I had to format EFI partition, how to restore Solus boot?

Lahiri

Hello all,

I had to format EFI partition because my Windows boot entry was corrupted and I need Windows for work.
I managed to fix it re-creating a new EFI partition from scratch, but I don't know how to restore Solus boot.
I still have the OS installed, I just need to make it show up in the boot menu.

Thanks!

craigtoyoracer

Lahiri In the Help Center 🙂 https://getsol.us/articles/troubleshooting/boot-rescue/en/

stalebrim

Lahiri Make sure the EFI partition is fat32 and has esp flag. You can set that with gparted. Then follow the boot rescue guide to chroot into your system and trigger clr-boot-manager.

Lahiri

craigtoyoracer I already tried that, but it didn't solve the problem.

Patrice

Hi,
I would try to boot to your Solus system using Super Grub 2( https://www.supergrubdisk.org/super-grub2-disk/)
Then, once on your system, try to reinstall Grub.

nathanpainchaud

Patrice I think that before suggesting to reinstall Grub, it would be wise to know if @Lahiri boots in UEFI or legacy mode, and consequently whether they even use Grub at all.

Lahiri

nathanpainchaud I boot in EFI mode.
N1X3L I used that command in the past, but now I don't have the \EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi file in the EFI partition because it was formatted.

Bhibb

If OP does have an EFI system, then maybe reinstalling clr-boot to a fresh EFI partition might help? I haven't done it myself, but I keep a separate EFI partition just for Solus's clr-boot on my disk which has multiple distrobutions on it.

N1X3L

This may help solve the issue. I hope it works out!

craigtoyoracer

Lahiri Run these 2 commands

sudo eopkg up
sudo eopkg check | grep Broken | awk '{print $4}' | xargs sudo eopkg it --reinstall

Lahiri

craigtoyoracer I done that already, it's in the boot rescue guide. Unfortunately it didn't work.

Bhibb

@Lahiri I might try two different approaches:

Flash a Solus ISO to a USB and boot up. Run the Solus installer and try to point it at your new EFI partition (make sure to preserve the Windows one, I've been able to do something similar by clearing the "boot" flag on the EFI that belongs to the different OS, then after install, open up gparted and restore the flag), then I would see if you can just "use" the current installation of Solus as your OS. You would have to do manual partitioning scheme in order to do that, rather than the guided (entire disk) setup.

Or you could try to install Solus to a different machine and then copy the EFI partition to an external source. Then I would try to mount the old file system (again with the Solus USB) and copy the contents of the EFI partition that was freshly installed from the fresh install you just did. I have no idea if that works, though, and I'm sure there is magic going on in the background to set up an EFI partition, so you may have to edit some files or whatnot 🙁 Sorry I couldn't be more help.

Lahiri

I tried chrooting again from a Solus Live distro and I noticed I get this if I run clr-boot-manager update:

[ERROR] cbm (../src/bootman/update.c:L189): Cannot determine the currently running kernel

In debug mode:

sudo CBM_DEBUG=1 clr-boot-manager update

[DEBUG] cbm (../src/cli/cli.c:L142): No such file: //etc/kernel/update_efi_vars
[INFO] cbm (../src/bootman/bootman.c:L744): Current running kernel: 5.4.12-144.current
[DEBUG] cbm (../src/bootman/bootman.c:L140): systemd caps: 0x26, wanted: 0x02
[DEBUG] cbm (../src/bootman/bootman.c:L155): UEFI boot now selected (systemd)
[INFO] cbm (../src/bootman/bootman.c:L764): path ///etc/kernel/initrd.d does not exist
[INFO] cbm (../src/bootman/bootman.c:L764): path ///usr/lib/initrd.d does not exist
[INFO] cbm (../src/bootman/bootman.c:L459): Checking for mounted boot dir
[INFO] cbm (../src/bootman/bootman.c:L467): boot_dir is already mounted: /boot
[DEBUG] cbm (../src/bootman/update.c:L164): Now beginning update_native
[DEBUG] cbm (../src/bootman/update.c:L173): update_native: 4 available kernels
[ERROR] cbm (../src/bootman/update.c:L189): Cannot determine the currently running kernel
[SUCCESS] cbm (../src/bootman/update.c:L205): update_native: Bootloader updated
[DEBUG] cbm (../src/bootman/update.c:L230): update_native: Checking kernels for type current
[INFO] cbm (../src/bootman/update.c:L243): update_native: Default kernel for type current is ///usr/lib/kernel/com.solus-project.current.5.10.12-171
[SUCCESS] cbm (../src/bootman/update.c:L255): update_native: Installed tip for current: ///usr/lib/kernel/com.solus-project.current.5.10.12-171
[SUCCESS] cbm (../src/bootman/update.c:L269): update_native: Installed last_good kernel (current) (///usr/lib/kernel/com.solus-project.current.5.10.7-168)
[INFO] cbm (../src/bootman/bootman.c:L459): Checking for mounted boot dir
[INFO] cbm (../src/bootman/bootman.c:L467): boot_dir is already mounted: /boot
[SUCCESS] cbm (../src/bootman/update.c:L338): update_native: Default kernel for current is ///usr/lib/kernel/com.solus-project.current.5.10.12-171
[DEBUG] cbm (../src/bootman/update.c:L353): No kernel removals found\```

Is this any indication of a problem with the kernel?

stalebrim

Lahiri A wild guess, but I think you didn't do the chroot part correctly.

Lahiri

These are the exact commands I've used to chroot:

mkdir /target
mount /dev/sdc2 /target/
mount /dev/sdb5 /target/boot
mount --bind /proc /target/proc
mount --bind /dev /target/dev
mount --bind /sys /target/sys
chroot /target

Where sdc2 is the partition with the Solus installation and sdb5 the EFI partition.
Did I miss anything?