Artix Linux Forum

Alright, I was able to find my bootloader inside the ISO and successfully boot into my system through GRUB.
However, there is still no boot entry, but at least I know it CAN boot so I can try and create it.

what is your hardware?

Quote from: JWJ212 – on 08 August 2023, 05:05:30

Alright, I was able to find my bootloader inside the ISO and successfully boot into my system through GRUB.
However, there is still no boot entry, but at least I know it CAN boot so I can try and create it.

And once you were able to boot to your system, did you just try sudo grud-install /dev/sd<the root partition>?

It seems from the description not related to entries in grub.cfg missing, but in the BIOS efi list. Yet in the first post the efibootmgr mentions a Grub entry, so it must be nearly there.
You need an EFI partition which you apparently have. This must be mounted on /boot/efi, if /boot is on it's own partition this must be mounted first on /boot, check /etc/fstab is correct, then run mkinitcpio -P if changes were made. Once you have /boot/efi mounted in your Artix install (you can do all this in a chroot and manually mount /boot/efi or boot with the help of the  iso) then run from within your new Artix OS:

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

With apparently 3 or 4 disks present, there could be some confusion possible - perhaps temporarily disable some from booting in the BIOS or even unplug / remove them to simplify matters until it's working.You will need the disk with the EFI partition and the Artix one (the NVMe drive it seems) if different. In my BIOS I had no obvious method to add EFI boot entries, but it was required and there was indeed a way, consulting the relevant Dell (in my case)  manual online showed how to do it.

Quote from: ####### – on 08 August 2023, 16:19:01

It seems from the description not related to entries in grub.cfg missing, but in the BIOS efi list. Yet in the first post the efibootmgr mentions a Grub entry, so it must be nearly there.
You need an EFI partition which you apparently have. This must be mounted on /boot/efi, if /boot is on it's own partition this must be mounted first on /boot, check /etc/fstab is correct, then run mkinitcpio -P if changes were made. Once you have /boot/efi mounted in your Artix install (you can do all this in a chroot and manually mount /boot/efi or boot with the help of the  iso) then run from within your new Artix OS:

Code: [Select]

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

With apparently 3 or 4 disks present, there could be some confusion possible - perhaps temporarily disable some from booting in the BIOS or even unplug / remove them to simplify matters until it's working.You will need the disk with the EFI partition and the Artix one (the NVMe drive it seems) if different. In my BIOS I had no obvious method to add EFI boot entries, but it was required and there was indeed a way, consulting the relevant Dell (in my case)  manual online showed how to do it.

Alright, after unplugging all of my drives mounting my efi partition to /boot/efi as before and reinstalling grub it still is not functioning. I have been looking around to see how to manually add boot entries in my bios (MSI Click Bios 5) and the only info I found was in this forum post
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?threads/click-bios-5-uefi-boot-entry-management.294360/

“ I've contacted MSI technical support. The outcome of our chatting was:
  - there are no options to manage UEFI boot entries from Click BIOS 5;
  - they are not planning to implement them.”

So I am kind of at a loss here, I may try to move the actual EFI file around and see if this changes anything.

I ran
efibootmgr --create --disk /devnvme1n1 --part 1 --loader /boot/efi/EFI/grub/grubx64.efi --label "GRUB Boot Manager" --unicode
and got the output

BootCurrent: 0005
Timeout: 2 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0005,0006,0004,0001,0003
Boot0001* Hard Drive    BBS(HD,,0x0)/VenHw(5ce8128b-2cec-40f0-8372-80640e3dc858,0200)
Boot0003  Windows Boot Manager  HD(2,GPT,297e9aef-059f-4ff5-81e6-54220a803a5a,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI)
Boot0004* USB HDD       BBS(HD,,0x0)/VenHw(5ce8128b-2cec-40f0-8372-80640e3dc858,0900)
Boot0005* UEFI:  USB DISK 3.0 PMAP      PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(17,0)/CDROM(1,0x18842c,0x8000)
Boot0006* UEFI:  USB DISK 3.0 PMAP, Partition 1 PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(17,0)/HD(1,MBR,0x0,0x18842c,0x2000)
Boot0000* GRUB Boot Manager     HD(1,GPT,3c41c4d6-0d5b-40fa-97ef-dc221050c4f5,0x800,0x200000)/File(\boot\efi\EFI\grub\grubx64.efi)

It's hidden in a spoiler in the first post, but this seems to be EFI:

Quote

I ran
efibootmgr --create --disk /devnvme1n1 --part 1 --loader /boot/efi/EFI/grub/grubx64.efi --label "GRUB Boot Manager" --unicode
and got the output

