Booting to GRUB and mounting errors

[Kevito]

Ok will look in the F12 boot menu again there were some UEFI and some w/o. Thankx.

[pbear]

... you installed in BIOS mode (aka legacy mode).

Reviewing the thread, I realize this statement is incorrect in an important way: you didn't install Mint. Rather, "computer came mint already installed." Lots of people in the Linux community dislike UEFI and prefer to install in BIOS/legacy mode. Obviously whoever set up your computer is one of those.

[Kevito]

Ok yeah I put this machine together from parts of used ones I bought on ebay. The drive I'm using had a 19 version which I upgraded to 20.3 online worked ok until the last time I installed updates. Anyway the bios is Gigabyte UEFI and can boot in UEFI Legacy or both. Both stick and system show up as UEFI and SATA which I guess is Legacy mode. I played around with the boot options and can get the live stick to boot in Legacy but both UEFI and Legacy for system still goes to grub prompt. All the files yes show up in device 251 GB Volume which ids as /dev/sda5 ext4 mounted at/media/mint. Theres a 512 MB volume which gparted ids as /dev/sda1 fat32 not mounted which I guess to be the EFI partition. Also shows /dev/sda5 seeming a subpartition of an /dev/sda2 extended. busy at least one logical partition mounted.So what do you think I am set up in Legacy mode or should try revert to UEFI. Reinstall grub or grub2?

[Kevito]

Also the partition /dev/sda1 is flagged by gparted as boot but I think as seen in the code ran posted before trying to boot from /dev/sda5?

[AndyMH]

Your description sounds like legacy boot, creates a useless EFI partition and creates your / partition as a logical partition inside the extended partition. Does it boot? Re-installing grub on legacy is straightforward if it is not booting.

[pbear]

Mint is installed in legacy mode, which is confirmed by the fact efibootmgr doesn't report an ubuntu boot item.

Kevito, do this. Boot a live session. Open Terminal. Run these two commands:

Code: Select all

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt 
sudo grub-install /dev/sda --boot-directory=/mnt/boot

If you want to be 100% of getting it right, set up an internet connection in the live session, open Firefox, navigate to this thread and use copy-and-paste. You can paste from the top menu in Terminal, under Edit, or by using Ctrl-Shft-V (instead of the usual Ctrl-V).

Shut down the live session and try to boot the main system. Please report back either way.

[Kevito]

Ok tried that again said installed no errors but still boots to grub prompt.

[AndyMH]

From your earlier posts, the problem is here:

Code: Select all

mint@mint:~$ efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0007  <<<<<<<<
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0003,0007,0006,0002
Boot0002* Hard Drive
Boot0003* UEFI: WDC WD2502ABYS-01B7A0
Boot0006* WDC WD2502ABYS-01B7A0
Boot0007* UEFI: VendorCoProductCode 2.00 <<<<<

Booting from the install stick with that output suggests the stick is booting in UEFI mode*. It doesn't like #3 (grub not installed to the EFI partition) and it's not getting as far as #2 (which sounds like legacy boot). No idea what #7 is?

BIOS is booting UEFI, change the boot mode in BIOS to legacy and move "Hard drive" to the top of the boot list.

Failing that, could try installing grub to the EFI partition, or failing that installing mint again, but this time formatting the drive in advance** trying to force it to install in UEFI mode.

Welcome pbear's thoughts on this.



* if you boot legacy, efibootmgr gives you this:

Code: Select all

andy@T432 ~ $ efibootmgr
EFI variables are not supported on this system.

** gpt partition table, two partitions, an EFI partition and a partition for /.

[pbear]

Kevito, I mentioned earlier in the thread, " Be sure to use BIOS/legacy mode when booting to reinstall Grub." You did that, right? Pretty sure you did, actually, as I think you would have gotten an error message otherwise. But this time we're going to make sure.

As the simple grub-install command didn't work, we're going to escalate to a more complex one called chroot. Don't worry about understanding the commands. It's black magic.

