[SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

Unia · 2013-10-26 16:18:59

Hey,

So I randomly decided to boot into Windows 8 again today (I guess that's what studying does to you ) but quickly I found myself wanting to go back to Linux. I restarted, chose Arch Linux in my EFI boot menu and voilà, a message appeared saying the following:

Error loading \vmlinux-linux: Volume Corrupt

Is this as simple as chrooting into my installation from a LiveCD, generating a new vmlinuz-linux image with mkinitcpio and putting that back in place? I'm a bit hesitant about this so I'd like some confirmation first.

Thanks!

Last edited by Unia (2013-10-26 22:40:45)

the.ridikulus.rat · 2013-10-26 17:13:11

Unia wrote:

Hey,
So I randomly decided to boot into Windows 8 again today (I guess that's what studying does to you ) but quickly I found myself wanting to go back to Linux. I restarted, chose Arch Linux in my EFI boot menu and voilà, a message appeared saying the following:
Error loading \vmlinux-linux: Volume Corrupt
Is this as simple as chrooting into my installation from a LiveCD, generating a new vmlinuz-linux image with mkinitcpio and putting that back in place? I'm a bit hesitant about this so I'd like some confirmation first.
Thanks!

Try disabling Windows Fast Startup feature and/or Hibernation (in Windows)

Last edited by the.ridikulus.rat (2013-10-26 18:12:24)

Unia · 2013-10-26 17:35:22

That's already done - mind you, Linux has been working fine on this laptop ever since I got it. It just says the vmlinuz-linux file is corrupt whenever I try to boot into Linux.

Since I have been having issues with installing apps from the beginning, and since Windows update now also fails to complete, I'm just going to try what I think is the correct fix and then proceed to remove Windows from the hard drive.

WorMzy · 2013-10-26 18:00:41

You can't generate a new vmlinuz file, that's the kernel. You're thinking of initrd files. You'll need to reinstall the linux package.

I think the.ridikulus.rat has the right of it -- you didn't "shutdown" Windows last time, so when you booted it this time, it "resumed" and marked the new files as corrupt. This is a fairly well documented "feature" of Windows 8.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/63 … s-8-a.html

If you've already disabled it, but it's still marking files as corrupt when you reboot into Windows, you should seek assistance from a Windows forum.

Edit, or remove Windows. Whatever's best for you.

Last edited by WorMzy (2013-10-26 18:01:52)

Unia · 2013-10-26 18:42:32

Aah, that explains things! I thought the.ridikulus.rat meant the fastboot EFI option, or whatever it is called. The one that starts Windows directly, bypassing any EFI menus. I have disabled it and will now chroot to reinstall the kernel and go from there!

Thanks both!

Unia · 2013-10-26 22:39:58

It's resolved! First Windows was halfway through updating to Windows 8.1, so I had to wait a while. Then it turned out it had made the EFI partition read only (but all the files were still present) and when it was finally done updating, all the files were gone and it even reset to auto-boot into Windows... I don't get how any OS is allowed to touch files in a partition meant to be set up for multiple OSes! Grrrr....

But, in the end, all is well. Thanks again the.ridikulus.rat and WorMzy!

Last edited by Unia (2013-10-26 22:40:13)

cfr · 2013-10-27 00:04:07

Agreed. It is not just Windows, though. Ubuntu not only deleted every file in my EFI partition, it failed to install anything of its own rendering the system entirely unbootable.

WorMzy · 2013-10-27 00:18:14

cfr, I think you may have accidentally checked the 'format' option in the Ubuntu installer when you were doing the partitioning.

Although I've not installed 13.10 on a system yet, so maybe they've changed it. (I'm still not happy that they did away with the option to disable the bootloader installation)

cfr · 2013-10-27 00:23:58

WorMzy wrote:

cfr, I think you may have accidentally checked the 'format' option in the Ubuntu installer when you were doing the partitioning.
Although I've not installed 13.10 on a system yet, so maybe they've changed it. (I'm still not happy that they did away with the option to disable the bootloader installation)

No. This was a bug in an earlier version of Ubuntu. For some reason, the installer wanted the EFI partition to be fat 16 so if you had a fat 32 partition, it formatted it regardless of whether you told it to do so or not. There were rather irate bug reports about it, as you might imagine. I'm sure they've fixed it by now.

I wasn't having a go at Ubuntu. Just that many things behave badly with respect to the EFI side of things - not just Windows. Personally, I think gummiboot also behaves badly as its installer overwrites any fall back .efi application installed.

