Arch Linux

0x152a

Member

Registered: Yesterday

Posts: 4

[SOLVED] GRUB 2.16-1 boot failure: lvmid/* not found, 2.14-1 works

I have a LUKS-encrypted Btrfs root partition with encrypted /boot and there is not LVM partition.

After upgrading to grub version 2.16-1 and reboot, GRUB failed before grub menu:

apfs.efi: LocateProtocol(AppleLogging) succeeded
error: kern/disk.c:grub_disk_open:240:disk 'lvmid/nsGck5-xZW2-He3a-qfeP-VELi-2dDP-n9x1BN/YptBAm-zNjc-Xhdd-Jrcq-nsFm-OwBQ-PuBkG9' not found.
Entering rescue mode...
grub rescue> set
cmdpath='(hd1,gpt1)/EFI/BOOT'
prefix='(lvmid/nsGck5-xZW2-He3a-qfeP-VELi-2dDP-n9x1BN/YptBAm-zNjc-Xhdd-Jrcq-nsFm
-OwBQ-PuBkG9)/grub'
root='lvmid/nsGck5-xZW2-He3a-qfeP-VELi-2dDP-n9x1BN/YptBAm-zNjc-Xhdd-Jrcq-nsFm-Ow
BQ-PuBkG9'
grub rescue>

prefix= and root= are set to lvmid/*. Because of that, GRUB cannot load `fat`, `luks2`, etc, and cannot unlock the LUKS partition.

Downgrading to GRUB 2.14-1 and reinstall grub fixes the problem.

I'm using linux-t2 kernel provided by t2linux on a 2019 macbook pro, but I think it is unrelated.
`uname -a`: Linux mact2 7.2.7-arch1-Watanare-T2-1-t2 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sat, 26 Sep 2026 17:39:28 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I checked after asking llm:
- `wipefs -n /dev/nvme0n1*` reports no lvm signature
- `grub-probe -t device /boot/grub` prints `/dev/mapper/crypt` and grub-probe -t abstraction --device /dev/mapper/crypt prints no lvm
- `efivar -l | grep -i grub` is empty

I tried without success:
- I found Grub fails to detect LVM volumes with: error: disk `lvmid/*/*' not found but that was fixed in 2024
- rerun grub-mkconfig
- reinstall grub following arch wiki
- GRUB_PRELOAD_MODULES="part_gpt part_msdos"

Is it a known regression in GRUB 2.16? Any workaround besides downgrading to `2.14-1`?
Should I report this upstream, and if so, what additional logs would be useful?

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Last edited by 0x152a (Today 13:08:56)

frostschutz

Member

Registered: 2013-11-15

Posts: 1,657

Re: [SOLVED] GRUB 2.16-1 boot failure: lvmid/* not found, 2.14-1 works

Maybe try installing with --verbose and see if there are any differences between versions?

0x152a

Member

Registered: Yesterday

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] GRUB 2.16-1 boot failure: lvmid/* not found, 2.14-1 works

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ve uploaded both logs to gist

I diffed them and found:

- 2.16-1 does not delete the original efi boot entry but 2.14-1 does. However, I deleted the EFI entry and re-ran `grub-install`, and after reboot I still get the same prefix= and root=. So the EFI variable itself is not the root cause.

- 2.16-1 pulls in some additional modules and the core.efi/grub.efi becomes larger. I can't tell if any of these modules are related — I'm just listing what changed. 2.16 removes efi_uga.mod and pulls in tpcm.mod, tpm_record_pcrs.mod, mfa.mod, mldsa_test.mod, gcry_pubkey_dilithium.mod, dsa_sexp_test.mod, efibootnext.mod, virtionet.mod, xen_boot.mod
 
I checked efibootmgr -v, and the efi entry correctly points to \EFI\GRUB\grubx64.efi on the ESP in both version.

Also, the lvmid/nsGck5-... id does not exists in /boot/grub/grub.cfg and /boot/efi/EFI/GRUB/grubx64.efi in both version.

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 15,442

Re: [SOLVED] GRUB 2.16-1 boot failure: lvmid/* not found, 2.14-1 works

You may be bitten by a recent change in systemd/mkinicpio , see https://archlinux.org/news/mkinitcpio-4 … s-devices/

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

0x152a

Member

Registered: Yesterday

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] GRUB 2.16-1 boot failure: lvmid/* not found, 2.14-1 works

Thanks for the pointer, but I don't think this is tpm2-related. That news affecting LUKS unlock in the initramfs stage. My failure happens much earlier, inside grub itself, before grub.cfg is even loaded, GRUB misdetects an lvmid/nsGck5-... device that doesn't exist. Also, T2 Macs I'm using don't have a standard tpm 2.0. The T2 chip provides similar security functions, but it's not a tpm-compliant module that systemd-cryptenroll would target.

frostschutz

Member

Registered: 2013-11-15

Posts: 1,657

Re: [SOLVED] GRUB 2.16-1 boot failure: lvmid/* not found, 2.14-1 works

At a glance I don't see how it's possible with the output you provided. Could it be that for some reason or other, it boots a different image or device that causes this error?

Check with grep if you can find this string nsGck5 anywhere in /boot /efi /etc (or other locations and media if applicable).

0x152a

Member

Registered: Yesterday

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] GRUB 2.16-1 boot failure: lvmid/* not found, 2.14-1 works

Could it be that for some reason or other, it boots a different image or device that causes this error?

That's true, there's a /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI that has the lvmid, and I found that all the efi files grub2.16 generates does not run on t2linux.

So this is a t2linux specific problem with grub 2.16 then. Marking this as solved. Thanks for the pointer.