PC boots into BIOS, How to full/dist-upgrade EN / DE

[eriefisher]

Yes, this laptop has been running suction for several years now. The first install had some trouble with grub but a second install about a year and a half ago went without issue.

[ro_sid]

[...]
If I attempt to boot normally I just get " no bootable device". I can't figure out what's causing the lock up. Same happens on a fresh install. Everything goes fine until installing the bootloader and it freezes up.

I really think, that this "no bootable device" could be the key. What happens, when grub thinks it can install to the/a boot device and this does not answer? It hangs!? It is just difficult to analyze.
When you have an idea, let us hear it and proceed according to it.
Otherwise I would suggest to get us some information from the live system: What does "efibootmgr -v" say? An "ls -l /dev/x" could give us some insight too, where x is sd* and nvme*. Then an lsblk and "lsblk -f" might be of use. Finally the partition structure of the (future) boot device (something like "fdisk -l /dev/sda" or "fdisk -l /dev/nvme0n1" (assumption sda or nvme0n1 is the designated boot device)) tells us, where the EFI boot partition resides.

If you like, you can also install another boot-manager. "rEFInd" helped me a lot.

From my ideas, either the boot partition "vanishes", then you can not access any (boot-)manager at restart or the boot-disk becomes inactive (for whatever reason) or the second boot-manager kicks in, should "grub" be the culprit part.

Good luck!!!

[eriefisher]

The information requested. I hope someone can see something I don't. This is from the running system booted from a usb stick.

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root@siducer:/home/dan# efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 2001,2002,2003
Boot0000* USB HDD: Generic USB Storage PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x15,0x0)/USB(3,0)/HD(2,GPT,817baa94-9d4a-4016-a775-f71f3dab0d9f,0xd4,0x1680)RC
Boot2001* EFI USB Device RC
Boot2002* EFI DVD/CDROM RC
Boot2003* EFI Network RC
root@siducer:/home/dan# ls -l /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 0 Sep 12 17:47 /dev/sda
root@siducer:/home/dan# lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda      8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk
├─sda1   8:1    0   300M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda2   8:2    0  58.8G  0 part /
├─sda3   8:3    0   3.9G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda4   8:4    0 402.8G  0 part /media/dan/DATA
sdb      8:16   1  14.9G  0 disk
└─sdb1   8:17   1  14.9G  0 part /media/dan/7597-EA86
root@siducer:/home/dan# lsblk -f
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sda                                                                         
├─sda1
│    vfat   FAT32 EFI   B756-5D7B                             299.3M     0% /boot/efi
├─sda2
│    ext4   1.0   root  f93d1610-2664-426c-885d-b4b32351563e   47.1G    13% /
├─sda3
│    swap   1     SWAP  68057ccd-9b8e-447b-8ee5-d060a5b3816a                [SWAP]
└─sda4
     ext4   1.0   DATA  0dd547a7-fc11-4f13-8c1c-2c29163c0bd4  349.3G     7% /media/dan/DATA
sdb                                                                         
└─sdb1
     vfat   FAT32       7597-EA86                              11.4G    24% /media/dan/7597-EA86
root@siducer:/home/dan# fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Disk model: WDC WD5000LPCX-2
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 0B72D56E-CCE6-489D-9557-BFE8ADC11514

Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1       2048    616447    614400   300M Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda2     616448 123930623 123314176  58.8G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3  123930624 132122623   8192000   3.9G Linux swap
/dev/sda4  132122624 976773119 844650496 402.8G Linux filesystem
root@siducer:/home/dan#



[ro_sid]

Thank you!

Well, there is a little bit, I can be detect:

BootOrder: 2001,2002,2003
Boot0000* USB HDD: Generic USB Storage   PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x15,0x0)/USB(3,0)/HD(2,GPT,817baa94-9d4a-4016-a775-f71f3dab0d9f,0xd4,0x1680)RC
Boot2001* EFI USB Device   RC
Boot2002* EFI DVD/CDROM   RC
Boot2003* EFI Network   RC

Although you have a device "sda", which I assume is an internal disk (HD or SSD), there is no entry for it in the EFI boot list, at least not yet! The Boot0000 is your USB-Stick, which is ok, since you booted from it (successfully) and the entries "2001-2003" are just some other devices (possible USB-attachment, optical drive, and network).
If it stays like this, it is no wonder, that the message after a reboot is "no bootable device". With the stick gone, there is no entry for your disk!
Normally, grub-install will/should add an entry here, but this can be suppressed, e.g. by the "--no-nvram" option.

Otherwise your disk-configuration seems alright. There is an EFI-partition (sda1) and a root one (sda2).
If the installation data actually do get on that disk, I am sure it would boot, once there is an entry in the EFI-vars list.
If it gets stuck, the next time, you could check after the next boot from the stick, if boot files did actually get on the EFI-partition from the previous grub-install. From your lsblk-listing, it gets (correctly) mounted to /boot/efi. If you look around there (with "ls"), you should find an EFI/siduction subdirectory. If present, and containing .efi-files, grub-install worked up until here, at least. With a little bit of luck, there is also an EFI/BOOT directory. If so, and when there is not a "just BOOT" directory in /boot/efi already, then copy the EFI/BOOT to that (just BOOT) place. This would help to boot that disk similar to the stick at the next reboot. It would be a stop gap only, but can help, if grub-install did not create a propper disk entry in the EFi-vars list. We would still have to find out, why this is so, though, if it is the case.
May be, hopefully, my suspicion about the hard disk failing is incorrect, and grub-install simply does not succeed in creating an EFI boot entry and just "hangs" there every time.
So far my findings and "recipe" for now.

