Arch Linux

gabx

Member

From: Geneva, Switzerland

Registered: 2011-11-20

Posts: 149

Website

[SOLVED] grub install with errors

I had to recover from a disk crash.
Using ArchIso, i was able to recover from a rsync backup. Now I need to reinstall Grub when Arch-chrooting my recovered system.

# gdisk /dev/sdc
Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048            4061   1007.0 KiB  EF02  BIOS boot partition
   2            4096       234441614   111.8 GiB   8300  hortensia 

Sounds fine to me. This is a GPT partionned disk, with one partiton for Arch (hortensia).
Then:

# grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck --debug /dev/sdc
.......
grub-install: info: guessed root_dev `hostdisk//dev/sdc' from dir `/boot/grub/i386-pc'.
grub-install: info: setting the root device to `hostdisk//dev/sdc,gpt2'.
grub-install: warning: Attempting to install GRUB to a disk with multiple partition labels.  This is not supported yet..
grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible.  GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists.  However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
grub-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists.

I do not understand why I have this error, as I am doing a vanilla install to disk, as per descibed in wiki.
Could this issue comes from my old install on the disk, even if I created a new empty GUID partition table before the  rsync recovery?
Shall I ignore ? or force ?

Thank you for help.

Last edited by gabx (2014-05-12 13:55:47)

shulamy

Member

From: israel

Registered: 2010-09-11

Posts: 459

Re: [SOLVED] grub install with errors

what is sdc?

ezik

gabx

Member

From: Geneva, Switzerland

Registered: 2011-11-20

Posts: 149

Website

Re: [SOLVED] grub install with errors

$ lsblk -f
sdc            btrfs      ArchProd dff0c08a-3ac2-4280-b7d8-a1e007d7c399   
├─sdc1         btrfs      ArchProd dff0c08a-3ac2-4280-b7d8-a1e007d7c399   
└─sdc2         ext4       ArchProd 47157a8e-eda1-4bbd-9dc6-9ef4a25618cf   /mnt

Note: the btrfs is wrong, and remains from an old install. Do not know why sdc1 is still see as btrfs, as it has no fs as shown below.

# parted -l

Model: ATA KINGSTON SH103S3 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 120GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name                 Flags
 1      1049kB  2080kB  1031kB               BIOS boot partition  bios_grub
 2      2097kB  120GB   120GB   ext4         hortensia

# blkid
/dev/sdc1: PARTLABEL="BIOS boot partition" PARTUUID="5826a336-22db-496d-a6e7-a30f8504a7d1" 

EDIT I tried to boot my system, but as I suspected, GRUB did not take into accoun the changes. I am left with the rescue shell and this error:

 error : no such device : ......UUID here......

I guess it is the old UUID from my previous install.

 grub rescue > ls

returns a list of hd (from 0 to 3, which is correct), with some in this way : (hd2,gpt2). But I have no idea which hd is the one I want to boot from!

EDIT1
i tried using the -- force option, but got the same result: back to GRUB rescue with same error message. It seems to me GRUB maybe somewhere else, as I have more than 1 disk. It keeps trying to mount another UUID as root partition, thus the error message.
Is there any way to find where GRUB can hidden on other disks ?

Last edited by gabx (2014-05-02 14:25:40)

gabx

Member

From: Geneva, Switzerland

Registered: 2011-11-20

Posts: 149

Website

Re: [SOLVED] grub install with errors

I was able to detect on ly /boot/grub/grub.cfg that the root partition of my disk was (hd2,gpt2).
On grub rescue shell I then set this partition (set prefix) and then set insmod.
now i can boot.

EDIT Unfortunately the change is not persistant across reboots. It seems I am still using an old GRUb setup.
After a deep look at all my disks, the only one with a BIOS boot partition is the /dev/sdc. So my guess is that I am using the correct device to install GRUB.
Why can't I modify to the correct root UUID?

Any help would be welcomed.

Last edited by gabx (2014-05-02 15:15:20)

gabx

Member

From: Geneva, Switzerland

Registered: 2011-11-20

Posts: 149

Website

Re: [SOLVED] grub install with errors

The issue came from an old GRUB install on another HD. This setting was still active.
Deleting the ef02 partition on this HD and grub-install on the new Hd ef02 partition solved this login issue.

Last edited by gabx (2014-05-12 13:57:57)