this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Update from this post from the other day: What to know before Dual Booting Windows + Linux?

TLDR: I got it working, started learning, tried to fix a grub issue and borked the whole system.


So after considering all the advice, I went and disabled/prepped/backed up, and started the process. I managed to get Fedora KDE installed on another partition and everything was looking ok. I installed some programs, started learning for a few hours, but there was one small issue. The grub configuration from the video didn't really work. Windows wasn't booting by default, and when I tried to do the GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true to have it boot the last OS, it also didn't work. When booting windows, a message would flash by saying '/EFI/fedora/grubenv' not found.

Looking more into it, the video says to use sudo grub2-mkconfig -o boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg but I think the correct one now is grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg? I found this thread, but I couldn't run the first command because it gave a conflict error, and I think there were two versions of grub2 installed?

So anyways, I tried running the setup again, thought it was ok and did a reboot to test... and got hit with a black screen with minimal BASH like line editing is supported.

At this point I'm a little worried and lost, thinking maybe I wasn't ready to try this, and trying to get it back the way it was. I found this guide, but I get stuck trying to mount the EFI partition.

Any tips on where to go from here? Right now I plugged in the USB I used earlier, booted Fedora from it, and opened the terminal. Past that I'm a bit lost on how to fix grub.

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[–] luthis 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82/boot/grub$ find . -name normal.mod

./x86_64-efi/normal.mod

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82/boot/grub$ ls

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82/boot/grub$ vi grub.cfg

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82/boot/grub$ cd ../..

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo mount -o bind /dev dev

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo mount -o bind /proc proc

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ chroot .

chroot: cannot change root directory to '.': Operation not permitted

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo chroot .

[root@mint /]# find . -name grubx64.efi

[root@mint /]# sudo fdisk -l

sudo: unable to allocate pty: No such device

[root@mint /]# exit

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ mount -o bind /dev/pts dev/pts

mount: /media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82/dev/pts: must be superuser to use mount.

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo mount -o bind /dev/pts dev/pts

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo chroot .

[root@mint /]# sudo fdisk -l

[root@mint /]# lsblk

lsblk: failed to access sysfs directory: /sys/dev/block: No such file or directory

[root@mint /]# exit

exit

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo mount -t sysfs /sys /mnt/sys

mount: /mnt/sys: mount point does not exist.

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo mount -t sysfs /sys

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo mount -t sysfs /sys sys

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo chroot .

[root@mint /]# lsblk

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS

loop0 7:0 0 2.6G 1 loop

sda 8:0 1 14.6T 0 disk

└─sda1 8:1 1 14.6T 0 part

sdb 8:16 0 476.9G 0 disk

└─sdb1 8:17 0 476.9G 0 part

sdc 8:32 1 232.9G 0 disk

├─sdc1 8:33 1 223.1G 0 part

└─sdc2 8:34 1 9.8G 0 part [SWAP]

sdd 8:48 1 14.6T 0 disk

└─sdd1 8:49 1 14.6T 0 part

sde 8:64 1 29.1G 0 disk

├─sde1 8:65 1 2.8G 0 part

├─sde2 8:66 1 4.1M 0 part

└─sde3 8:67 1 26.4G 0 part

nvme0n1 259:0 0 931.5G 0 disk

├─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 500M 0 part

├─nvme0n1p2 259:2 0 2G 0 part

└─nvme0n1p3 259:3 0 929G 0 part /

[root@mint /]# fdisk -l

[root@mint /]# mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /efi

[root@mint /]# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=efi --bootloader-id=GRUB

Installing for x86_64-efi platform.

Installation finished. No error reported.

[–] luthis 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

So for a step by step,

I booted into Mint and opened a terminal and cd to my OS drive.

I checked my grub folder:

mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82/boot/grub$ ls

fonts grub.cfg grub.cfg.broke grubenv locale themes x86_64-efi

made an edit with vi (irrelevant here)

went back to / on my OS drive

mounted the various partitions needed, that's all the mount -o bind commands, dev, proc, dev/pts, sys

then chroot to my OS drive so that I'm working inside my Arch install not the Mint install

then I mount the efi and grub install

[root@mint /]# mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /efi

[root@mint /]# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=efi --bootloader-id=GRUB