[SOLVED]Help with increasing boot partition to be able to upgrade my linux

[warm nova]

Hello, when I first installed archlinux(dualboot with win10, 2 different ssd's) i naively made the boot partition only 100mb and now I'm having issues with it and I'm a bit scared to try to manually decrease another partition in case I mess anything up. Any help is appreciated!

[remote stag]

what partitions do you have
efi or bios

[warm nova]

efi

[remote stag]

@warm nova can you name every partition you have for arch

[warm nova]

on the ssd i run linux on, i have one partition named "/" and on the ssd i run windows on i have one partition named "/boot" where i have grub installed

i dont know if you mean something else

[remote stag]

cool so

are you booted into your system

[warm nova]

right now im booted in linux yes

[remote stag]

ok uh

is windows installed on something other than the ssd

[warm nova]

well, basically windows is installed on ssd1 which is where the boot partition that holds grub bootloader is

and can boot just from that one ssd

and on ssd2 its only linux

[remote stag]

right so

@warm nova windows probably has its own boot partition so why dont we just use that

[warm nova]

what do you mean by that?

[remote stag]

do you have a partition called windows boot manager

lsblk -f

[warm nova]

nvme0n1 259:1 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:4 0 100M 0 part /boot
├─nvme0n1p2 259:5 0 16M 0 part
├─nvme0n1p3 259:6 0 930.8G 0 part /windows
└─nvme0n1p4 259:7 0 604M 0 part

nvme0n1
│
├─nvme0n1p1
│ vfat FAT32 2ACB-79B0 3.4M 96% /boot
├─nvme0n1p2
│
├─nvme0n1p3
│ ntfs A4FECC4BFECC1786 41.7G 96% /windows
└─nvme0n1p4
ntfs DCDCA428DCA3FAC2

thats the windows ssd

[remote stag]

@warm nova can you send lsblk -f output

or is that it

[warm nova]

its the second part i just edited

[remote stag]

lsblk -f | grep -i "windows boot"

[warm nova]

format is a bit off

[remote stag]

is there any output

[warm nova]

no

in the "/boot" partition

there is grub and the EFI folder

[remote stag]

lsblk -o name,fstype,mountpoint

can you send output of that

[warm nova]

nvme1n1
├─nvme1n1p1 ext4 /
└─nvme1n1p2 ntfs
nvme0n1
├─nvme0n1p1 vfat /boot
├─nvme0n1p2
├─nvme0n1p3 ntfs /windows
└─nvme0n1p4 ntfs

and there are 23 "loop" idk if you care about those

[remote stag]

ignore that

ok so heres the thing

youve been lied to

and your boot partition doesnt need to be any bigger than 1 MiB

[warm nova]

What do I need to do then?

[remote stag]

however you shouldnt mount it to /boot

[remote stag]

so uhh

open a terminal

do the following

actually wait

one quick thing

can you ls /mnt for me

and tell me if theres any output

[warm nova]

nothing

[remote stag]

perfect

actually wait

[warm nova]

folder empty

[remote stag]

ls -A /mnt

just to be sure

if thats also empty then do this

[warm nova]

yeah also empty

[remote stag]

mv /boot/* /mnt/ umount /boot mv /mnt/* /boot

then uh

can you do this

ls -R /boot | curl --data-binary @- https://paste.rs

[warm nova]

okay done

[warm nova]

output https://paste.rs/GmH

[remote stag]

almost done

rmdir /boot/System*

ls -A /mnt/ /boot/.*

then can you send the output of that

[warm nova]

/boot/.:
EFI initramfs-linux-fallback.img 'System Volume Information'
grub initramfs-linux.img vmlinuz-linux

/boot/..:
bin etc lib mnt RECOVERDIR sbin swapfile usr
boot home lib64 opt root snap sys var
dev install-script.sh lost+found proc run srv tmp windows

/mnt/:

[warm nova]

soo i run this now?

[remote stag]

yes

then 3 more commands

[warm nova]

okay done

[remote stag]

well ig 4

mv /boot/EFI /mnt mount /boot mv /mnt/EFI /boot

what text editor do you use

[warm nova]

notepadqq

[remote stag]

uh do you know how to use any non gui text editors

like nano or something

[warm nova]

i have used nano yes

not very much though

[remote stag]

k then

oh wait actually

fuck it

rm /etc/fstab && touch /etc/fstab

that should be it

try rebooting to make sure everything works ok

[warm nova]

okay done

sooo uuh fingers crossed

[remote stag]

youre probably fine

[warm nova]

Uhhh

Lol

[remote stag]

hmm

do you have an iso

[warm nova]

No but I have a second pc I can make any USB you tell me to

[remote stag]

are you familiar with the arch iso

or would you rather use a different one

[warm nova]

I mean that's what I used to install it, are there alternatives?

