sys/kernel/tracing tracefs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
fusectl /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
configfs /sys/kernel/config configfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,nr_inodes=1048576,inode64 0 0
/dev/mapper/volgroup0-lv_home /home ext4 rw,relatime 0 0
binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
tmpfs /run/user/1000 tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=3280248k,nr_inodes=820062,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=984,inode64 0 0
gvfsd-fuse /run/user/1000/gvfs fuse.gvfsd-fuse rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=984 0 0
portal /run/user/1000/doc fuse.portal rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=984 0 0```

[hushed nova]

if they have the /boot as the EFI

partition

[pseudo dew]

pro tip: mount command (with no args)

[hushed nova]

✅

anyways it doesn't look like the efi partition is mounted to /boot

but the /boot directory

is there

could you unmount /boot

and remount /dev/sda1 to /boot

[vital crane]

the efi partition is /dev/sda1 right? just to be clear

[hushed nova]

well yes since that's the vfat file system

[vital crane]

It doesn't look like that's mounted at all

[pseudo dew]

what why

[hushed nova]

i mean

[pseudo dew]

why not /mnt or /boot/efi or /efi

mounting to non empty directories generally doesnt make sense

[vital crane]

I'm not sure anything is mounted to /boot right now

[pseudo dew]

hm

[hushed nova]

just forgot this isn't systemd boot

but grub

[pseudo dew]

mount | grep '/boot|sda1'

what does it say

[vital crane]

I have systemd

[vital crane]

empty

[thin charm]

doesnt matter :p

[pseudo dew]

yeah pretty much everyone does if using arch

[pseudo dew]

mount | grep boot?

[vital crane]

empty

[thin charm]

some ppl have esp mounted to /boot

[hushed nova]

most common esp partition mount point

[vital crane]

Can I just mount /dev/sda1 to /mnt or something temporarily? will that work?

[thin charm]

but yea since it's full nah

[thin charm]

u can mount it wherever for now really

what error did you get when you tried to mount the boot partition again?

[vital crane]

mount: /mnt: unknown filesystem type 'vfat'.
       dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

[pseudo dew]

yeah ik

[vital crane]

Just got it again

[pseudo dew]

then sda1 instead of boot?

[pseudo dew]

dmesg | tail

can you run it

and see if that helps

[pseudo dew]

it can

[pseudo dew]

source??
also esp partition means efi system partition partition

[hushed nova]

no run has run a poll yet on where they mount their partition

plus yes i know esp is efi system partition 😭

installation guide has /mnt/boot as the mount point and most beginners follow that anyways

[pseudo dew]

so you wouldnt know

[hushed nova]

Well yes but no

[pseudo dew]

/boot/efi and /efi are super common esp mountpoints

many people use it, especially when using installers

[pseudo dew]

is that dmesg

[vital crane]

Yes

[pseudo dew]

huh

thats nothing helpful

[vital crane]

sudo dmesg | tail

[hushed nova]

we wouldn't know where he originally mounted the esp anyways

[vital crane]

gave me that

[thin charm]

do u have dosfstools installed?

[pseudo dew]

i highly, highly doubt its needed

[vital crane]

Yes

[thin charm]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[hushed nova]

what is the output of lsmod | grep vfat

[vital crane]

nothing

[hushed nova]

do you have mtools installed

pacman -Qs mtools

[vital crane]

Yes

[pseudo dew]

@vital crane modprobe vfat

as root

does it work

[vital crane]

modprobe: FATAL: Module vfat not found in directory /lib/modules/5.19.4-arch1-1

[hushed nova]

what is the output of

uname -r

[vital crane]

5.19.4-arch1-1

[thin charm]

it's probably a different version installed on their system since they updated

[hushed nova]

[thin charm]

pacman -Qi linux?

i forget if it's Qi dont yeet me

[pseudo dew]

you can -Q

qi has extra info you dont need

[vital crane]

Yes I have linux installed

[pseudo dew]

q has version

[thin charm]

oh i wasnt sure about that

[hushed nova]

[vital crane]

it says 5.19.5

[thin charm]

uhhhh

F

[hushed nova]

reboot?

