Im not sure if my Lenovo Thinkpad/E590 bios has changed, but all of a sudden, I cant boot to grub menu.
Step 1 was to bring up a live version of refind boot, which finds my grub and boots and I can use but the old method of boot/grub/ windows or linux has gone without refind.
I dont want to make refind my boot manager, so welcome any advice.
I did try update-grub, but still the grub is elusive.
sudo grub-install /dev/sdX
where X is the letter matching the booting disk where you need to install grub on.
But it’s strange grub disappeared once of a sudden.
Are there many OS on that machine ? Any upgrade for one of these ?
Maybe https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Info and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
Hi thanks for consideration. I will document here, as others may have similar problem, which comes down to the added complexities of UEFI boot and inability of historical utilities to address any problem with grub and/or boot.
Possibly grub disappeared either by me changing some BIOS setting, on a brand new Lenovo E590, which in turn changed the EFI structure, compromising grub boot, or I had been trying a live distro of emmabuntus-de4-amd64-11.0-alpha1 which simply hung when I shut down; there was some odd disk activity.
My first port of call after grub issue was boot-repair-disk-32bit.iso, which a) could not use my wifi network and b) would not recognise my SSD. The latter was most important as if it cant recognise the SSD it cant do the job.
I needed a distro that could recognise the SSD, and modify the existing grub/paths, so next used MX-linux.iso grub tools which could not find grub either.
Since these were not working, and what did work was the following methods:
1…Boot into existing installed distro of Budgie by using boot manager refind-cd-0.12.0.iso
2…The following actions:
alistair@alsE590:~$ efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 001D
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0011,0010,0012,0013,0014,0018,0019,001A,001B,001C,001D,001E
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0010 Setup
Boot0011 Boot Menu
Boot0012 Diagnostic Splash Screen
Boot0013 Lenovo Diagnostics
Boot0014 Regulatory Information
Boot0015 Startup Interrupt Menu
Boot0016 Rescue and Recovery
Boot0017 MEBx Hot Key
Boot0018* USB CD
Boot0019* USB FDD
Boot001A* NVMe0
Boot001B* ATA HDD0
Boot001C* ATA HDD1
Boot001D* USB HDD
Boot001E* PCI LAN
Boot001F* IDER BOOT CDROM
Boot0020* IDER BOOT Floppy
Boot0021* ATA HDD
Boot0022* ATAPI CD
the above shows no grub visible
alistair@alsE590:~$ sudo grub-install
[sudo] password for alistair:
Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
Installation finished. No error reported.
alistair@alsE590:~$ efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 001D
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,0000,0011,0010,0012,0013,0014,0018,0019,001A,001B,001C,001D,001E
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0001 ubuntu*
Boot0010 Setup
Boot0011 Boot Menu
Boot0012 Diagnostic Splash Screen
Boot0013 Lenovo Diagnostics
Boot0014 Regulatory Information
Boot0015 Startup Interrupt Menu
Boot0016 Rescue and Recovery
Boot0017 MEBx Hot Key
Boot0018* USB CD
Boot0019* USB FDD
Boot001A* NVMe0
Boot001B* ATA HDD0
Boot001C* ATA HDD1
Boot001D* USB HDD
Boot001E* PCI LAN
Boot001F* IDER BOOT CDROM
Boot0020* IDER BOOT Floppy
Boot0021* ATA HDD
Boot0022* ATAPI CD
Typically, linux wont boot usually is a minor issue. Most times for me its when I have a disk mount in fstab and the disk dies or is removed; linux wont boot. This above issue clearly did not need a linux re-install. I would always ensure to have refind-cd in my group of rescue items.
Regards, Al.
Just
sudo grub-install
was enough ?
It’s strange, as you should point a specific booting device to install grub on it.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Installing
I’m no senior-grub-doctor so please look at at boot-info and boot-repair ( without repairing first, just to check what it could suggest ).
But yes, if you changed settings regarding boot / secure-boot / efi-options in bios that might have wiped out previous boot partition ( here is a very big question mark → ? ).
To summarize sudo grub-install was enough, but I wanted to be sure to instantiate it from the original distribution eg Budgie hence reason for using refind which let me do exactly that.
You could have done it from an UbuntuBudgie live session.
Anyway, if you solved your problem, that’s what matters.