MX boot repair problem...

[R_S_I]

Hi!

After I used (from live usb) MX boot repair, I get always on GRUB start the message "error: file /grub/i386-pc/normal.mod not found". Can't boot my MX Linux.

Any idea what's going wrong?

[CharlesV]

Please post your QSI

[R_S_I]

It's already posted here: viewtopic.php?t=75746
But I copy it again...

The only difference is that I now only have one SSD with MX Linux in the PC and have removed the other two Windows hard drives. /dev/sdc is now /dev/sda. Therefore I had to do a boot repair. However, this did not work. I tried it from the MX Live and I tried in the usb live system Grub Rescue. Nothing worked, although practically nothing has changed.
Grub was previously installed on the 1st hard drive (which had a Windows on it) and I always used Grub as the boot manager.
I do not understand why MX Boot Repair does not work or the above error message comes. MX Boot Repair did not report any errors when running. Installed was in the MBR. /boot is the 1st partition.
I also tried a manual chroot and manually installed GRUB on the MX Linux SSD. But did not work either!

QSI:

Code: Select all

System:    Kernel: 5.10.0-23-amd64 [5.10.179-1] x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1 
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-5.10.0-23-amd64 root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet splash 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.18.1 tk: Gtk 3.24.24 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm 4.18.0 vt: 1 
           dm: LightDM 1.26.0 Distro: MX-21.3_x64 Wildflower March 31  2021 
           base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) 
Machine:   Type: Desktop Mobo: ASRock model: 870 Extreme3 R2.0 serial: <filter> 
           BIOS: American Megatrends v: P1.80 date: 12/06/2011 
CPU:       Info: 6-Core model: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T bits: 64 type: MCP arch: K10 family: 10 (16) 
           model-id: A (10) stepping: 0 microcode: 10000DC cache: L2: 3 MiB 
           flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4a svm bogomips: 38319 
           Speed: 798 MHz min/max: 800/3200 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 1: 798 2: 798 
           3: 798 4: 798 5: 798 6: 798 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected 
           Type: l1tf status: Not affected 
           Type: mds status: Not affected 
           Type: meltdown status: Not affected 
           Type: mmio_stale_data status: Not affected 
           Type: retbleed status: Not affected 
           Type: spec_store_bypass status: Not affected 
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 
           mitigation: Retpolines, STIBP: disabled, RSB filling, PBRSB-eIBRS: Not affected 
           Type: srbds status: Not affected 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: AMD Pitcairn PRO [Radeon HD 7850 / R7 265 / R9 270 1024SP] 
           vendor: PC Partner Limited driver: radeon v: kernel alternate: amdgpu bus-ID: 01:00.0 
           chip-ID: 1002:6819 class-ID: 0300 
           Display: server: X.Org 1.20.11 compositor: compton v: 1 driver: loaded: radeon 
           unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa alternate: ati display-ID: :0.0 screens: 1 
           Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1280x720 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 338x190mm (13.3x7.5") 
           s-diag: 388mm (15.3") 
           Monitor-1: HDMI-0 res: 1280x720 hz: 50 dpi: 47 size: 698x392mm (27.5x15.4") 
           diag: 801mm (31.5") 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD PITCAIRN (DRM 2.50.0 5.10.0-23-amd64 LLVM 11.0.1) 
           v: 4.5 Mesa 20.3.5 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: AMD SBx00 Azalia vendor: ASRock driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus-ID: 00:14.2 chip-ID: 1002:4383 class-ID: 0403 
           Device-2: AMD Oland/Hainan/Cape Verde/Pitcairn HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 7000 Series] 
           vendor: PC Partner Limited driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 01:00.1 
           chip-ID: 1002:aab0 class-ID: 0403 
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.10.0-23-amd64 running: yes 
           Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes 
Network:   Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR8151 v2.0 Gigabit Ethernet vendor: ASRock driver: atl1c 
           v: kernel port: d000 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 1969:1083 class-ID: 0200 
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 1.6 TiB used: 16.25 GiB (1.0%) 
           SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required. 
           ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: Seagate model: ST1000LM014-1EJ164-SSHD 
           size: 931.51 GiB block-size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: HDD 
           rpm: 5400 serial: <filter> rev: HPM6 scheme: MBR 
           ID-2: /dev/sdb maj-min: 8:16 vendor: SanDisk model: SDSSDP128G size: 117.38 GiB 
           block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter> 
           scheme: MBR 
           ID-3: /dev/sdc maj-min: 8:32 vendor: KingDian model: S400 120GB size: 111.79 GiB 
           block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter> 
           rev: 3A scheme: GPT 
           ID-4: /dev/sdd maj-min: 8:48 type: USB model: H W RAID1 size: 465.72 GiB block-size: 
           physical: 512 B logical: 512 B type: N/A serial: <filter> rev: 0101 scheme: GPT 
           ID-5: /dev/sde maj-min: 8:64 type: USB vendor: Intenso model: Rainbow Line 
           size: 7.5 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B type: N/A serial: <filter> 
           rev: 8.07 scheme: MBR 
           SMART Message: Unknown USB bridge. Flash drive/Unsupported enclosure? 
Partition: ID-1: / raw-size: 112.38 GiB size: 109.55 GiB (97.49%) used: 14.48 GiB (13.2%) fs: ext4 
           dev: /dev/sdb5 maj-min: 8:21 
           ID-2: /boot raw-size: 1024 MiB size: 974.7 MiB (95.18%) used: 332.6 MiB (34.1%) 
           fs: ext3 dev: /dev/sdb1 maj-min: 8:17 
Swap:      Kernel: swappiness: 15 (default 60) cache-pressure: 100 (default) 
           ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 4 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 dev: /dev/sdb2 
           maj-min: 8:18 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 27.1 C mobo: N/A gpu: radeon temp: 37.0 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:     Packages: note: see --pkg apt: 2205 lib: 1094 flatpak: 0 
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib non-free
           3: deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ bullseye-backports main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/mxlinux/packages/mx/repo/ bullseye main non-free
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/various.list 
Info:      Processes: 247 Uptime: 22m wakeups: 1 Memory: 7.75 GiB used: 897.8 MiB (11.3%) 
           Init: SysVinit v: 2.96 runlevel: 5 default: 5 tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: 10.2.1 
           alt: 10 Client: shell wrapper v: 5.1.4-release inxi: 3.3.06 
Boot Mode: BIOS (legacy, CSM, MBR)

