Arch Linux

LabRicecat

Member

Registered: 2023-09-10

Posts: 36

[SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

Heya!

So today I wanted to shrink my sda1 partition to create space for some swap. I did that using cfdisk, and removed 21GB (exact data about my system in a bit). I then set it up by using mkswap, swapon and regenerated my fstab.
After a reboot, I ran into this problem, where now when I boot my PC up, I only get this message

error: unknown filesystem.
Entering rescue mode...
grub rescue>

I started up my arch linux live ISO, and tried to mount /dev/sda1 to /mnt, giving me yet again an error with unknown filesystem.
I figured out that I hadn't resized the table of the partition!
Afterwards I tried to use resize2fs and e2fsck, with no success. I gave up and used cfdisk to revert my changes, removing the new partition and appending it to sda1.
After a reboot, I was able to mount /dev/sda1 and everything looked normal. I was able to arch-chroot and everything was still there as before.
I once again regenerated  my fstab and reinstalled linux via pacman to let it regenerate stuff that might have been changed.

Yet, now I still have the grub rescue screen whenever I boot. I dont even use grub, I use limine. I reinstalled limine using my live ISO, but still the same error.

What can I do? My filesystem is working, and df in the live ISO told me its ext4!

About my PC:

Partitions:
- sda1  / ext4 421GB
- sda2 /home ext4 500GB
- sda3 /boot FAT32 

Its all on one SSD.

The size I took off sda1 was 21GB, because it looked convenient.

Thanks a lot!!

Last edited by LabRicecat (2023-11-19 19:43:31)

ua4000

Member

Registered: 2015-10-14

Posts: 558

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

Hi,
before shrinking the partition, you must shrink the ext4 filesystem, then afterwards the partition.
Make a backup before.
If this sound too risky, I recommend to use a swapfile instead of a swap partition:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Swap#Swap_file

LabRicecat

Member

Registered: 2023-09-10

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

I now properly added 21GB of swap using firstly resize2fs and cfdisk, but even then grub rescue complains about unknown filesystems, the life ISO tells me everything is fine..

What I did on the live system:

# e2fsck -f /dev/sda1
# resize2fs /dev/sda1 400G
# cfdisk
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/home
# mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/boot
# mkswap /dev/sda4
# swapon /dev/sda4
# genfstab -U /mnt > /mnt/etc/fstab
# reboot

Last edited by LabRicecat (2023-11-18 12:42:17)

LabRicecat

Member

Registered: 2023-09-10

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

I dont understand at all, why the grub rescue starts, I dont have grub installed.
I ran find -name "*grub*" and not a single file was found, this is weird..

Now also redid the installation process of /boot described in the installation guide, still the same grub rescue message. :c

Last edited by LabRicecat (2023-11-18 13:23:04)

LabRicecat

Member

Registered: 2023-09-10

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

I now _also_ uninstalled limine and installed grub, thinking maybe I had a broken grub installation somehow, but no, that also does not do anything and still causes the same message as shown above.

LabRicecat

Member

Registered: 2023-09-10

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

Okay I now can only guess that my PC must be haunted, I reinstalled my /dev/sda1 (root) and /dev/sda3 (boot) from scratch, and I still get this message.
Maybe it has something to do with the UEFI?

ua4000

Member

Registered: 2015-10-14

Posts: 558

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

"maybe UEFI" troubles me - this is a major difference and must be considered for grub.
Did you follow https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB ?
Then you must come at the point, were you have either a UEFI system, or a BIOS system...
I have to ask, did you use https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide at all ? There is the step "Verify the boot mode" ...

LabRicecat

Member

Registered: 2023-09-10

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

I said before I use limine, not grub.
And yes I used the installation guide, and yes I read it carefully.
I also followed the UEFI guide for limine on the arch wiki, not the BIOS one.

Last edited by LabRicecat (2023-11-18 17:56:24)

ua4000

Member

Registered: 2015-10-14

Posts: 558

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

I think we are at grub now ?