[remote stag]

i would prefer you just use the arch iso bc its pretty easy to use but if the terminal scares you we can use any other linux iso

[warm nova]

No it's okay, so I'll just make a arch Linux USB with etcher real quick?

[remote stag]

yeah sure

[warm nova]

Okay ready

[remote stag]

@warm nova boot into it first of all

best option is copy to ram but feel free to try the first one

doesnt really matter

[warm nova]

Uhh for starters I boot in the install medium, right?

[remote stag]

right

second option best & first option is fine

dont choose anything else

[warm nova]

Okay I'm in

[remote stag]

oh wait dont choose second

whatever

[warm nova]

I chose first

[remote stag]

wonder why it says copy to ram

anyway

connect to internet

if you use wifi

then

[warm nova]

I use Ethernet so should be fine I think

[remote stag]

yeah

mount root partition to /mnt

uh

then arch-chroot /mnt

then mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt

find -name normal.mod and send output

[warm nova]

When you say root you mean "mount / /mnt"?

[remote stag]

no, it should be /dev/nvm…

nvme1n1p1

[warm nova]

Oh you mean the partition Linux is installed in

Aaah yeah okay

[remote stag]

yeah

it gets mounted to / normally

and / is known as root

hence it is called the root partition

anyway

follow the rest

[warm nova]

I hope it's visible

[remote stag]

weird

mount --mkdir /dev/nvme0n1p1 /boot/efi
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi

@warm nova try this

[warm nova]

First command gives me unrecognized option --mkdir

[remote stag]

that's weird
maybe you typed it in wrong
just replace it with this
mkdir /boot/efi mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /boot/efi

[warm nova]

Hmm can't find in /etc/fstab

[remote stag]

!! /boot/efi

typed that command wrong

but this does it again but fixed

[warm nova]

Okay so now I continue installing grub?

[remote stag]

yeah grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi

then exit and reboot

cross your fingers

wait no

if you havent rebooted yet

[warm nova]

I haven't pressed enter yet

[remote stag]

stay in chroot

[remote stag]

on the grub-install?

[warm nova]

Yes haha

[remote stag]

do that

[warm nova]

I saw you were typing

Okay done

[remote stag]

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

then exit and reboot

and that will probably work

[warm nova]

Thank you, it Works I'll just have to add windows to grub bootloader

[remote stag]

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Grub#Detecting_other_operating_systems
ping if you need help, should be pretty straightforward

good luck

[warm nova]

And now I managed to update my arch Linux installation

[warm nova]

Thank you for all your help.

[amber linden]

you just got $\\LaTeX$’d received a thank you cookie!

[remote stag]

yw

[warm nova]

[SOLVED]Help with increasing boot partition to be able to upgrade my linux

[warm nova]

Um hey, sorry for pinging, from installation media it doesn't even detect windows and when I try from arch Linux although it does detect it(I mean grub-mkconfig says found windows entry) when I try to boot grub it says no such device
Unknown file system

[remote stag]

hm can you boot windows directly

also can you show the full error

picture or not idc

[warm nova]

Yes, Windows work fine

[remote stag]

@warm nova can you mount everything (esp goes to /mnt/boot/efi or /boot/efi if in chroot)

and then run grub-mkc…

[warm nova]

When you say everything? I'm in root and / is my Linux and /mnt the 100mb efi partition

[remote stag]

wdym in root, chroot?

[warm nova]

Yes

[remote stag]

mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /boot/efi

then uh

grub-mkc…

and tell me if it has any errors as well as if it mentions windows

[remote stag]

@warm nova now try rebooting into linux

you probably won't have windows in grub still but you can at least find it

[warm nova]

Aaa again normal.mod, not found, let me do the same thing we did before to fix grub at least

[remote stag]

sounds good

dont bother with mkdir this time

[warm nova]

Okay grub works now, only linux

[remote stag]

perfect so uh

boot into linux and

actually wait

boot into windows

open disk editor thingy

and send a screenshot

can you do that

@warm nova

[warm nova]

Okay one moment

[remote stag]

interesting

uh

boot into linux

sudo -s mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

[warm nova]

That's weird

Grub is broken again now

But there is a boot option named arch which is grub? Weird

[warm nova]

It found it

[remote stag]

what

so is everything fixed or

@warm nova

[warm nova]

Basically it works just fine but for some reason I need to select arch which I didn't have before, and grub which I had before doesn't work

But I don't care about the name, just a bit odd, thank you for your help and sorry for the delay

[remote stag]

i can help you fix that
btw you can remove grub entirely and boot into arch the same way youd boot into your usb

while windows boots by default without a boot loader menu, as it did before

or vice versa

boot into windows the same way you do with your usb

and then arch boots by default

[warm nova]

Basically I had it always boot to grub, and then it would have selected the last one I booted and I could just select which ever I wanted

Same with now, it's just that it's named arch and grub isn't working, which idk why or what the difference even is