In a nutshell, chroot permits the live session to act with the powers of the root user of the system mounted to /mnt. The second line links directories into the chroot environment, so they can be accessed as well. In this case, what chroot enables us to do (which isn't easily done otherwise) is run update-grub without the system being booted.

As before, boot a live session (in BIOS/legacy mode, of course). Set up an internet connection, open Firefox and navigate to this thread.

Before installing Grub, run this command (definitely use copy-and-paste):

Code: Select all

[ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo "Currently in UEFI mode" || echo "Currently in Legacy mode"

Having confirmed you are in legacy mode, run these commands, one line at a time (again, using copy-and-paste)

Code: Select all

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i; done
sudo chroot /mnt
grub-install /dev/sda
update-grub
exit
sudo umount -R /mnt

Shut down the live session. Boot main system, fingers crossed. Report back.

[Kevito]

Hey. The #7 is the live usb stick in UEFI mode. I can boot it in Legacy also from the f12 menu it shows w/o the UEFI. #3 & #6 is drive linux is indtslled on sda. I asume the one marked SATA is sposed be legacy mode. Hard drive has to be my second data drive. I changed to Legacy only and moved drives order and no effect.

I've got stick in Legacy mode now this hardware is detected: sda: bootloader MDR: grub2 v1.97, partition sda1 flagged boot: yes, sda5: boot: no. But sda1 looks to be empy, no files. Grub folder appears in boot folder on sda5.


Ok will now try method with chroot see what happens.

[Kevito]

Currently in legacy mode but now grub-install not found. ????

[pbear]

Currently in legacy mode but now grub-install not found. ????

You're not giving me enough to work with. Do it again, except this time, click the maximize button in Terminal so it goes to full screen. Run the commands, including the legacy mode check; continue until the command aborts or returns an error. Then, from the top menu in Terminal, select Edit > Select All, then Edit > Copy. Switch over to Firefox and paste from clipboard into your next reply.

[Kevito]

Ok I can't get internet on the linux machine right now -mb out of data for month - so I had to figure how to get this to phone.

mint@mint:~$ sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
mint@mint:~$ for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i; done
mint@mint:~$ sudo chroot /mnt
root@mint:/# grub-install /dev/sda

Command 'grub-install' not found, but can be installed with:

apt install linux-image-azure-fde # version 5.4.0.1085.90+cvm1.25, or
apt install grub2-common # version 2.04-1ubuntu26.15
apt install lupin-support # version 0.57build1

root@mint:/# update-grub

Command 'update-grub' not found, but can be installed with:

apt install linux-image-azure-fde # version 5.4.0.1085.90+cvm1.25, or
apt install grub2-common # version 2.04-1ubuntu26.15

root@mint:/# exit
exit
mint@mint:~$ sudo umount -R /mnt
mint@mint:~$

Aviso: I cant do apt-install w/o internet connection so may have to wait.


I also have boot.info report from boot repair utility (which doesn't repair anything) if you want can post also.

Grax.

[pbear]

Color me puzzled. This is what you should have gotten:

Code: Select all

mint@mint:~$ [ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo "Currently in UEFI mode" || echo "Currently in Legacy mode"
Currently in Legacy mode
mint@mint:~$ sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
mint@mint:~$ for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i; done
mint@mint:~$ sudo chroot /mnt
root@mint:/# grub-install /dev/sda
Installing for i386-pc platform.
Installation finished. No error reported.
root@mint:/# update-grub
Sourcing file `/etc/default/grub'
Sourcing file `/etc/default/grub.d/50_linuxmint.cfg'
Sourcing file `/etc/default/grub.d/init-select.cfg'
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-121-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-121-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-91-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-91-generic
done
root@mint:/# exit
exit
mint@mint:~$ sudo umount -R /mnt
mint@mint:~$ 

That's running the same commands I gave above (except the system partition is sda2) from a Cinn 20.3 live session, installing Grub to a Cinn 20.3 virtual machine which was installed in UEFI mode and therefore didn't have a BIOS boot loader. The VM now boots in BIOS mode, by the way.

