Arch Linux

rasmusblack

Member

Registered: 2024-05-24

Posts: 2

Dumped to GRUB shell after reboot [solved]

So I followed the installation guide on the wiki and attempted to install Arch in VirtualBox and I don’t think GRUB installed correctly. I’m using a separate EFI partition and I’m booting in EFI mode. I should note I used /efi as a mount point rather than /boot. I tried to manually find a kernel to boot from the shell and load it myself, because I suspect grub.conf is either incorrect or missing somehow, but I got a black screen when I attempted to boot it. I’ll include any additional information that I’m asked for, but I’m not sure what to include for now other than what I’ve already stated. Also worth noting; I can’t seem to force virtualbox to boot from the livedvd without disconnecting the vdi drive file, even though it’s first in the boot order. No idea why. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I’m new to Arch but I’m a gentoo veteran.

Last edited by rasmusblack (2024-05-24 20:13:18)

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 61,641

Re: Dumped to GRUB shell after reboot [solved]

It doesn't matter where you mount the ESP, but grub.cfg and the kernels/initramfs go into /boot (ie. likely the /boot directory on your root partition)
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB#Installation
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB#G … ation_file

How *exactly* did you install grub?

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rasmusblack

Member

Registered: 2024-05-24

Posts: 2

Re: Dumped to GRUB shell after reboot [solved]

How *exactly* did you install grub?

I used

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

I did some investigating today and found all of the relevant boot files in /boot, and /efi is totally empty. Obviously this is a problem. I manually changed the mountpoint back to /boot in fstab, since I figure just using /boot instead of /efi would be the path of least resistance here. I'm going to rerun grub-install using /boot instead and try again. Are there any relevant config files I need to modify to point to the new /boot partition?

EDIT: Well, that didn't work lol. I must be missing something here. The grub shell shows the empty efi/ directory still on my boot partition, and somehow the /boot directory is still just on my root filesystem partition. Tried to manually load the kernel and boot it and it hanged my system. I have no idea what is going on lol.

EDIT: I realized also that my grub.cfg was missing, so I generated one with grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg, and rebooted. Still dumping me to a shell. When I go to ls my /boot partition, it says "filesystem is unknown". It was vfat when I created it, idk if it got corrupted somehow during all of this or what lol. I'm gonna reboot the live environment and arch-chroot back in and see if I need to fsck it or something. I have a feeling that nothing is wrong with it though and that I am overlooking some totally obvious thing. I checked my root partition just out of curiosity and the /boot directory is indeed there again, however this time it is empty, which is obviously kind of alarming. If my kernel and everything is gone now I'll probably have to start the whole install over.

EDIT: Rebooted the live environment and chrooted back into everything and it's all fine; was able to mount /boot with no problem and everything is still there. Idk why grub was saying unknown filesystem. At this point I guess I am at a loss. Out of ideas.

EDIT: Just kidding, I guess. Idk what I forgot to do, but clearly it was something. Reran grub-install and then grub-mkconfig immediately after and rebooted as a last resort test and it Just Worked, so idk what was wrong. It works now though! Thank you!

Last edited by rasmusblack (2024-05-24 20:12:48)