The title explains it well. But I installed Mint on a 2nd partition, then deleted it since I no longer used it, and now Grub dumps me to the command line on boot :/

How do I recover?

EDIT: gonna give up. Fuck grub lmao EDIT2: Just reinstalled mint and used the grub it gives to fix everything lmfao

  • @[email protected]English
    1•9 months ago

    This is definitely strange, but the EFI system partition will have to be mounted to install grub to it, maybe the disk got mounted as read only, could you try explicitly mounting it as rw with this command

    sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /boot/efi -o rw

    and then see if you can make a file as root by doing

    sudo touch /boot/efi/test

    if it doesnt fail on a permissions error, try installing grub again with --removable incase this error has something to do with it trying to tell the firmware what disk to look in like this

    sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --removable

    hopefully this will run without error and install grub, and if it does id run it again without the removable flag

    • @merthyr1831OP
      1•9 months ago

      It was just me not running the command with sudo, my bad!

      But even then, doing install-grub and grub-mkconfig with sudo (completing w/o errors) I’m still getting spat out onto the grub console at boot. Should I try formatting the efi partition and reinstalling grub to it?

      • @[email protected]English
        1•9 months ago

        Oh its no worries, it sounds like you just need to regenerate the grub config, you can do this by running

        sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

        or if your distro has it, you can just run

        sudo update-grub

        then grub should see the config on boot and put you in the normal graphical menu

        • @merthyr1831OP
          1•9 months ago

          Seems to work fine, but same again, nothing :/

          Is it worth me just wiping the partition and doing it from scratch?

          • @[email protected]English
            1•9 months ago

            I think anything that can be done with a fresh format can be done with the current one, when you ran grub-install after the issue with not running it as root, did you only do it with --removable? If so, the old grub is might be getting picked over the new grub installed at the removable fallback path, because it has a proper entry in the boot order. I dont know what key it is on your system, but if you can get into the boot order menu where it shows all the different boot devices, like where you can pick where you want to boot from, id look for one that just says something like "UEFI boot " or something like along those lines, it wont say like grub or your distro name, if there is such an option available, could you try booting from that option?

            • @merthyr1831OP
              1•9 months ago

              I ran it without the --removable flag :)

              Spamming f12 for the uefi boot menu, I have 3 options (neon, ubuntu, and ubuntu) but all 3 spit me out onto the grub console

              • @[email protected]English
                1•9 months ago

                Alright, could you see what the root variable is in the grub console before manually setting it by running echo $root, and if it prints anything, could you run ls / in the grub console and see if you see like home dev etc, or the directories you would expect to see in / inside linux, and if you do see anything, could you run ls /boot/grub/ and see if you see grub.cfg. But if you are already inside linux, go ahead and install grub with --removable, it wont overwrite your current installation. I dont want you to format the efi partition, incase something goes wrong and you wont be able to boot into linux at all

                • @merthyr1831OP
                  1•9 months ago

                  So echo $root returns (hd0,gpt1). I have to set it to hd0,gpt2 to get the boot/linux dirs. I’ll try --removable and get back to ya

                  • @merthyr1831OP
                    1•9 months ago

                    Eh, it gives me a grub-like menu but selecting any option just dumps me back into the console.

      • ResponsabilidadePortuguês
        1•9 months ago

        I had an issue like that in the past

        Even after I run grub-mkconfig and put the efi files on the correct folder, it wasn’t recognized by the UEFI

        What I did was to open my BIOS and at the EFI configs, I choose manually which efi file I wanted it to open

        Maybe it does the trick to you as well

        • @merthyr1831OP
          1•9 months ago

          Tried the 3 options I had in the UEFI boot menu but no dice on either annoyingly.

        • @merthyr1831OP
          1•9 months ago

          Tried all the ones that my BIOS picks up but no dice :/

            • @merthyr1831OP
              1•9 months ago

              Afraid I got nothin’ from that. It’s pretty much beyond my abilities.

              Im gonna try installing mint again and letting that fix my grub. if it doesnt, im gonna wipe and redo my install.

              Thanks for trying :)

              EDIT: Yep just stuck mint on the smallest partition the installer would let me and it “fixed” itself lol. Ah well. Until I inevitably distro hop :')