What's all the more puzzling is that I assume this is the same boot medium you used yesterday, which not only had grub-install but was able to run it.

It's up to you where to go from here. A week ago (my how time flies when we're having fun) you said, "If this can-t be resolved its not a big deal if I have to reinstall Linux since all my data is backed up and all my istalled programs were just free downloaded." You've made a good effort at reinstalling Grub - more patient and more careful than I usually see, frankly - but maybe it's time to cut your losses and reinstall. Alternatively, if you want to see this through as a learning experience, I'm fine with that also. If so, yes, please post the link for the Boot Repair report.

[Kevito]

Hey yeah I did think I ran grub-install before but then it might been in UEFI mode with internet connection. But here is the boot into report from the last try. I haven't really tried to analyse all that yet but do notice it wants me to switch to UEFI and be connected to internet. The boot repair utility that put this out says it won't work I in Legacy.


boot-repair-4ppa130 [20220628_1533]

============================== Boot Info Summary ===============================

=> Grub2 (v2.00) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks at sector 1 of
the same hard drive for core.img. core.img is at this location and looks
for (,msdos5)/boot/grub. It also embeds following components:

modules
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
fshelp ext2 part_msdos biosdisk
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
=> Windows 2000/XP/2003 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdc.

sda1: __________________________________________________________________________

File system: vfat
Boot sector type: FAT32
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System:
Boot files:

sda2: __________________________________________________________________________

File system: Extended Partition
Boot sector type: Unknown
Boot sector info:

sda5: __________________________________________________________________________

File system: ext4
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System: Linux Mint 20.3
Boot files: /etc/fstab /boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img

sdc1: __________________________________________________________________________

File system: ntfs
Boot sector type: Windows 2000/XP: NTFS
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System:
Boot files:

sdb: ___________________________________________________________________________

File system: ext4
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System:
Boot files:

sdd: ___________________________________________________________________________

File system: iso9660
Boot sector type: Unknown
Boot sector info:
Mounting failed: mount: /mnt/BootInfo/FD/sdd: /dev/sdd already mounted or mount point busy.


================================ 1 OS detected =================================

OS#1: Linux Mint 20.3 Una (20.3) on sda5

============================ Architecture/Host Info ============================

CPU architecture: 64-bit
Live-session OS is Linuxmint 64-bit (Linux Mint 20.3, una, x86_64)


===================================== UEFI =====================================

This live-session is not in EFI-mode.
This session has been detected as 'live' because /proc/cmdline contains (boot=casper)
This session has been detected as 'live' because df -Th / contains overlay



============================= Drive/Partition Info =============================

Disks info: ____________________________________________________________________

sda : notGPT, no-BIOSboot, has---ESP, not-usb, not-mmc, has-os, 2048 sectors * 512 bytes
sdc : notGPT, no-BIOSboot, has-noESP, usb-disk, not-mmc, no-os, 2048 sectors * 512 bytes

Partitions info (1/3): _________________________________________________________

sda1 : no-os, 32, nopakmgr, no-docgrub, nogrub, nogrubinstall, no-grubenv, noupdategrub, not-far
sda5 : is-os, 64, apt-get, no-docgrub, nogrub, nogrubinstall, grubenv-ok, noupdategrub, farbios
sdc1 : no-os, 32, nopakmgr, no-docgrub, nogrub, nogrubinstall, no-grubenv, noupdategrub, farbios

Partitions info (2/3): _________________________________________________________

sda1 : is---ESP, part-has-no-fstab, no-nt, no-winload, no-recov-nor-hid, no-bmgr, notwinboot
sda5 : isnotESP, fstab-has-goodEFI, no-nt, no-winload, no-recov-nor-hid, no-bmgr, notwinboot
sdc1 : isnotESP, part-has-no-fstab, no-nt, no-winload, no-recov-nor-hid, no-bmgr, notwinboot