EDIT: Perhaps I should also say that I actually expected it to wipe my EFI partition. In fact, I positively wanted it to do so and the fact that it failed to install anything of its own was really irrelevant - I wasn't actually interested in installing it anyway. I only tried to install it in the first place in the hope that it would do just that - wipe my EFI partition. I admit I did expect it to install Ubuntu as well but since I would only have removed it anyway, its failing to do so was not a great loss. Nonetheless, the fact that I positively wanted it to manifest the bug does nothing to detract from the fact that it was a very significant bug and that it was not, apparently, considered sufficiently serious to justify reissuing the iso, for example, so that the installer didn't render other OSs' unbootable.

Last edited by cfr (2013-10-27 00:28:43)

WonderWoofy · 2013-10-27 00:25:16

@WorMzy, I know you are a btrfs user (as you maintain the btrfs-progs stuff in the AUR), so I'm curious if the ubuntu installer is able to use an existing btrfs filesystem and new subvols to put itself on. That is, if you already have a btrfs partition, with Arch installed to a subvol, will it then be able to install itself to the same btrfs filesystem on a new subvol?

@Unia, if my OT questions bother you let me know. I just figure your issue is apparently solved, so a quick OT question wouldn't be too much derailment.

WorMzy · 2013-10-27 00:53:10

cfr wrote:

WorMzy wrote:
cfr, I think you may have accidentally checked the 'format' option in the Ubuntu installer when you were doing the partitioning.
Although I've not installed 13.10 on a system yet, so maybe they've changed it. (I'm still not happy that they did away with the option to disable the bootloader installation)
No. This was a bug in an earlier version of Ubuntu. For some reason, the installer wanted the EFI partition to be fat 16 so if you had a fat 32 partition, it formatted it regardless of whether you told it to do so or not. There were rather irate bug reports about it, as you might imagine. I'm sure they've fixed it by now.

Ah fair enough. We generally stick to BIOS installs where I work, but I'll bear this bug in mind if we ever decide to switch to UEFI.

@WonderWoofy: I'm afraid I don't use Ubuntu at home, and we don't use btrfs on the university machines (we use freebsd + zfs for our file servers). I guess I could try it out on my home machine, but after reading cfr's post, I'd rather not.

WonderWoofy · 2013-10-27 01:20:57

Yeah, don't go out of your way. It just sounded like you were also an ubuntu user, and kept a copy of it on your personal machine. I was just curious though, and the answer is not crucial, as I have no plans to try such a thing either.

Unia · 2013-10-27 09:40:03

WonderWoofy wrote:

@Unia, if my OT questions bother you let me know. I just figure your issue is apparently solved, so a quick OT question wouldn't be too much derailment.

It bothers me! Please delete all your posts now

cfr · 2013-10-28 01:46:53

Unia wrote:

WonderWoofy wrote:
@Unia, if my OT questions bother you let me know. I just figure your issue is apparently solved, so a quick OT question wouldn't be too much derailment.
It bothers me! Please delete all your posts now

WonderWoofy can't do that without violating forum policy so I guess it will require some creativity to transform them into OnT posts (or at least <OT posts).

reflectionalist · 2014-11-13 05:40:08

I suffered the same problem. Fortunately I have the LTS kernel installed and strangely it did not get corrupted. I could boot choosing the LTS kernel and reinstalled the current kernel and then boot using it.

jasonwryan · 2014-11-13 05:49:35

Please don't necrobump, particularly solved threads: Please remember to mark your thread as [Solved] by editing your first post and prepending it to the title.

Closing

Arch Linux

#1 2013-10-26 16:18:59

[SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#2 2013-10-26 17:13:11

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#3 2013-10-26 17:35:22

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#4 2013-10-26 18:00:41

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#5 2013-10-26 18:42:32

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#6 2013-10-26 22:39:58

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#7 2013-10-27 00:04:07

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#8 2013-10-27 00:18:14

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#9 2013-10-27 00:23:58

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#10 2013-10-27 00:25:16

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#11 2013-10-27 00:53:10

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#12 2013-10-27 01:20:57

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#13 2013-10-27 09:40:03

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#14 2013-10-28 01:46:53

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#15 2014-11-13 05:40:08

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

#16 2014-11-13 05:49:35

Re: [SOLVED] Windows ate vmlinuz-linux from my EFI partition

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