Again, good luck!!!

[DeepDayze]

There's a few *buggy* UEFI implementations that don't create the proper boot entries or an EFI in the right place. @rosid's post is one good workaround.

[eriefisher]

This is some kind of manufacture/hardware/firmware issue. I just tried to install rEFInd and it froze the system up. I'm going to try some bios adjustments.

[eriefisher]

Well I'm giving up for a while on this thing. I pulled out an old HP with siduction on it. It hasn't been updated for a few months now. It has a power port issue so it got shelved. I fired it up, did a dist-upgrade and rebooted. Grub starts but the laptop won't boot. Grub_load_image not found.
Fired up the latest live usb and did a grub-install and update-grub. Then an update and dist-upgrade then reboot. No boot.
I don't get it. Two very different machines with totally different hardware. If the grub issue has been sorted out what the heck is going on.

[ro_sid]

Well, try to install rEFInd there, too. It is totally independent of grub. If you succeed, grub is somehow responsible, but then you can start siduction via grub and we can "work" on grub. If not, then it is not the boot-manager.
Try to turn off a CSM, at least temporarily, to guarantee EFI boot.
By the way: Is "secure boot" accidentally 'on'?
There is still a lot of debugging potential (for both hardware systems), if you are adventurous enough (e.g. we can try to "manually" make an EFI entry via efibootmgr).

[eriefisher]

I tried rEFInd. It installed without error. However, when I rebooted it tried to use grub and failed. Reboot a live system and purged everything grub, reinstalled rEFInd and rebooted, grub still starts up and fails.
Getting late here and I'm burnt out and out of laptops. I'll have another look in the morning.

[ro_sid]

Ok, we shall track this down , starting with the HP, where rEFInd works.
I am away for the better part of tomorrow, or more appropriately, today (Thursday), though; thus I can not "react", until later.

Still: good luck!!!

[ReinerS]

@erifisher:
What model of an HP do you have.
I recently renewed the encrypted Installation of my HP8470p completely after 5 years.
Run quite into difficulties with the strange HP UEFI-BIOS and had to restore some directories from the backup of the EFI partition.
Especially, the "boot" directory and/or the "bootx64.efi" file in the root directory of it seems to be required.

Regards

Reiner

[eriefisher]

I managed to get the HP up and running again via a fresh install. While I was running live I did and apt update/dist-upgrade then started the install. I allowed the installer to wipe all the partitions and let it go. Everything completed without error and rebooted cleanly. I hated to reinstall but I can work on getting it set up the way it was, maybe better.

Now I just have to deal with the Acer. I'll start another thread for that one once I get going on it. Thanks for all the input. It's great to have the support of other users.

[absolut]

hi all,

i was also hit by this issue today morning.

in my case UEFI was activated all the time (MSI mainboard), but the efibootmgr listed more than 200 boot options, and had to be cleaned up. how and why they appeared - i do not know. the relevant entries were these two:
--> old EFI from siduction_2021.3.0  original installation of the operating system
--> new EFI siduction which came with the grub upgrade

looping over all not necessary entries with the following command, helped me get that cleaned

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efibootmgr -b <bootnumber>  -B
setting the boot order did not persist on my machine


so, what i have now is this, and it works

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root@sidbox:~# efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,0002
Boot0001* siduction     HD(1,GPT,473c0e32-f3b7-6740-909e-271626ab25c3,0x1000,0x96000)/File(\EFI\SIDUCTION\GRUBX64.EFI)
Boot0002* UEFI: Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB, Partition 1  PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x17,0x0)/Sata(4,65535,0)/HD(1,GPT,473c0e32-f3b7-6740-909e-271626ab25c3,0x1000,0x96000)..BO
thanks to ro_sid for the right pointer. thanks to the whole community. you rock.

best
absolut

[dieres]

I had to update the "Bios" of my ASRock Z77 Pro3 from 2.10 to 2.20 to solve the Problem of no boot systems on the second SSD with EFI Partition on the first SSD.

[dpanter]

Ran into this fun bug on an old HP craptop I honestly didn't even remember might be affected.

Sure enough, found myself staring at the UEFI screen following a DU+reboot. For bonus points, using chroot-helper+grub-install+update-grub on a live usb with siduction-2023.1.1-Standing_on_the_Shoulders_of_Giants-kde-amd64-202401191500.iso didn't work (iso from testbuilds).
The commands ran as expected without errors, then reboot and faced with a sad grub rescue screen:

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error: symbol `grub_disk_native_sectors' not found.
Thankfully, boot-repair-disk managed to sort it. Flashed a spare usb stick with the image, clicked the auto fix button and let it do its thing. Rebooted and all was fine again. No idea why chroot-helper came up short though. Sharing my adventure in case someone else ran into the same weirdness.

The tool: https://sourceforge.net/projects/boot-repair-cd/
Repair log: https://paste.debian.net/hidden/19f72847