Partitions info (3/3): _________________________________________________________

sda1 : not-sepboot, no-boot, part-has-no-fstab, not-sep-usr, no---usr, part-has-no-fstab, std-grub.d, sda
sda5 : not-sepboot, with-boot, fstab-without-boot, not-sep-usr, with--usr, fstab-without-usr, std-grub.d, sda
sdc1 : not-sepboot, no-boot, part-has-no-fstab, not-sep-usr, no---usr, part-has-no-fstab, std-grub.d, sdc

fdisk -l (filtered): ___________________________________________________________

Disk sda: 233.84 GiB, 251059544064 bytes, 490350672 sectors
Disk identifier: 0x059cb471
Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
sda1 * 2048 1050623 1048576 512M b W95 FAT32
sda2 1052670 490348543 489295874 233.3G 5 Extended
sda5 1052672 490348543 489295872 233.3G 83 Linux
Disk sdb: 2.75 TiB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
Disk sdc: 931.49 GiB, 1000170586112 bytes, 1953458176 sectors
Disk identifier: 0xf588007a
Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
sdc1 2048 1953458175 1953456128 931.5G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
Disk sdd: 14.66 GiB, 15728640000 bytes, 30720000 sectors
Disk identifier: 0x2d7faf9b
Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
sdd1 * 0 4397759 4397760 2.1G 0 Empty
sdd2 640 8639 8000 3.9M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
sdd3 4399104 30719999 26320896 12.6G 83 Linux

parted -lm (filtered): _________________________________________________________

sda:251GB:scsi:512:512:msdos:ATA WDC WD2502ABYS-0:;
1:1049kB:538MB:537MB:fat32::boot;
2:539MB:251GB:251GB:::;
5:539MB:251GB:251GB:ext4::;
sdb:3001GB:scsi:512:512ATA HGST HUS724030AL:;
1:0.00B:3001GB:3001GB:ext4::;
sdc:1000GB:scsi:512:512:msdos:WD My Passport 0827:;
1:1049kB:1000GB:1000GB:ntfs::;
sdd:15.7GB:scsi:512:512:unknown:VendorCo ProductCode:;

blkid (filtered): ______________________________________________________________

NAME FSTYPE UUID PARTUUID LABEL PARTLABEL
sda
├─sda1 vfat FD4E-9CD6 059cb471-01
├─sda2 059cb471-02
└─sda5 ext4 d4592f5c-580b-42fa-aeb0-8dde87f9533e 059cb471-05
sdb ext4 ecd5cbe6-d0fb-4228-8e47-7abfb4c48a1c Data
sdc
└─sdc1 ntfs 4E1AEA7B1AEA6007 f588007a-01 My Passport
sdd iso9660 2022-01-04-15-01-47-00 Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon 64-bit
├─sdd1 iso9660 2022-01-04-15-01-47-00 2d7faf9b-01 Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon 64-bit
├─sdd2 vfat 54C5-9C6C 2d7faf9b-02
└─sdd3 ext4 1f806f5d-ca6a-48f5-ad9e-125b490b4155 2d7faf9b-03 writable

df (filtered): _________________________________________________________________

Avail Use% Mounted on
disk/by-label/writable[/install-logs-2022-06-27.3/log] 11.6G 1% /var/log
sda1 511M 0% /mnt/boot-sav/sda1
sda5 146.7G 31% /mnt/boot-sav/sda5
sdc1 224.9G 76% /media/mint/My Passport
sdd1 0 100% /cdrom

Mount options: __________________________________________________________________

disk/by-label/writable[/install-logs-2022-06-27.3/log] rw,relatime
sda1 rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro
sda5 rw,relatime
sdc1 rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096
sdd1 ro,noatime,nojoliet,check=s,map=n,blocksize=2048,iocharset=utf8

========================== sda5/etc/fstab (filtered) ===========================

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sde5 during installation
UUID=d4592f5c-580b-42fa-aeb0-8dde87f9533e / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sde1 during installation
/swapfile none swap sw 0 0
UUID=FD4E-9CD6 /boot/efi vfat defaults 0 1

