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#1 2017-06-07 19:55:45

bstafford
Member
Registered: 2017-06-07
Posts: 2

error: file '/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found

I have a Logic Supply ML100G-30 that was recently running Ubuntu. I started to install Arch on it using a USB stick. The install started off fine. I verified that there was a pile of files in /sys/firmware/efi/efivars, so I believe I was booting in UEFI mode. The system had an existing EFI partition, so I didn't touch it; I just reformatted the main partition, /dev/sda1.

After running through everything in install.txt, I removed the USB stick and rebooted. The boot fails immediately with the message:

error: file '/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found

and then I get dumped to grub rescue mode.

I dug around using ls, but couldn't find normal.mod anywhere. I did find three filesystems, (hd0), (hd0,msdos1) and (hd0,msdos5). The first and last can't be read by ls (error: unknown filesystem). The middle one, (hd0,msdos1), contains what looks like a typical Linux filetree, including /boot/efi, /boot/grub and /grub, all of which are empty.

Here's what my partitions look like when I boot off the USB stick:

Disk /dev/sda: 238.5 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x5f5ddb7f

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *         2048 466829311 466827264 222.6G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2       466831358 500117503  33286146  15.9G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5       466831360 500117503  33286144  15.9G 82 Linux swap / Solaris


Disk /dev/sdb: 1.8 GiB, 1939865600 bytes, 3788800 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x58ea47c6

Device     Boot Start    End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1  *        0 999423  999424  488M  0 Empty
/dev/sdb2         164 131235  131072   64M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)


Disk /dev/loop0: 375.6 MiB, 393854976 bytes, 769248 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I suspect what's happening is that /dev/sdb2 is not getting mounted properly, but I'm not sure how to fix that.

Any help would be appreciated.

Brandon

Last edited by bstafford (2017-06-07 20:09:07)

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#2 2017-06-08 13:51:51

paulkerry
Member
From: Sheffield, UK
Registered: 2014-10-02
Posts: 611

Re: error: file '/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found

bstafford wrote:

After running through everything in install.txt

Hello and welcome to the forums.

"install.txt" - what is that and where is it from? Aren't you following the installation guide - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide ?

It would probably help if you posted the actual commands that you used during the installation...

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#3 2017-06-08 21:37:53

bstafford
Member
Registered: 2017-06-07
Posts: 2

Re: error: file '/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found

Hi, thanks for the welcome!

install.txt is a file I found at /root/install.txt when I booted off the USB stick containing archlinux-2017.06.01-x86_64.iso

It appears to be the text of https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide, so far as I can tell.

Your request for a listing of all the commands I executed is reasonable, but I'm afraid I don't remember every step. Is there a step that should have created normal.mod? My guess would be that it would only have been created, at least explicitly by me, in a step where I was changing the partition table, but all I did there was to reformat /dev/sda1 using mkfs.ext4, so that can't be it.

Brandon

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#4 2017-06-18 21:24:27

paulkerry
Member
From: Sheffield, UK
Registered: 2014-10-02
Posts: 611

Re: error: file '/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found

[OK about the install file]

As far as I am aware, /boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod should be automatically created when you install GRUB - perhaps double check you followed that part of the installation guide correctly. Did you remember to generate the GRUB main configuration file - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … ation_file ?

There is also lots of info about GRUB at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB and UEFI: for instance it's "highly recommended" to use GPT partition tables and your output shows yours are "dos".

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