this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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I now see this when i boot up. I just restarted my pc and now i get this.

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[–] [email protected] 110 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Pretty unhelpful responses so far. Enter

exit

to exit the current screen and return to a selection of installed OS/Kernels. You should be able to boot normally from there on. Once logged in, try

update-grub 

which should repair your bootloader config.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 7 months ago

Note: If update-grub isn't present, it's fine as it's basically just a short script for grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

[–] [email protected] 63 points 7 months ago

I raise you "what happened to my bus ?"

[–] [email protected] 52 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 53 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Achievement unlocked.

If you can fix it you unlock another one. If you manage to boot the system without using a rescue USB pen you unlock another one.

[–] kryllic 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Eventually Linus himself will come and personally re-write your cfg file for you

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

Once level up enough you'll be writing a GRUB replacement yourself. Now that would be a massive achievement.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Is that the platinum trophy?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Elements can't define achivement levels because you have so much achivements in linux but only 118 elements

[–] [email protected] 46 points 7 months ago

Your system is fucked, that's what happened.

More specifically, it cannot find the config file (/boot/grub/grub.cfg) it uses to load the menu & stuff to boot.

Usually it means one (or more) of:

  • the grub.cfg got moved/deleted
  • grub directory got moved/deleted
  • /boot directory got moved/deleted
  • boot partition failed to load
[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Welcome, this is the Linux user equivalent of popping your cherry.

You have a few options, but the easiest is to just use a rescue thing like Rescatux on a USB drive that automates most of the process. If you haven't the means of flashing a USB drive (like another computer) but still have your linux installation USB drive, most distros offer a "rescue existing install" option somewhere in their installer/liveUSB. But you'll have to search around.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Same thing happened to my windiws oc way back in 2002. Hdd crash wrecked its boot loader

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You’ve got some schmutz on your screen.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Are you alright joel?

How to i @ someone lmao

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Thank you :) makes sense

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Solar eclipse-caused bit flip.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Related. I actually thought it was a sun related thing, like a solar flare, in the comic. Turns out it was butterflies.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Dont forget to play around with grub while its like this. Tab completion works great, try '(' the press tab to maybe see your disks as grub sees them. I think help lists commands and most of them are harmless.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Dont forget to play around with grub while its like this. Tab completion works great, try ‘(’ the press tab to maybe see your disks as grub sees them.

Is this a joke like sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root / to speed up the PC? Because it kinda sounds that way.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

No. It's a little shell that you can explore with commands. If needed, you can mount and boot your OS just with commands in the grub shell.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The process for this is that you want to set your prefix to the /boot partition in the (hd1, gpt1) syntax (use ls) and then load the "normal" module. From then on, you should have regular GRUB again and should be able to boot your OS to properly fix GRUB.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Sounds like you'd love configuring network hardware then! You can get a peek into that in Linux with frr since it has a mode to configure your linux machine like you've just SSHed into a Catalyst switch, or just hop on ebay and buy a 20 year old switch for peanuts

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago

What were you doing before you got this? If the systems intact you can just boot your machine manually with grub commands.

Here's a guide I found: https://www.unix-ninja.com/p/Manually_booting_the_Linux_kernel_from_GRUB

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It isn't booting a kernel, you're in the bootloader.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (3 children)

How do i get it to load the kernal

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

If that doesn’t help boot with a live-cd or rescue, and check that your grub config points to a valid kernel.

Your hdd might be the culprit but it’s very hard to say from that screen. Maybe the one previously that can show your boot command

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

Witchcraft!! They’re speaking in tongues, get them!!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

It depends, is this a new install? Did you just update something?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Sheer hope, and a warrior's bravery

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Can you give a little more background info? What distro are you using, are you dual booting, is it a new install, did you make changes to your kernel, your partitions or grub before that?

While it's clear that grub couldn't find a kernel to boot, we need these Infos to help you find a solution.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Im using kde I did not even use my pc the last few days I came home it froze and when i rebooted i got this I do NOT have any duel boot

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You may want to replace the disk on that computer after you fix your boot. (As people said, with a recovery drive, probably the same one you use to install.)

After your computer is back, get a SMART client (like smartmontools) and check your disk status.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Probably, yeah. Depends on a few other things (drive age, SMART test results, how risk-averse you are…)

But at least it’s worth thinking about.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Could also be a bad update that broke grub, the smart data will show if your drive is dying

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

It's too early to tell; you must investigate further.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Well - the screen seems to indicate that it might wanna duel you anyway

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

I think I remember that a non geek friend of mine had good luck with this for fixing their Grub : https://www.supergrubdisk.org

Another option : https://www.system-rescue.org/disk-partitioning/Repairing-a-damaged-Grub/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Burn a live Linux system onto a USB (can be one with just a terminal, like Arch Linux). If you don't have another computer to plug the USB into, this can be done on an Android phone using EtchDroid.

Then, boot from that USB and mount your main filesystem. Inside of the Live system, chroot into the mounted filesystem and run sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg which should fix the bootloader.

After that, you can just exit the USB system and return back to your OS which should boot now.

(If you don't know how to mount a filesystem or chroot, I would explain but I forgot how to do it. If someone else could explain that would be neat)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I also like https://www.system-rescue.org/, it also has a menu entry that will detect and boot into installed Linux systems.

Remember that you can use Ventoy as a super simple method of using these tools. Ventoy will prepare a flash drive with a tool that, when booted, will give you a menu of all the ISO images on the drive and lets you boot any of them. You can have a drive with a collection of rescue tools, install ISO's, whatever you want, and it's as easy as dropping the ISO's on there. You can also use that partition to store your own files or whatever you want, it doesn't mind.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Some good tips on this thread, saved for later.