I now _also_ uninstalled limine and installed grub

/boot == sda3  is  also your EFI system partition  ?

LabRicecat

Member

Registered: 2023-09-10

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

Sorry I should have clarified, I switched back to limine after grub was not working.
For testing, someone who uses grub helped me install it _again_, but still the same result. (I am now at grub)
Also yes, sda3 is my EFI partition I marked as bootable.

ua4000

Member

Registered: 2015-10-14

Posts: 558

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

(I am now at grub)

ok, going with grub and UEFI mode:
please follow the steps here https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB#UEFI_systems, and post all used commands and output here.
Please report anything strange or come back if a step us unclear for you.
Afterwards show the partition and file-system layout, the content of /boot and output of efibootmgr.

Sanity check: Bios is set to to an UEFI boot entry "GRUB", not a BIOS disk ?

LabRicecat

Member

Registered: 2023-09-10

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

Sorry for the late response.
I now wiped my whole SSD, and installed everything from scratch following closely the arch installation guide.
Yet again, even after all that, the same message persists.

Update on everything now, I am sorry about the many changes.
Current bootloader: limine
Config: the one from the arch limine guide, but with my root partition UUID set.
Paritions:

/dev/sda1: fat32 : 500MiB : /boot ( set as bootable with cfdisk )
/dev/sda2 : swap : 21G
/dev/sda3 : ext4 : 400GB : /
/dev/sda4 : ext4 : 500GB : /home

To whipe I did

# cat /dev/zero > /dev/sdaX
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3
# mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda4
# swapon /dev/sda2
# mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/sda1
# cfdisk  #<- set /dev/sda1 as bootable

But the lines

error: unknown filesystem.
Entering rescue mode...
grub rescue>

still occurs upon boot. I rebooted and did a complete poweroff...
I am running out of ideas. I swear I only did what the arch install guide told me.

Any ideas what might have caused this and how I can fix it?
Thanks!

ua4000

Member

Registered: 2015-10-14

Posts: 558

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

I now wiped my whole SSD
...
# cat /dev/zero > /dev/sdaX

No, that wipes only the partition X, not the whole disk, whole disk would be /dev/sda without X.
If you had unintentionally made the grub steps for "BIOS system" then grub resides in the 1st blocks on the disk, and these may exists there still and are used when you set your Bios boot order wrong:
That's why I was asking for:

Sanity check: Bios is set to to an UEFI boot entry "GRUB", not a BIOS disk ?

Edit: also look out for "CSM Support" in that bios section

Last edited by ua4000 (2023-11-19 15:36:15)

LabRicecat

Member

Registered: 2023-09-10

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

Sorry with the X i meant I ran it on all the partitions.
I dont understand what you mean by that question, I'm sorry. Can you explain it a little simpler?
When I was installing grub, I did the 3 steps in 2.1 Installation and ran

# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB

if thats what you mean. I am quite sure I did not do the BIOS installation for grub, as I did not scroll that far down.

Last edited by LabRicecat (2023-11-19 15:41:29)

ua4000

Member

Registered: 2015-10-14

Posts: 558

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

Sorry with the X i meant I ran it on all the partitions.

Again: cycling with X through all partitions will probably not erase the entire disk, and may skip the grub bootloader code in the mbr, the 1st block.

Let's have a look at the mbr, if it contains grub

sudo file -s /dev/sda
sudo head -c 512 /dev/sda | strings

LabRicecat

Member

Registered: 2023-09-10

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

Oh!

# file -s /dev/sda
DOS/MBR boot sector
# head -c 512 /dev/sda | strings
ZRr=
`|f
\|f1
GRUB
Geom
Hard Disk
Read
 Error

Your theory seems to be correct, but what now?