[thin charm]

no

[vital crane]

can't

[pseudo dew]

yeah im fairly sure you need to use an iso at this point

[hushed nova]

ah

[pseudo dew]

idk

what do you think

[thin charm]

reboot = gurb bork

[hushed nova]

oh true

[vital crane]

any last ditch efforts? try to load a kernel module anyways?

[pseudo dew]

maybe you need older kernel headers

[pseudo dew]

not sure

[hushed nova]

btw is this in a live usb

[pseudo dew]

no

[hushed nova]

or in your current arch install

[pseudo dew]

yeah

[vital crane]

usb drive, followed a video

[vital crane]

current install

[pseudo dew]

thats irrelevant rn

[thin charm]

it doesnt rlly matter

[vital crane]

I only learned that later, and I know it was up to date

[thin charm]

this is like way past install and has to do with grub being broken on all the arch stuff

[pseudo dew]

oh ok

[hushed nova]

are you able to flash the iso

arch install iso

to a usb drive

[vital crane]

I think I still have the same usb around

do I need to update it or will a year(ish) old iso still be fine?

No, Debian was

[hushed nova]

💀

[thin charm]

eh it'll probably work fine if u chroot before running the grub install stuff

[vital crane]

Why would I do that?

[pseudo dew]

what
why??

[vital crane]

That's like 20 steps ahead of this

[pseudo dew]

tofu why do you keep insisting on never using anything you consider flawed ever

that would make no sense

i mean unofficial guides and manjaro

we get it arch is great

now can we tackle the real problem

[thin charm]

?

this shows?

[pseudo dew]

anyway @vital crane so it seems like you dont have the driver for mounting vfat drives

so im not quite sure how youd get that

[thin charm]

they updated kernel

update kernel = running kernel's modules get delete

[pseudo dew]

you could try getting an older version of the linux package

oh ok

[vital crane]

It looked like I have a driver, it's just not turned on

[pseudo dew]

right so

[thin charm]

just boot up the iso

[pseudo dew]

yeah but a working one

oh wait

[vital crane]

Like, I have mtools installed

[pseudo dew]

pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/linux-5.19.4*.tar.zst should work

right?

[vital crane]

To downgrade?

[thin charm]

usually it's fixed by rebooting but since the issue is a possible grub breaking that's not a great idea

[pseudo dew]

mhm

[pseudo dew]

right but before we go to the iso we could try this

[vital crane]

No matches found

[pseudo dew]

right and then you'll have drivers to mount your efi partition

[vital crane]

I think I moved my pacman cache

But I forgot where lmao

[thin charm]

oh well no harm in booting up the iso really

[vital crane]

found it

[thin charm]

or that

[vital crane]

~/tempcache

[pseudo dew]

pacman -U /path/to/linux-whatever.4-whatever.tar.zst

as root

[vital crane]

Done

Now I can load a driver?

[pseudo dew]

probably

try sudo modprobe vfat again

@thin charm this sound right?

[vital crane]

Nothing still

[hushed nova]

i don't think modprobe gives output

doesn't it load the vfat

driver in

[pseudo dew]

so no output or

[vital crane]

no output

[pseudo dew]

try mounting esp to /mnt

[vital crane]

Okay no error this time

[thin charm]

yay

pogress

[pseudo dew]

do you hate cow that much

[thin charm]

paru*

[vital crane]

❯ ls /mnt        
EFI

[pseudo dew]

perfect

k now grub-install

[vital crane]

Installation finished. No error reported.

[pseudo dew]

this but /mnt not /boot/EFI

[thin charm]

do the gurb shit and dont forget to update ur kernel again before u reboot

[pseudo dew]

perfect

grub-mkconfig /b…

[vital crane]

/mnt or /mnt/EFI?