BootCurrent: 0005
Timeout: 2 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0005,0006,0004,0001,0003
Boot0001* Hard Drive    BBS(HD,,0x0)/VenHw(5ce8128b-2cec-40f0-8372-80640e3dc858,0200)
Boot0003  Windows Boot Manager  HD(2,GPT,297e9aef-059f-4ff5-81e6-54220a803a5a,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI)
Boot0004* USB HDD       BBS(HD,,0x0)/VenHw(5ce8128b-2cec-40f0-8372-80640e3dc858,0900)
Boot0005* UEFI:  USB DISK 3.0 PMAP      PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(17,0)/CDROM(1,0x18842c,0x8000)
Boot0006* UEFI:  USB DISK 3.0 PMAP, Partition 1 PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(17,0)/HD(1,MBR,0x0,0x18842c,0x2000)
Boot0000* GRUB Boot Manager     HD(1,GPT,3c41c4d6-0d5b-40fa-97ef-dc221050c4f5,0x800,0x200000)/File(\boot\efi\EFI\grub\grubx64.efi)

And here you can change your UEFI boot order in this BIOS:
https://us.msi.com/support/technical_details/DT_Boot_Priority (https://us.msi.com/support/technical_details/DT_Boot_Priority)

In the above output you can see grub getting mentioned, so efibootmgr could potentially add a UEFI boot entry to the available options you would think. I'm not sure if it's just a typo but some of that command looks suspect -  /devnvme1n1 - shouldn't there be a / after dev?

also GPT needs some empty space at the end of the drive.

The Debian wiki suggests this including the -w flag:
https://wiki.debian.org/UEFI#efibootmgr_and_efivar (https://wiki.debian.org/UEFI#efibootmgr_and_efivar)
efibootmgr example 3 - add a new boot entry
Create a new boot entry, pointing to a bootloader program on disk /dev/sdb, partition 1; write a new signature to the MBR if needed; call it "debian"; the bootloader program is in \EFI\debian\grubx64.efi
# efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sdb -p 1 -w -L debian -l '\EFI\debian\grubx64.efi'

I installed Devuan a while ago and the installation automatically set everything to boot via Devuan grub which I didn't actually want, so they have it working somehow, although more recently yet on another machine I selected advance install for Devuan and didn't install Grub to avoid this, but then it wiped my efi partition and left it empty so nothing booted until it was fixed from an Artix iso. But on that one I added the new entry from the BIOS.

Edit:

Code: [Select]

$ sudo efibootmgr -c -d /dev/nvme0n1 -p 1 -w -L debian -l '\EFI\debian\grubx64.efi'
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 2 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,0000,0002
Boot0000* grub  HD(1,GPT,bfd2969f-503a-4bb5-b0aa-a43f42d9b357,0x4000,0x96000)/File(\EFI\grub\grubx64.efi)
Boot0006* Windows Boot Manager  HD(2,GPT,eef60966-cfb1-44c0-9bfc-42086db2b591,0x96800,0xfa000)/File(\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi)57494e444f575300010000008800000078000000
4200430044004f0042004a004500430054003d007b00390064006500610038003600320063002d0035006300640064002d0034006500370030002d0061006300630031002d00660033003200620033003400340064003
4003700390035007d00000000720100000010000000040000007fff0400
Boot0001* debian        HD(1,GPT,bfd2969f-503a-4bb5-b0aa-a43f42d9b357,0x4000,0x96000)/File(\EFI\debian\grubx64.efi)

That certainly created a new entry for a non-existent debian which appeared in my BIOS uefi boot options when I tried just now. (I don't have Windows installed, that's just some relic in the BIOS from past use, or some default thing I guess.)

I think I read somewhere that some EFI BIOS implementations can only hold a limited number of entries and you need to delete one if there are none left - I leave it to you to consider which if any you wish to delete at your own risk, and quite likely it won't help either, after all nothing else so far has.  ;D
It might be possible to hijack an existing entry by somehow duplicating a uuid, filename and location, but I have no idea if that could work in reality...

On my Acer ES1-732, you have to work on the "vfat" partition after installing grub. Here are my notes that might inspire you:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you can't boot a system you just installed, boot in live mode and detect the "vfat" partition with the "GPT" label:
sudo blkid
/dev/sda4: UUID="B772-4C60" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="GPT" PARTUUID="cca063d4-6381-4c12-970f-986c81ead4aa"

On my Acer this vfat partition is on /dev/sda4

mount the partition of the system that we have just installed (for example on /dev/sda2):
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
sudo mkdir /mnt/boot/efi
sudo mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/boot/efi


Create the EFI directory
sudo mkdir /mnt/boot/efi/EFI

Copy or move /mnt/boot/efi/artix/grubx64 file next to /mnt/boot/efi/EFI/BOOT and rename it to bootx64.

sudo cp /mnt/boot/efi/artix/grubx64.efi /mnt/boot/efi/EFI/bootx64.efi

Reboot and it should work

If I'm not wrong, when grub will need to be reinstalled (doesn't usually happen but last autumn an update needed it for instance) you'll have to copy that file again. Just something to keep in mind :)