[CharlesV]

If I am reading this right (and I have not had full coffee yet, so possible I am not), it sounds like your /dev/sda changed and grub was installed there?

If that is the case, then the I dont think you can 'repair', I believe you would need to reinstall using the MX boot Repair.

Honestly I have not done a bunch of grub repair, so someone else is probably better suited than I to answer this. But from the error message and the /sdc to /sda change ...

[dolphin_oracle]

that message can indicate that grub is not installed on the target system.

[fehlix]

It's already posted here: viewtopic.php?t=75746
But I copy it again...

The only difference is that I now only have one SSD with MX Linux in the PC and have removed the other two Windows hard drives. /dev/sdc is now /dev/sda. Therefore I had to do a boot repair. However, this did not work. I tried it from the MX Live and I tried in the usb live system Grub Rescue. Nothing worked, although practically nothing has changed.
Grub was previously installed on the 1st hard drive (which had a Windows on it) and I always used Grub as the boot manager.
I do not understand why MX Boot Repair does not work or the above error message comes. MX Boot Repair did not report any errors when running. Installed was in the MBR. /boot is the 1st partition.
I also tried a manual chroot and manually installed GRUB on the MX Linux SSD. But did not work either!

If sdc or sda is the ssd drive with a GPT partition table,
MX Boot Repair would install onto the drive - but for some historical reason
still uses a "--force" flag. Installing grub onto "MBR" of a GPT-drive would normally trigger a big warning by grub-install stating " the install on GPT is unreliable...". The reason is simple: GPT drives do not have a "MBR", so you can run grub-install with --force flag. But at boot time grub may not find the grub-core.img, which is needed to load normal.mod .
Suggest the reformat the drive to dos/mbr partition table (e.g. using Gparted) and reinstall.
++EDIT+++
Alternatively you may add a bios_grub partition of size 1MB unformatted (with no file system)
and marked with bios_grub flag. This would than take a role for mbr to hold grub's core.img

[R_S_I]

@fehlix - I think you have found the problem. I didn't think about the fact that the SSD has a GPT format.

I also noticed that the /boot directory is empty. The corresponding partition is also empty.
Something must have gone wrong.

Ok... I see, so I can't avoid a complete reinstallation.
Home directory and everything else important is backed up.

Thanks for the help! I guess the problem was sitting in front of the screen!

[pbear]

Ok... I see, so I can't avoid a complete reinstallation.

No need. As fehlix mentioned, you also can solve the problem by creating a BIOS boot partition. Easily done with GParted in a live session. Either tack onto the end or shrink the first partition to make room. A BBP only needs to be 2 MB. Main trick is that it must be unformatted, which is the last option on the formatting dropdown. Click check mark to Apply. Then right-click, select manage flags, and choose bios-grub. Now grub-install will work fine in BIOS mode.