[SOLVED] GRUB starts in rescue shell, wrong UUID, reinstall didn't fix

deafeningsylence · 2016-09-23 10:40:31

Dear Arch Community,

I read rules and code of conduct, however if I should misbehave, say so.
As stated in the topic I get a grub rescue shell everytime I boot up. The error code is the following:

error: no such device: ec4c72c7-6311-4085-aa36-49b54ceeaf92
error: unknown filesystem
Entering rescue mode...

I have to manually redirect to the correct drive and partition for the system to boot up properly.

set prefix=(hd3,gpt1)/grub
set root=(hd3,gpt1)
insmod normal
normal

The given UUID is not among my block devices (blkid), which confuses me, since grub was explicitely pointed to a disk when I installed it. Also in the fstab file the correct device UUID is given for boot.
I tried reinstalling and regenerating the config many times, with and without boot directory option, no solution yet.

grub-install --boot-directory=/boot /dev/sdb1
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

I even edited a few lines in /boot/grub/grub.cfg directly (the ones that say root=(DRIVE,PARTITION)), pointing them to the correct drive, again with no outcome.

My system is up to date (just upgraded to be sure) and my bios is a legacy bios ('SMBIOS 2.7 present' shows in system log). However, my motherboard does have UEFI as well, I don't think it is used for booting up. It is the MSI Z68A-GD80-G3, an early adopter when it comes to UEFI, I think this is why the implementation is this weird hybrid. I figured that grub maybe is confused by that and the weird UUID that cannot be found belongs to the chip that contains the UEFI? I cannot find a command to list me all UUIDs of my system to search for the one in the error message.
Since the systemlog only starts after booting up, thus after I pointed it to the right direction, I cannot provide you with an event log of what is happening when grub starts.

Hopefully, some of you have encountered similar issues or have some ideas to contribute to a solution.

All the best,

deafingsylence

Last edited by deafeningsylence (2016-09-23 12:40:43)

WorMzy · 2016-09-23 11:00:23

Welcome to the Arch Linux forums.

Is there any chance you have another copy of grub installed somewhere else on this PC? That editing the grub.cfg file doesn't help suggests to me that there is.

I cannot find a command to list me all UUIDs of my system to search for the one in the error message.

The command you are looking for is 'lsblk -f', or 'blkid'. Running 'ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid' would also work in this case.

deafeningsylence · 2016-09-23 11:25:00

Wow that was a fast reply, what a nice welcome .

I had another grub installed on sda (now running on sdb) before, so that could be it. I ran parted and there still was a small partition on it, which I removed and then mklabeled it again to completely remove any traces.

Thank you for the commands, I ran blkid before already, but the UUID grub gives me in the error output was not among them, however, maybe I purged it just yet with parted. I'll restart now and comeback with a report.

WorMzy · 2016-09-23 11:48:35

If you have two disks, and grub installed on both, and assuming that you're booting in legacy mode rather than UEFI, then you may just need to change the disk boot order in the BIOS.

deafeningsylence · 2016-09-23 12:37:45

So, I think the issue is solved (I will change the threadname, no worries).I rebooted and still got the same problem. Then I ended up reattaching all my hard drives in the order that the bios would give me from 1 to 4 and changed the boot order in the bios accordingly. Reboot. Aaaand... it looked like this:

GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB
GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB
GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB
GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB
GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB
GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB

All over the screen, I guess somehow grub did not like the reattaching of the drives.
I put in an arch usb, booted from it, opened my Luks container, mounted the drives and chrooted into the installation, then I reinstalled and reconfigured grub. Reboot.
Aaand, voila. I have a login, no rescue shell anymore.

Thank you for the idea with the second grub. Probably there was one on some of the drives from an earlier and broken install (Arch is my first Linux and I reinstalled like 10 times until I got it working).

So this counts as my first experience with the Arch community I guess and I gotta say it is quite fast and problem oriented, which is really a pleasure.

Thank you WorMzy.

All the best,

deafeningsylence

Last edited by deafeningsylence (2016-09-23 12:41:16)

Arch Linux

#1 2016-09-23 10:40:31

[SOLVED] GRUB starts in rescue shell, wrong UUID, reinstall didn't fix

#2 2016-09-23 11:00:23

Re: [SOLVED] GRUB starts in rescue shell, wrong UUID, reinstall didn't fix

#3 2016-09-23 11:25:00

Re: [SOLVED] GRUB starts in rescue shell, wrong UUID, reinstall didn't fix

#4 2016-09-23 11:48:35

Re: [SOLVED] GRUB starts in rescue shell, wrong UUID, reinstall didn't fix

#5 2016-09-23 12:37:45

Re: [SOLVED] GRUB starts in rescue shell, wrong UUID, reinstall didn't fix

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