Re: [gentoo-user] Grub fails. I missed something.

[Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>]

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Michael wrote:
> On Sunday, 16 March 2025 11:40:14 Greenwich Mean Time you wrote:
>> On Sunday, 16 March 2025 09:58:42 Greenwich Mean Time Dale wrote:
>>> Dale wrote:
>>>> Well, this got interesting.  I booted the spinning rust drive again and
>>>> redone the /boot from the old system.  I rebuilt the init thingy because
>>>> the one that was there was for the old drive.  I then ran the usual grub
>>>> commands to generate the config file and even reinstalled grub just to
>>>> be sure.  When I tried to reboot the SSD drive, I was back to the
>>>> original screen at the start of this thread.  While I'd like to fix this
>>>> and perhaps that fix help someone else in the future, this is just
>>>> getting annoying.  I should have put a DOS partition on the thing and it
>>>> could be that is the problem despite the parted trick that I've used in
>>>> the past.  I dunno.
>>>>
>>>> So I'm just going to start over and use a DOS partition table this
>>>> time.  That may fix it.  If that fails, I'll just reinstall from
>>>> scratch.  That should fix it for sure.  I got all the config files,
>>>> world file and such that I need.  I just wish it was colder outside.
>>>> That little mobo creates some heat.  LOL
>>>>
>>>> In the future, if someone runs into this thread, try rebuilding the init
>>>> thingy and all the grub update commands.  It should work.  It did here
>>>> once.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks to all for helping.
>>>>
>>>> Dale
>>>>
>>>> :-) :-)
>>>>
>>>> Hmmm.  I usually use dd or shred to erase a spinning rust drive.  How in
>>>> the heck do I do this on a SSD and not affect it in a negative way?  I
>>>> never thought about erasing one of those before.  :-|
>>> Update.  I found a command that wipes partition tables in my little
>>> file, where I put things I forget about quite often.  This is my little
>>> note.
>>>
>>>
>>> wipefs -a -f /dev/sdX   # erase partition table for DOS or GPT
>>>
>>>
>>> It's very fast so I assume it erases only the needed bits but doesn't
>>> write to other areas, erase user data to prevent recovery or anything.
>>> Still, since I was going to put something else on it right away, I
>>> wasn't worried about that anyway.
>> You can use fdisk/gdisk/parted to change the partition table from legacy
>> DOS- MBR to GPT, then create the new partitions, finally format them with a
>> suitable filesystem.
>>
>> However, you did not need to do this, GPT would be totally suitable for your
>> disk.
> Ugh!  I didn't provide a comprehensive answer - sorry.  All this MBR nostalgia 
> I've been trying to forget.  LOL!
>
> If you are installing GRUB on a GPT disk, which is meant to boot on a legacy 
> BIOS MoBo, you *must* create a BIOS Boot Partition (gdisk code EF02).  GRUB 
> will drop its boot.img in the disk's MBR (sector 0) then would try to install 
> its core.img in sector 1, exactly where GPT has stored its own primary table.  
> With a BIOS Boot Partition this clash is averted.
>
> Or, alternatively, you stick with a conventional MBR-DOS partition table which 
> will work fine as long as the partitionable space is no larger than 2TB (using 
> 512-byte sectors) and the total number of partitions (primary plus logical) is 
> not ridiculously large.
>

When I first did this and got through with the copy process, grub
complained about that.  I ran into that before and found a fix.  Of
course, I couldn't remember how to fix it tho.  Off to my little cheat
file, my memory file.  This is what I put there to fix this, worked a
couple times before. 


# grub-install fails with "grub-install: warning: this GPT partition
label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be possible." 
Using parted command.
#
#  parted /dev/sdX
#  set 1 boot off
#  set 1 bios_grub on
#  q
#
#  then install grub.  This happens on drives where GPT is used instead
of MBR.


I did that but I think it messed up the file system for /boot when I did
it.  I don't recall it doing that when I used it before tho.  When I ran
lsblk, it showed a file system for root and home but not /boot anymore. 
I know I formatted it because it was the first one I did and it is
always ext2, others are ext4.  I also ran du -shc /* after the copy
process to make sure that /dev, /sys, /proc and such were empty and
others that should have files were about the right size.  I know I
mounted and copied /boot.  When I finish mounting things to chroot, I
type in mount to be sure I did them all right. 


>>> After all that, I partitioned the SSD, copied everything over, chrooted
>>> into the SSD OS and then made a new init thingy, updated grub, installed
>>> grub and I also re-emerged the linux firmware package.  It puts a .img
>>> file in /boot and grub picks that up.  I don't know if it matters but
>>> since I did everything else, that was one that I hadn't done before.
>>> Maybe it was wrong on the SSD and grub loads it first.  If it fails, no
>>> boot.  It's possible anyway.
>> I wouldn't think your aged system wouldn't boot if some firmware file was
>> missing - unless such firmware was necessary to access your drives.
>>
>>> Oh, I also set the labels on the file systems for boot, root and home,
>>> like I usually do.  I didn't have to update fstab this time.  Those
>>> still matched up just fine with labels.
>>>
>>> Again, thanks to all who helped.  It could be the GPT partition table or
>>> it might have been that firmware image.  I dunno.  It works now tho.
>>> Oh, it might boot a tiny bit faster.  Maybe.
>>>
>>> Dale
>>>
>>> :-)  :-)
>> I think the problem was with your initrd, plus the missing grub and other
>> files from /boot fs indicate you may have not mounted it the first time you
>> chrooted.
> Rethinking all this techno-legacy, I think a critical problem was the lack of 
> a BIOS Boot Partition as explained above. 

I think me fixing not having it is what caused the problem.  I figure if
we kept banging at the problem, we could have fixed it.  Thing is, given
things I got going on, I don't have time to keep arguing with that old
thing.  LOL  It was easier to just start over and put a DOS partition
table on it and be done with it.  Now it is done the right way, for that
old thing anyway. 

I booted it up twice now.  I think it is going to be OK.  I'll update my
backups later.  I got some new videos to rename first tho.  Found some
vintage stuff.  :-D 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

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