Last edited by LabRicecat (2023-11-19 17:06:30)

LabRicecat

Member

Registered: 2023-09-10

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

To add context, this is the output of fdisk

# fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 931.52 GiB, 1000207286272 bytes, 1953529856 sectors
Disk model: WDC WDS100T2G0A-
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: 0x9def3ced

Device     Boot     Start        End    Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *         2048    1026047    1024000  500M 83 Linux
/dev/sda2         1026048   45066239   44040192   21G 83 Linux
/dev/sda3        45066240  883927039  838860800  400G 83 Linux
/dev/sda4       883927040 1953529855 1069602816  510G 83 Linux

Last edited by LabRicecat (2023-11-19 17:22:20)

ua4000

Member

Registered: 2015-10-14

Posts: 558

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

Disklabel type: dos

This suggests, you are using "3.1 BIOS system"  and not "3.2 UEFI system"  from https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Limine ?
And if you follow the "BIOS system" steps, there is

# limine bios-install /dev/sdX

which surly replaces grub by Limine.
(Note: the X stands only for a letter - not the partition number)

Or did you follow chapter "3.2 UEFI systems" ?
Please post a

efibootmgr -uv
sudo cat /sys/firmware/efi/fw_platform_size

LabRicecat

Member

Registered: 2023-09-10

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

A friend of mine suggested to simply redo the installation, but beforehand clear the MBR by running

# cat /dev/zero > /dev/sda

Now I did that, reinstalled using the guide and got, finally, a different error!

Reboot and Select proper Booz device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key

In my BIOS I see my SSD as boot option and selected it.

Some information:

# cat /sys/firmware/efi/fw_platform_size
64
# gdisk -l /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.9.1

Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 1953529856 sectors, 931.5 GiB
Model: WDC WDS100T2G0A-
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 466E899B-46D2-4D16-BEF6-24662D253761
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 2048, last usable sector is 1953529822
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2015 sectors (1007.5 KiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048         1026047   500.0 MiB   EF00  
   2         1026048        45066239   21.0 GiB    8200  
   3        45066240       883927039   400.0 GiB   8300  
   4       883927040      1953527807   510.0 GiB   8300  
# file -s /dev/sda
/dev/sda: DOS/MBR boot sector; partition 1 : ID=0xee, start-CHS (0x0,0,2), end-CHS (0x3ff,255,63), startsector 1, 1953529855 sectors, extended partition table (last)
# efibootmgr -uv
BootCurrent: 0002
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0002,0001
Boot0001* Festplatte 	BBS(HD,,0x0)䵁佇䵁低¯
Boot0002* UEFI: KingstonDataTraveler 3.0	PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1a,0x0)/USB(1,0)/USB(2,0)/HD(1,MBR,0xfd38acc6,0x18c000,0x7800)䵁佂

(Boot0002 is my live USB)

ua4000

Member

Registered: 2015-10-14

Posts: 558

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

efibootmgr shows, that you did not added Limine.
The step is mentioned in the Limine wiki, but you may have overlooked it, because it's maybe not clear enough this step is mandatory. (I will have a look to make it better)
You need to add a boot option for Limine:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unifie … efibootmgr
Give it nice name, e.g. "limine", then you should find this name next time in Bios to select as boot device.

Run

# efibootmgr -uv

after adding the Limine entry - "limine" should be listed there.

LabRicecat

Member

Registered: 2023-09-10

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

Running the said efibootmgr command yields the following error:

# efibootmgr --create --disk /dev/sda --part 1 --loader /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI --label "limine" --unicode
EFI variables are not supported on this system.

I was unsure and ran it both on the mounted sda1 (with everything mounted) and in the live ISO.
What do I do?

Edit: I have the suspicion previously trying to boot the SSD, failing and then booting the live USB caused a problem, let me see if thats it..

Edit2: Yes! That was it. I was able to set it.

# efibootmgr -uv
BootCurrent: 0002
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0002,0001
Boot0000* limine	HD(1,GPT,9d4d6ace-2980-4f61-8ba9-d756ad6cc015,0x800,0xfa000)/File(\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI)
      dp: 04 01 2a 00 01 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 a0 0f 00 00 00 00 00 ce 6a 4d 9d 80 29 61 4f 8b a9 d7 56 ad 6c c0 15 02 02 / 04 04 30 00 5c 00 45 00 46 00 49 00 5c 00 42 00 4f 00 4f 00 54 00 5c 00 42 00 4f 00 4f 00 54 00 58 00 36 00 34 00 2e 00 45 00 46 00 49 00 00 00 / 7f ff 04 00
Boot0001* Festplatte 	BBS(HD,,0x0)䵁佇䵁低¯
      dp: 05 01 09 00 02 00 00 00 00 / 7f ff 04 00
    data: 41 4d 47 4f 41 4d 4e 4f af 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 6f 00 57 00 44 00 43 00 20 00 57 00 44 00 53 00 31 00 30 00 30 00 54 00 32 00 47 00 30 00 41 00 2d 00 30 00 30 00 4a 00 48 00 33 00 30 00 00 00 05 01 09 00 02 00 00 00 00 7f ff 04 00 02 01 0c 00 d0 41 03 0a 00 00 00 00 01 01 06 00 02 1f 03 12 0a 00 01 00 ff ff 00 00 7f ff 04 00 01 04 3e 00 ef 47 64 2d c9 3b a0 41 ac 19 4d 51 d0 1b 4c e6 30 00 32 00 36 00 34 00 4e 00 36 00 35 00 34 00 38 00 35 00 39 00 30 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 00 00 7f ff 04 00 41 4d 42 4f 41 4d 4e 4f bd 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 79 00 4b 00 69 00 6e 00 67 00 73 00 74 00 6f 00 6e 00 44 00 61 00 74 00 61 00 54 00 72 00 61 00 76 00 65 00 6c 00 65 00 72 00 20 00 33 00 2e 00 30 00 00 00 05 01 09 00 02 00 00 00 00 7f ff 04 00 02 01 0c 00 d0 41 03 0a 00 00 00 00 01 01 06 00 00 1a 03 05 06 00 01 00 03 05 06 00 02 00 7f ff 04 00 01 04 46 00 ef 47 64 2d c9 3b a0 41 ac 19 4d 51 d0 1b 4c e6 4b 00 69 00 6e 00 67 00 73 00 74 00 6f 00 6e 00 44 00 61 00 74 00 61 00 54 00 72 00 61 00 76 00 65 00 6c 00 65 00 72 00 20 00 33 00 2e 00 30 00 00 00 7f ff 04 00 41 4d 42 4f
Boot0002* UEFI: KingstonDataTraveler 3.0	PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1a,0x0)/USB(1,0)/USB(2,0)/HD(1,MBR,0xfd38acc6,0x18c000,0x7800)䵁佂
      dp: 02 01 0c 00 d0 41 03 0a 00 00 00 00 / 01 01 06 00 00 1a / 03 05 06 00 01 00 / 03 05 06 00 02 00 / 04 01 2a 00 01 00 00 00 00 c0 18 00 00 00 00 00 00 78 00 00 00 00 00 00 c6 ac 38 fd 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 / 7f ff 04 00
    data: 41 4d 42 4f

Last edited by LabRicecat (2023-11-19 19:40:06)

ua4000

Member

Registered: 2015-10-14

Posts: 558

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

in your previous output your have booted in UEFI mode:

# cat /sys/firmware/efi/fw_platform_size
64

You need to do this again. Post this "cat" again and the output of invoking efibootmgr.

Last edited by ua4000 (2023-11-19 19:41:07)

LabRicecat

Member

Registered: 2023-09-10

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] Wont boot after reinstall, grub rescue instead

I was finally able to boot into my system!!
Many thanks ua4000, I will mark this thread finally as solved now.

My week is saved!