[pseudo dew]

then try rebooting

[hushed nova]

make sure you didn't grub-install'ed in root (/mnt)

[pseudo dew]

should be /mnt

[pseudo dew]

??

[hushed nova]

Nvm

mounted esp to /mnt

[vital crane]

I ran sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/mnt/EFI --bootloader-id=GRUB

[hushed nova]

[pseudo dew]

welp im sure it works either way

[vital crane]

Hmm

[thin charm]

i hate wurgchamp

[pseudo dew]

what

[thin charm]

wug

[vital crane]

I now have a /mnt/EFI/EFI

I feel like this is wrong

[thin charm]

oh uh

[pseudo dew]

right so that's what happens when you use /mnt/EFI

but im sure itll still work

[vital crane]

Alright will it overwrite itself?

[pseudo dew]

what

[vital crane]

If I run it with the right directory now?

[pseudo dew]

also you might wanna reinstall the new kernel

[pseudo dew]

no

youd have to delete it manually

[vital crane]

I will do that then

[thin charm]

ummm... enjoy? idk

[pseudo dew]

lmao

[vital crane]

Alright this looks good now

Thanks for the help y'all

[pseudo dew]

np

[vital crane]

Rebooted, it works

[pseudo dew]

cool

[vital crane]

Time to do this on my laptop as well

[pseudo dew]

now you can pacman -Syu if you want the latest kernel

[vital crane]

I did before the reboot

[pseudo dew]

ok but this time mount the esp first so you dont have to downgrade kernels

[pseudo dew]

oh ok

perfect

[vital crane]

Yeah probably a better way to do it

[vital crane]

@pseudo dew Sorry for the necro ping, but I’m having issues again.

This time it’s on my laptop, which is running effectively the same system. I ran grub-install, restarted, and it failed. I booted a usb, chrooted in, ran grub-install in the chroot, rebooted, and it’s still not working

[ripe swift]

nHail

[vital crane]

Here is the exact message shown when I turn on the laptop:

Welcome to GRUB!

error: symbol `grub_debug_malloc’ not found.
Entering rescue mode
grub rescue>

[potent mural]

This is traditionally a mis match in how arch was installed and how grub was installed.

When you boot the iso does it have the arch logo or not at the first menu?

[vital crane]

No. I got it from the official mirror list though

[potent mural]

What is the grub install command you used?

[vital crane]

Here’s what it looks like

[potent mural]

Before that

When it’s a menu

[vital crane]

I don't think there was an arch logo

Reboot to check?

[potent mural]

Up to you, but it implies if not that you have a uefi and not bios boot

[vital crane]

I have UEFI, yes

[potent mural]

What’s the grub install command you used?

[vital crane]

I'm checking

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

Run from inside the chroot

[potent mural]

Interesting, that looks right

[vital crane]

Yeah

[potent mural]

You sure you installed the OS as uefi?

[vital crane]

99%, but how can I check?

[potent mural]

I honestly don’t know

[vital crane]

I have uefi on the computer, I know when I go into the bios screen it talks about uefi

[potent mural]

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=197337

[vital crane]

("bios screen" being what I get to by holding f2 during startup, maybe not the right name)

There is an efi there

[potent mural]

Have you tried deleting grub, reinstalling it, reinstalling the kernel and then re mkconfig?

[vital crane]

I assumed installing grub deleted grub

I haven't touched the kernel

[potent mural]

I don’t think it necessarily does

Try doing that in chroot with efi mounted is my suggestion

[vital crane]

Would that just be rm -rf /boot/EFI?

[potent mural]

If that’s where you installed it yes but be careful you don’t delete another bootloader E.G. if you have windows installed and that’s also in the EFI partition

[vital crane]

Nope, no dual boot

[vital crane]

# ls /boot/EFI
EFI boot grub

Does this look like an average grub install?

[potent mural]

Why is there a boot inside your boot?

