Bug#720513: GRUB stopped in rescue mode for me, too

[Martin Steigerwald]

Hi!

grub-efi-amd64 stopped in rescue mode for me as well.

I added a 30 GB mSATA SSD to my system some time ago and yesterday moved
my Debian GNU/Linux Sid installation to it.

First I tried UEFI which failed like described here. Then MBR also failed
until I removed mSATA SSD from BIOS bood order to put it past old Intel
SSD 320 (see bug #721016).

Unlike reported there, GRUB just dumped me into rescue mode without any
error message being displayed.

Since the bug report mentioned that it happened after upgrade to 2.00-15
to 2.00-17 I downgraded again using the following packages from
snapshot.debian.org:

grub2-common_2.00-15_amd64.deb
grub-common_2.00-15_amd64.deb
grub-efi-amd64_2.00-15_amd64.deb
grub-efi-amd64-bin_2.00-15_amd64.deb


I reinstalled grub using

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi /dev/sdb

I also tried with

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi /dev/sdb


EFI setup I did along the lines of:

http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article51/debian-efi


But "grub-install /dev/sdb" alone didn´t work. It complained something
about a missing directory and suggested to use --target or --directory.
Which I did in above. Thats probably cause I did install from BIOS mode.


My EFI partition is as follows:

merkaba:~> find /boot/efi -ls
     1   16 drwxr-xr-x   3 root     root        16384 Jan  1  1970 /boot/efi
     4    4 drwxr-xr-x   4 root     root         4096 Aug 26 14:40 /boot/efi/EFI
     7    4 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         4096 Aug 26 14:38 /boot/efi/EFI/debian
     9  120 -rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root       121856 Aug 26 13:00 /boot/efi/EFI/debian/grubx64.efi
    10    4 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         4096 Aug 26 14:40 /boot/efi/EFI/boot
    12  120 -rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root       121856 Aug 26 13:00 /boot/efi/EFI/boot/bootx64.efi

I copied the boot/bootx64.efi over manually from debian/grubx86.efi. That
is with grub 2.00-15. With grub 2.00-17 size was a bit higher. This was to
have the firmware boot at least something, until I am able to use efivars
and this magic command to tell it to boot the debian entry.

This seemed to have worked as I got to GRUB. This is on a ThinkPad T520,
with UEFI firmware without Secure Boot.


I used GPT partitioning which I converted to MBR now in order to be able
to boot this somehow.

Basically it was

Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/sdb: 58626288 sectors, 28.0 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 496603F8-[…]
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 58626254
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 15659181 sectors (7.5 GiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048          411647   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System
   2          411648         1026047   300.0 MiB   8300  Linux filesystem
   3         1026048        42969087   20.0 GiB    8300  Linux filesystem


Now is:

merkaba:~> fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 30.0 GB, 30016659456 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3649 cylinders, total 58626288 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1            2048      411647      204800   ef  EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
/dev/sdb2          411648     1026047      307200   83  Linux
/dev/sdb3         1026048    42969087    20971520   83  Linux

in order to boot via grub-pc.

Ciao,
-- 
Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de
GPG: 03B0 0D6C 0040 0710 4AFA  B82F 991B EAAC A599 84C7