==================== sda5: Location of files loaded by Grub ====================

GiB - GB File Fragment(s)
9.197662354 = 9.875914752 boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img 1
46.272499084 = 49.684717568 boot/vmlinuz 1
43.694370270 = 46.916472832 boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-113-generic 1
46.272499084 = 49.684717568 boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-117-generic 1
4.986324310 = 5.354024960 boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-74-generic 2
125.520736694 = 134.776864768 boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-89-generic 1
10.176990509 = 10.927460352 boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-91-generic 1
129.459987640 = 139.006603264 boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-99-generic 1
43.694370270 = 46.916472832 boot/vmlinuz.old 1
48.279193878 = 51.839389696 boot/initrd.img 1
48.197261810 = 51.751415808 boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-113-generic 5
48.279193878 = 51.839389696 boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-117-generic 1
45.146350861 = 48.475525120 boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-74-generic 3
44.497509003 = 47.778836480 boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-89-generic 2
44.404178619 = 47.678623744 boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-91-generic 3
66.130752563 = 71.007354880 boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-99-generic 2
48.197261810 = 51.751415808 boot/initrd.img.old 5

===================== sda5: ls -l /etc/grub.d/ (filtered) ======================

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 700 Feb 21 03:06 35_fwupd

=========================== sda5/etc/grub.d/35_fwupd ===========================

#! /bin/sh
# SPDX-License-Identifier: LGPL-2.1+
set -e
[ -d ${pkgdatadir:?} ]
# shellcheck source=/dev/null
. "$pkgdatadir/grub-mkconfig_lib"
if [ -f /var/lib/fwupd/uefi_capsule.conf ] &&
ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/fwupd-*-0abba7dc-e516-4167-bbf5-4d9d1c739416 1>/dev/null 2>&1; then
. /var/lib/fwupd/uefi_capsule.conf
if [ "${EFI_PATH}" != "" ] && [ "${ESP}" != "" ]; then
echo "Adding Linux Firmware Updater entry" >&2
cat << EOF
menuentry 'Linux Firmware Updater' \$menuentry_id_option 'fwupd' {
EOF
${grub_probe:?}
prepare_grub_to_access_device '`${grub_probe} --target=device \${ESP}` | sed -e "s/^/\t/"'
cat << EOF
chainloader ${EFI_PATH}
}
EOF
fi
fi


======================== Unknown MBRs/Boot Sectors/etc =========================

Unknown BootLoader on sda2

00000000 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff |................|
*
000001b0 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 00 fe |................|
000001c0 c2 ff 83 fe c2 ff 02 00 00 00 00 10 2a 1d 00 00 |............*...|
000001d0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
*
000001f0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa |..............U.|
00000200

