Arch Linux

lsnso

Member

Registered: 2022-09-15

Posts: 2

GRUB wont load and forces BIOS menu

Hey!
I was dualbooting Windows 10 with Arch and using GRUB as the bootloader.
Today I got the following error when turning on the PC:

error: file /boot/grub/locale/C.gmo not found.

The PC proceeds to boot into the BIOS menu and I am currently unable to use my laptop.
Any help would be appreciated as I do not know how to fix this issue by myself.

Thanks!

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,263

Re: GRUB wont load and forces BIOS menu

You should've followed the news: https://archlinux.org/news/grub-bootloa … ibilities/

Now you will need to boot into a live system, chroot into your root partition, mount your partitions with

mount -a

, check the mount table with mount, and reinstall grub into the ESP/disk as relevant. Look at the corresponding section of: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB

Since there's no way that this breakage can "just" happen on a normal Arch system, what are you actually running?

Last edited by V1del (2022-09-15 20:28:06)

lilikoi

Member

Registered: 2022-02-01

Posts: 23

Re: GRUB wont load and forces BIOS menu

I had the same issue, with ``file /boot/grub/locale/C.gmo not found.''. I tried to reinstall grub multiple times but that specific file did not get generated at all. Instead, I had to copy and rename a grub file as per user `aja' comment: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=165821

And I *am* using Arch Linux.

Last edited by lilikoi (2022-09-15 22:24:04)

cfr

Member

From: Cymru

Registered: 2011-11-27

Posts: 7,178

Re: GRUB wont load and forces BIOS menu

I had the same issue, with ``file /boot/grub/locale/C.gmo not found.''. I tried to reinstall grub multiple times but that specific file did not get generated at all. Instead, I had to copy and rename a grub file as per user `aja' comment: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=165821

And I *am* using Arch Linux.

That issue was due to a bug, long since fixed. If this is a packaging issue, did you report the bug?

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V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,263

Re: GRUB wont load and forces BIOS menu

None of these will magically happen on their own. You need to have your lang/locale setup correctly ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Locale … tem_locale - C is generally a last ditch effort fallback, and if you get that error message then your locale wasn't set up properly before running the grub-install command ) when running the grub-install command  and that error should not generally be fatal to GRUB (and would again, not happen out of the blue on a previously working Arch install without running grub-mkconfig explicitly without reinstalling GRUB).

Last edited by V1del (2022-09-16 09:24:21)

lilikoi

Member

Registered: 2022-02-01

Posts: 23

Re: GRUB wont load and forces BIOS menu

I checked all my environment and locale settings after Arch Wiki and all seems to be fine with "$LANG=en_US.UTF-8" set as system defaults.

Upon rerunning grub-install and grub-mkconfig, still no "C.gmo" file was generated at /boot/grub/locale/ .

I filled a bug report on this seemingly issue as asked here, it was my first bug report: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/75928

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,263

Re: GRUB wont load and forces BIOS menu

The file is not supposed to be there as it would rather use an actual locale granted one is configured correctly. What's your output of

 sudo locale
sudo locale -a

lilikoi

Member

Registered: 2022-02-01

Posts: 23

Re: GRUB wont load and forces BIOS menu

Thanks, V1del.
Uhm...  here is the output of locale:

me@archhost ~ % sudo locale                                              18:07
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES=
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
me@archhost ~ % sudo locale -a                                                                                                   18:07
C
C.utf8
C.UTF-8
en_GB.utf8
en_US.utf8
POSIX
pt_BR.utf8

I note that all but "$LC_MESSAGES" is not set. UPDATE: It so happens $LC_MESSAGES is only unset when under TMUX.

root archhost:/home/me $ cat /etc/locale.conf
LANG=en_US.UTF-8

PS: I tried to define "LANG=C" in /etc/default/grub as per ref from my bug report comment: https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/a … sues/10816
Defining and exporting "$LANG" from the shell does not help either.

Last edited by lilikoi (2022-09-20 02:23:53)