Re: [PLUG] Reinstall of Linux didn't work

I could fix these issues if it were Arch or other equivalent simple distro.

My 2 cents from my vantage point to fix it on my own system is first, get a chroot going. I would be using the Arch USB but that's because pacman and pacstrap are on there (match your live distro with your installed distro). I would then wipe the boot distro and rebuild. Do not use grub, it will self destruct because it is an active project doing a lot of good work that will break configurations (since many do not want to spend time learning how to maintain grub).

I would use systemd boot personally. Do not get fancy with your boot loader. Ext or even fat32 will best for formatting the partition as long as you set the boot partition flags. The rest of your partitions should remain untouched. Please note any UEFI assignments are weird to get started at first but not impossible. Assuming your kernel, boot loader, and UEFI assignments are set correctly you will be fine.

I do not have the slightest idea how to accomplish these tasks with an installer to aide you, but while in a chroot the Arch wiki should have a lot of guidance on how one may proceed regardless of whatever distro they are using. Just remember you may have to update your fstab which shouldn't be too difficult with the directions on the Arch wiki. Alternatively you could experiment with genfstab after you have backed up the fstab. Just remember genfstab requires all mounts be set before using chroot from the live distro -> original install.

-Will C

On Tue, Jul 4, 2023, 00:09 Keith C. Perry via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:

While I'm sure there are grub ninjas that are good at working from the grub rescue prompt, for me, I boot from a USB live cd and then fix these issues by mounting the Linux partition, then bind mounting (mount --bind) /proc /sys and /dev to those same paths on the mounted linux partition. I chroot to that partition and then reinstall grub. For Ubuntu that would "update grub" (if something has changed- usually doesn't hurt to run anyway) and then grub-install /dev/<whatever the disk is for the mount partition you are in> so if you had mounted /dev/sda1 then you would do grub-install /dev/sda.

I hope that makes some sense.

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Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Managing Member, DAO Technologies LLC
(O) +1.215.525.4165 x2033
(M) +1.215.432.5167
www.daotechnologies.com

From: "Philadelphia Linux User's Group Discussion List" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>
To: "Philadelphia Linux User's Group Discussion List" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>
Sent: Monday, July 3, 2023 3:40:24 PM
Subject: [PLUG] Reinstall of Linux didn't work

I'll do my best to keep this succinct.

First, some background. This computer was running Windows and Linux alongside each other, using grub to allow me to boot into the Ubuntu installation on sda, and the Windows 10 insulation on sdb. All work relatively well until recently.

Rather than continue wrestling with my installation of Linux refusing to update anything (no reason to get into that now), I figured a fresh installation over it was probably a good idea. Since the computer was running Ubuntu, I installed in Ubuntu based distribution over it.

First time, I used the custom installation option, selecting what I thought were the correct partitions for booth, swap, etc. No luck. I got an error saying no such device, unknown file system, entering rescue mode. I figured I had done something wrong, so I allowed the installer to wipe sda completely. No luck here, either - it looks like I got the same exact error. At least, it's the same no such device along with an error prompt.

I'm at a grub rescue prompt. Hopefully, I can work from here to edit the grub configuration, and get into the operating system.

Thoughts?

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___________________________________________________________________________
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Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug