Re: UEFI grub install fails
On 8/17/25 15:03, Van Snyder wrote:
On Sun, 2025-08-17 at 13:46 -0700, David Christensen wrote:
On 8/17/25 12:31, Van Snyder wrote:
I upgraded the BIOS in my Dell Latitude E5470 from 1.19.3 to
1.34.3.
Before upgrading:
1. Did you run Setup and document the settings?
I didn't write down all the settings. The important one was whether
booting was Legacy or UEFI.
So, what was the firmware mode setting before upgrading the BIOS and
what is it now?
4. Did you take an image of the HDD/SSD?
I cloned the HDD onto an NVME using dd, then added the EFI boot
partition and expanded /home to fill the rest of the "disk."
After upgrading:
1. Did you run Setup and reset the settings to factory defaults?
Not yet. I'll try that.
Please do -- firmware updates do not always migrate the Setup settings
correctly. After the reset, double-check everything; especially the
firmware mode (BIOS/Legacy/MBR, UEFI/GPT), disk mode (RAID, AHCI), and
Secure Boot.
It may take several tries to find the right combination of settings to
boot a working Windows install or to boot a working Debian install, and
the settings may conflict. Document whatever changes you make from
factory defaults. Save as user settings, if supported.
5. What are the Setup boot entries and what is their order? What
were
they previously?
They were previously USB, CD, HDD, PXE. After, the BIOS chose a random
order which I changed to that.
That sounds like a BIOS/Legacy style boot entries list (?).
My 2011 Intel DQ67SW motherboard is like that. There is a separate item
to enable UEFI mode.
What OS(s) are on the HDD/SSD? Using a Debian live distribution,
rescue
shell, etc., please run the following command as root and post the
console session -- prompt, input command, and output displayed:
# lsblk
With my annotations about what each partition is used for
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
loop0 7:0 0 809.5M 1 loop /run/archiso/sfs/airootfs
sr0 11:0 1 898M 0 rom The systemrestore CD
nvme0n1 259:0 0 953.9G 0 disk
|-nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 350M 0 part Win 10 System
|-nvme0n1p2 259:2 0 29.6G 0 part Win 10
|-nvme0n1p3 259:3 0 1014M 0 part /boot
|-nvme0n1p4 259:4 0 1K 0 part extended
|-nvme0n1p5 259:5 0 48.8G 0 part /
|-nvme0n1p6 259:6 0 7.8G 0 part Linux swap
|-nvme0n1p7 259:7 0 4.7G 0 part /rescue
|-nvme0n1p8 259:8 0 545M 0 part /boot/efi (FAT32), marked bootable
|-nvme0n1p9 259:9 0 861.1G 0 part /home
From fdisk -l:
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 953.87 GiB, 1024209543168 bytes, 2000409264 sectors
Disk model: SPCC M.2 PCIe SSD
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xf1177557
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1 2048 718847 716800 350M 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/nvme0n1p2 718848 62795775 62076928 29.6G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/nvme0n1p3 62795776 64872447 2076672 1014M 83 Linux
/dev/nvme0n1p4 64874494 2000408575 1935534082 922.9G 5 Extended
/dev/nvme0n1p5 64874496 167274495 102400000 48.8G 83 Linux
/dev/nvme0n1p6 167276544 183660543 16384000 7.8G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/nvme0n1p7 183662592 193428216 9765625 4.7G 83 Linux
/dev/nvme0n1p8 * 193429504 194545663 1116160 545M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
/dev/nvme0n1p9 194547712 2000408575 1805860864 861.1G 83 Linux
I assume nvme0n1p1 contains the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE).
350M seems too small for Windows 10/11. Both of my Windows 10 machines
have 530M WinRE partitions. I have experienced Windows Update problems
when the WinRE partition is too small and Windows Update cannot
automatically resize it because I partitioned manually during Windows
installation:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/3743059/update-kb5034441-fails-to-install
I assume nvme0n1p2 contains the Windows C: volume. 29.6G seems too
small for Windows 10/11. My two Windows machines do not have much
software and are lightly used, yet they consume 46G and 69G. Windows
daily drivers with Office tend to be over 100G. It helps to put
Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Videos, and other data on another
disk/ RAID or on a file server/ NAS.
Now when I install Windows, I let the Windows installer have the whole
disk and I accept the defaults.
I could no longer boot. So I decided to upgrade from Debian 12
Bookworm
to Debian 13 Trixie.
All went well until the end when grub install failed.
Please post the console session.
All I get is a blank blue page inviting me to type grub commands.
I meant the console session (or Debian installer step) showing the GRUB
failure.
I did dual-boot back in the day. No matter which OS I was running, I
always needed to do something on the other. My solution was two
computers -- one Windows, one Linux. Since then, free-as-in-beer and
free-as-in-freedom virtualization have both become much better. But,
you need a CPU that supports it and you will need extra memory.
I suggest secure erasing the SSD and doing a fresh install of Debian
into a small portion of the "1 TB" SSD. Once that is up, make the
remaining space available for virtual machines, audio/video temporary
files, etc.. Consider using volume management -- LVM, BTRFS, ZFS, etc..
Install Windows into a virtual machine. Keep the OS instances small
and self-contained. Put your data on a file server or NAS.
David
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