Unknown BootLoader on sdd

00000000 45 52 08 00 00 00 90 90 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |ER..............|
00000010 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
00000020 33 ed fa 8e d5 bc 00 7c fb fc 66 31 db 66 31 c9 |3......|..f1.f1.|
00000030 66 53 66 51 06 57 8e dd 8e c5 52 be 00 7c bf 00 |fSfQ.W....R..|..|
00000040 06 b9 00 01 f3 a5 ea 4b 06 00 00 52 b4 41 bb aa |.......K...R.A..|
00000050 55 31 c9 30 f6 f9 cd 13 72 16 81 fb 55 aa 75 10 |U1.0....r...U.u.|
00000060 83 e1 01 74 0b 66 c7 06 f1 06 b4 42 eb 15 eb 00 |...t.f.....B....|
00000070 5a 51 b4 08 cd 13 83 e1 3f 5b 51 0f b6 c6 40 50 |ZQ......?[Q...@P|
00000080 f7 e1 53 52 50 bb 00 7c b9 04 00 66 a1 b0 07 e8 |..SRP..|...f....|
00000090 44 00 0f 82 80 00 66 40 80 c7 02 e2 f2 66 81 3e |D.....f@.....f.>|
000000a0 40 7c fb c0 78 70 75 09 fa bc ec 7b ea 44 7c 00 |@|..xpu....{.D|.|
000000b0 00 e8 83 00 69 73 6f 6c 69 6e 75 78 2e 62 69 6e |....isolinux.bin|
000000c0 20 6d 69 73 73 69 6e 67 20 6f 72 20 63 6f 72 72 | missing or corr|
000000d0 75 70 74 2e 0d 0a 66 60 66 31 d2 66 03 06 f8 7b |upt...f`f1.f...{|
000000e0 66 13 16 fc 7b 66 52 66 50 06 53 6a 01 6a 10 89 |f...{fRfP.Sj.j..|
000000f0 e6 66 f7 36 e8 7b c0 e4 06 88 e1 88 c5 92 f6 36 |.f.6.{.........6|
00000100 ee 7b 88 c6 08 e1 41 b8 01 02 8a 16 f2 7b cd 13 |.{....A......{..|
00000110 8d 64 10 66 61 c3 e8 1e 00 4f 70 65 72 61 74 69 |.d.fa....Operati|
00000120 6e 67 20 73 79 73 74 65 6d 20 6c 6f 61 64 20 65 |ng system load e|
00000130 72 72 6f 72 2e 0d 0a 5e ac b4 0e 8a 3e 62 04 b3 |rror...^....>b..|
00000140 07 cd 10 3c 0a 75 f1 cd 18 f4 eb fd 00 00 00 00 |...<.u..........|
00000150 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
*
000001b0 c0 21 00 00 00 00 00 00 9b af 7f 2d 00 00 80 00 |.!.........-....|
000001c0 01 00 00 86 e0 f9 00 00 00 00 c0 1a 43 00 00 fe |............C...|
000001d0 ff ff ef fe ff ff 80 02 00 00 40 1f 00 00 00 d4 |..........@.....|
000001e0 44 11 83 3b c3 78 00 20 43 00 00 a0 91 01 00 00 |D..;.x. C.......|
000001f0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa |..............U.|
00000200


========= Devices which don't seem to have a corresponding hard drive ==========

sde

=============================== StdErr Messages ================================

File descriptor 63 (pipe:[416745]) leaked on lvs invocation. Parent PID 23135: /bin/bash
/dev/sde: open failed: No medium found
/dev/sde: open failed: No medium found

Unmount sdc1 from /media/mint/My Passport/ to avoid special characters (& or \ or space) incompatibilities

Unmount sdc1 from /media/mint/My Passport/ to avoid special characters (& or \ or space) incompatibilities

Suggested repair: ______________________________________________________________

The default repair of the Boot-Repair utility would purge (in order to fix packages) and reinstall the grub-efi-amd64-signed of
sda5,
using the following options: sda1/boot/efi,
Additional repair would be performed: unhide-bootmenu-10s use-standard-efi-file

Blockers in case of suggested repair: __________________________________________

The current session is in BIOS-compatibility mode. Please disable BIOS-compatibility/CSM/Legacy mode in your UEFI firmware, and use this software from a live-CD (or live-USB) that is compatible with UEFI booting mode. For example, use a live-USB of Boot-Repair-Disk-64bit (www.sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair-cd), after making sure your BIOS is set up to boot USB in EFI mode. This will enable this feature.

Confirmation request before suggested repair: __________________________________

Warning: continuing without internet would leave your system unbootable. Please connect internet.
The boot of your PC is in BIOS-compatibility/CSM/Legacy mode. You may want to retry after changing it to EFI mode.
Alternatively, you may want to retry after deactivating the [Separate /usr partition:] option.
Are you sure you want to continue anyway?

Final advice in case of suggested repair: ______________________________________


Please do not forget to make your UEFI firmware boot on the Linux Mint 20.3 Una (20.3) entry (sda1/efi/****/shim****.efi (**** will be updated in the final message) file) !
The boot of your PC is in BIOS-compatibility/CSM/Legacy mode. You may want to retry after changing it to UEFI mode.
paste2.org ko ()
paste.ubuntu.com ko ()

Thanx for help.

