Arch Linux

andalenavals

Member

Registered: 2017-10-30

Posts: 39

Wrong Fs type bad superblock bootpartition

Hello

After a power turn off during a system upgrade, I had to reinstall essentially my whole  Arch linux system. I did a $ shred -v /dev/sda
create two partitions, one BIOS boot and another Linux LVM. I am working with a MBR drive.

I mounted root in /mnt, and BIOS boot partition to /mnt/boot (before chroot). Also update the Hooks in mkinitcpio.conf including lvm2.

I am having problems to install grub. If I try
  $grub-install /dev/sda  . I get Fat-fs (sda1): Invalid FSINFO  signature: 0x00821cea, 0x10020082 (sector =1) display after installing it. But not only during the installation but even after it has finished like new lines in the terminal display that message.

If I try    $grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sda      error message does not appear but time I reload the live usb (grub error /vmlinuz-linux not found) I need to format again my boot partition because I get Wrong Fs type bad superblock bootpartition

I have the feeling that I need drive.
Happy to provide with more exact details, like fstab or fdisk -l (I will need to upload images).

Thanks for your help

Last edited by andalenavals (2022-02-01 15:10:15)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,088

Re: Wrong Fs type bad superblock bootpartition

You don't need a BIOS boot partition with an MBR drive and if you followed the "usual" BIOS boot partition advice (i.e. 1MB or so) it's like too small for anything and you should definitely and under no circumstances mount that to /boot . Remove/ignore the "BIOS boot partition" and with it unmounted chroot in and reinstall the linux package and rerun the grub-install as well as the grub-mkconfig commands.

The BIOS boot partition by the definition as present in https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB#G … structions is only there to allow a GPT disk be booted from a BIOS mainboard. There it just needs to "exist" so that the BIOS has something it can boot off of and it is not intended as the place to mount to /boot.

If you've partitioned the drive in MBR mode in the first place it isn't necessary as the "BIOS boot partition" on an MBR drive is just the first few bytes at the start of the disk.

Last edited by V1del (2022-02-01 15:14:48)

andalenavals

Member

Registered: 2017-10-30

Posts: 39

Re: Wrong Fs type bad superblock bootpartition

I recreate my table partition, deleting Bios Boot  and letting only my lvm partition.

I did:
$ mount dev/mapper/arch-root /mnt
$ mount dev/mapper/arch-home /mnt/home
$ mount dev/mapper/arch-var /mnt/var
$ swapon dev/mapper/arch-swap

However when installing grub, I get the error
This GPT partition label contain no Bios boot partition: embedding won't be possible. Which is contradictory to the fact that I did $gparted -l and I saw msdos displayed.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,088

Re: Wrong Fs type bad superblock bootpartition

Well which tool did you use to create the partition table?

andalenavals

Member

Registered: 2017-10-30

Posts: 39

Re: Wrong Fs type bad superblock bootpartition

When running fdisk I just notice that the partition type is GPT. So I suppose I will ignore parted. Well I suppose I need to take back the boot partition, how it was before. And it was 512 Mb. Could it be that using fdisk instead of gdisk was the reason of my original problem?

Last edited by andalenavals (2022-02-02 10:54:00)

Strike0

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2011-09-05

Posts: 1,489

Re: Wrong Fs type bad superblock bootpartition

Not really. You used shred before, on a blank device fdisk asks if you want to create a MBR or GPT partition table. You probably chose GPT and then deleted the GPT BIOS boot partition in the second try above, without switching to a MBR style partition table.

andalenavals

Member

Registered: 2017-10-30

Posts: 39

Re: Wrong Fs type bad superblock bootpartition

Well actually I never specified MBR or GPT. I just did fdisk /dev/sda and then type n and then the number of the partition and the size. I assume fdisk by default assumed my disk was GPT. I actually I was thinking that fdisk will always create a MBR partition and gdisk a GPT one, but it seems it is the wrong view.

Could you tell me how can Switch this GPT partition to MBR? is it just sgdisk -m /dev/sda

Strike0

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2011-09-05

Posts: 1,489

Re: Wrong Fs type bad superblock bootpartition

I can be wrong and it is cfdisk that prompts for a partition table type. It's many tools for very similar purposes, yes.
I have never used the command but sgdisk -m reads right. Afterwards you can use another tool to verify it is ok.
edit: If you want to start over with a fresh device, you can also use shred --size to wipe the first megabytes with the partition table again.

Last edited by Strike0 (2022-02-04 10:12:29)