Just do ls /boot

[vital crane]

EFI grub initramfs-linux-fallback.img initramfs-linux.img vmlinux-linux

[potent mural]

I’d just nuke all of /boot and then:
Install grub
Install linux
Install intel-ucode or amd-ucode assuming relevance
And then run grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

[vital crane]

lsblk says /dev/sda1 is on /boot/EFI, which is where I mounted it.

[potent mural]

Can install to boot or boot/efi

[vital crane]

Alright, so uh

Can you provide more detail?

[potent mural]

What do you need more detail on?

[vital crane]

So I umount /dev/sda1, rm -rf /boot, then remount it where?

[potent mural]

Don’t need to unmount it

Well, you will be not first

You want to wipe that partition

[vital crane]

dd from /dev/zero?

[potent mural]

I’d rm -rf the boot directory

[vital crane]

Alright

And what about "install linux"?

[potent mural]

But with the efi mounted

[vital crane]

cannot remove /boot/EFI: device or resource busy

So I do need to unmount it?

[potent mural]

I’ll go to my computer

do lsblk -f

let me see what you've mounted and unmounted basically

and if I sort out your grub issue maybe you can sort out my grub issue XD

[potent mural]

try: rm -rf /boot/*

[vital crane]

cannot remove /boot/EFI: device or resource busy again

[potent mural]

rm -rf /boot/EFI/*

[vital crane]

Worked

[potent mural]

now unmount it

wipe /boot/* like above

and if you want to install it to EFI just do mkdir /boot/EFI or /boot/efi etc. and remount it there

and then that's your ESP for the grub install

[vital crane]

Finished, no error reported.

[potent mural]

are you amd or intel?

[vital crane]

Intel

[potent mural]

pacman -S linux linux-headers intel-ucode

replace that with the kernel you want

if you use zen for instance linux-zen linux-zen-headers

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

even if you installed it at /boot/efi don't modify the mkconfig line

the cfg needs to go into /boot/grub/grub.cfg

that's where grub will look for it

[vital crane]

I don't think my wifi is on, one sec

Uh

I ran iwctl, now it just says Waiting for IWD to start...

[potent mural]

do you need to start a service perhaps? or can you just plug Ethernet in?

[vital crane]

systemctl status iwd says it won't run in chroot

[potent mural]

nmtui

try that?

[vital crane]

I do have a spare ethernet cable

[potent mural]

if it won't work exit chroot and try it and if it works rechroot

up to you which you try

it's only a temporary thing

[vital crane]

could not contact networkmanager

[potent mural]

exit chroot

[vital crane]

If I connect via iwctl outside chroot, will that carry over inside?

[potent mural]

should do

just rechroot

everything should stay mounted I think

[vital crane]

Yep

Alright pacman is running

[potent mural]

mkconfig

[vital crane]

Alright finished grub-mkconfig

[potent mural]

upload a picture?

[potent mural]

exixt, umount -a, shutdown, take the media out, boot up, and make sure that grub is selected in your bootloader if you need to

[vital crane]

It defaults to hard drive over a usb for some reason, so I've been disabling hard drive booting whenever I use the usb lol

[potent mural]

remember if you can boot you have to solve my grub issue

[vital crane]

Hope so

And that looks like a yes

ty so much for the help

🎉

[potent mural]

do pacman -Syu when you're fully in and then reboot, just to test things

[vital crane]

Most things were up to date already, but I'll reboot anyways

Yep, it's booting again

[potent mural]

lesson here, when you grub-install, destroy it with fire first

[vital crane]

Yeah, checks out

[potent mural]

I await your help here @vital crane :
https://discordapp.com/channels/399812551963049995/1016759433080086638/1016807143392936056
Remember to change your thread to say 'solved' 🙂

[vital crane]

Before I do that...

Steps to solve (a summary):

1. Boot up usb, chroot into system
2. Wipe everything in /boot using rm -rf, as well as in your esp
3. grub-install
4. reinstall linux via pacman
5. grub-mkconfig