[pbear]

Alas, nothing in the boot repair report indicates an alternate path forward from the one we've already tried.

The recommendation about using UEFI mode seem to be based solely on the existence of an EFI partition, which as Andy mentioned earlier is the product of a bug in the Ubuntu installer, also used by Mint. I don't think switching to UEFI will help, as you're still going to need the grub-install and update-grub commands, plus a few others. It's true the live session needs an internet connection to install secure boot compatible boot loaders, but we know that's not relevant to your problem, as you were connected to the internet last time anyway (so you could copy the commands).

Give me a chance to think this over. Meanwhile, please edit your last post (click the little pencil icon) and add [code] and [/code] at the beginning and end of the boot repair report. This puts it in a code box, like I used in the post before yours, making the thread easier for everyone to follow.

[pbear]

Well, I'll be darned. Turns out, what Boot Repair wants to do will work, at least in principle. Don't think I knew an MBR drive can be configured to boot in UEFI. I just did it, though, with an XFCE virtual machine installed in BIOS mode by the default method, i.e., the same one used for your computer.

Before we do that, though, I'd like you to try again using the chroot commands I gave on June 26th. That's the right answer for your situation, and there's no good reason for it not to have worked. Maybe just the gremlins toying with you. Remember, for those commands, boot in BIOS mode. On the boot menu, notice the option called Integrity check. Run that, after which you'll automatically boot into the live system as usual.

If that doesn't work, there's little to be lost by trying again in UEFI. So, boot in UEFI mode. Set up an internet connection; navigate to this thread. Open GParted (from Menu), right-click sda1 (the EFI partition) and select Manage flags; tick the box for esp, leaving the boot box also ticked; close GParted. Open Terminal (Ctrl-Alt-T) and click to expand to full screen. Run the following commands, one line at a time (as always, using copy-and-paste):

Code: Select all

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i; done
sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc
modprobe efivars
sudo chroot /mnt
apt install grub-efi-amd64-signed shim-signed 
grub-install /dev/sda --uefi-secure-boot
update-grub
exit
sudo umount /mnt/boot/efi 
sudo umount -R /mnt

Before shutting down, from the top menu in Terminal, select Edit > Select All, then Edit > Copy. Switch over to Firefox and paste from clipboard into this thread. Now shut down the live session and try booting the system, again using UEFI mode. Report back.

By the way, I don't have all this stuff memorized. Once upon a time, I decided I wanted to understand how to install Grub, did a bunch of research, then wrote up what I had learned in a tutorial. Everything I've posted in this thread comes from that tutorial, except installing UEFI boot loaders to an MBR drive, which is new to me.

[Kevito]

Hi

My internet connection had been refreshed so will look over what you posted and try these methods again butatsrying to think may have other hardware or bios problems causing this. I have a linux installation CD also a USB CD drive shows in boot menu when plugged in but can't get boot. Internal CD drive is detected but unable to run. I'm startimg to have problems even booting the live stick and getting usb mounting errors. When on linux frequent freezes and random pops of a writtable usb inserted with content of kernels then limux goes into fallback mode can't access drives and having to reboot. So yeah will try one more time then guess will try reinstall before everything fails.

Again thanks and will post back results.

[pbear]

... think may have other hardware or bios problems causing this.

Oh dear. Bear in mind, this may mean reinstall won't work either. Good luck.

[Kevito]

Hey

First ran integrity check and it showed

Intramfs unpacking failed : Decoding failed
Failed to execute /init (error -2)
Kernal panic - not surfing : No working init found ....

Told me to see Linux doc admin-guide/unit.rs.

So I was about to give up but anyway finally got live to reboot properly and did your chroot code with internet this time seemed to work so after shutting down removed live usb and rebooted to the menu choosing the linux system drive and unbelievably this time it booted to linux desktop nor grub!

So hopefully this repair will last though I may have other issues will do all the updates and see what happens.

Thank much for the great help.