Soā¦ for the record, and @jputnam, Iām going to try and āretraceā the steps that got us there and how we got out (well, in actually :p).
First of all, thanks so much for your help guys (especially @dalto, as usual, Iāve no idea how he puts up with it)
This is a very long post full of many useless words drowning out the few informative partsā¦
Jump to the TD;LR part at the end if youāre still in your right mind (and intend to keep it that way).
context of the installed system
System is dual booting eOS and Windows 10 (ā¦you already know itās gonna be a sad story), eOS was installed after W10, with the āregularā installer (was Neo version I think), btrfs, encryption, systemd-boot and dracut, like all this ādefaultā i.e. letting the installer do its magic, I just chose the W10 efi partition (that I previously tweaked increasing its size) and installer did the rest. (Wellā¦ as far as I remember, it was some months back, was my first time installing w/ dracut systemd-boot (and kde) and not manually partitioning or anything (except the efi size part))
It is not my main machine at all, but anyway, everything was working like a charm and as expected, the dual booting part included, and any time someone has had to do anything on eOS and/or W10 with this install, it has never disappointed.
Having to boot W10 to grab a document there, I decided to run an update from it, as it had a long time since anything happened to it (and boy was it better this wayā¦).
Andā¦ for an obscure reason (is there any other with micro$oft?) when the system restarted to allow W10 to fulfill its shady āupdateā, the boot loader was broken, like systemd-boot menu was nonexistent and a blue windows death screen that I didnāt bother to read (wellā¦) appeared to my pleasure.
After manhandling the machine a couple of times, throwing it on the ground and jumping on it while vocally expressing my gratitude to Mr Gates and its team, I rebooted to (surprisingly) the exact same screen.
I then had the wonderful idea to go check in the bios if some boot order was messed up, eOS wasnāt there anymore, I tweaked the UEFI mode to UEFI+legacy (is it when it got really bad?), rebooted, same same, tweaked back, threw it harder on the wall, spilled a big full pot of boiling water on it, restarted, same same (well, except some sparks that werenāt there before maybe).
So, following another rich idea, I let myself being tricked into the āpropositionā M$ offered on its nice blue screen and ended up pressing the button āREPAIR MY SYSTEMā.
In my defense, I do a lot of experimental drugs.
Well, Micro$oft didnāt disappoint, it did repair, well, not MY, but at least HIS system.
And yes, itās really only after willing-fully helping W10 to screw this as far as it possibly could, that I decided to boot in eOS live iso to clean this mess (about time, right?).
ā¦this is when the first post of this thread appeared, after I unsuccessfully
# bootctl install
reboot
same crap
# bootctl install
# reinstall-kernels
same same
/efi was there, it was apparently populated as expected as @dalto checked in this post.
After crying for a couple of minutes, I went and extensively followed everything I came across in the wiki systemd-boot troubleshooting, UEFI troubleshooting here and thereā¦
Wellā¦ that lead me kind of nowhere except in the windows command-line interface messing up rebuilding the bootloaderā¦
This windows terminal part really was a lot of pain, leading to assuming the problem was probably (but what do I knowā¦) with the BCD file in the windows boot loaderā¦ but like ĀÆ_(ć)_/ĀÆ
Yeah anyway, thereās so much pain one can take, so at one point I went rogue and just deleted (I do a LOT of drugs) everything inside the /efi partition (backing up only the /EFI/Microsoft folder which is stupid, but in line with the rest of my actions).
Now, NOTHING was booting of course. In the bios uefi was showing nothing at all to select to boot from. That was quite an achievement. I should have started with that.
So, eOS live iso, messing up the order of reinstall-kernels and bootctl install, leading to funny boot menu with nothing but the bios to ābootā on, then corrected the order, and back to a bootable eOS.
That was quite a journeyā¦
Then, cause I like pain I guess, had to grab a f$ck*n W10 iso, do so much crap from there to ārebuildā the W10 boot loader, went back to eos, re re re re re re bootctl install ā reinstall-kernels.
Back to a ānormalā dual-booting system, with a wonderful systemd-boot menu showing everything it should.
In the bios, next to Linux Boot Manager and Windows Boot Manager, I still have a weird entry, called UEFI OS, that was created when I messed up kernels and bootctl order the first time I ārepopulatedā the /efi. Iām not sure I will care about it at this point.
What a long and boring postā¦ (again, I do do drugs) so:
TL;DR:
- somehow (most probable cause: Me+ZindoZ) the boot menu vanished, worst, the linux bios entry did
- impossible to get it back on tracks only with
bootctl installandreinstall-kernels, firmware wouldnāt acknowledge linux boot manager existence. - blowing up
/eficontent for good and lettingbootctlreinstall systemd-boot to the ESP did what it should. Booting into Linux was possible again. - more idiotic steps were still necessary to get W10 on track too, but clearly the one and only mandatory step that should worth mentioning is:
- NOT TO INSTALL WINDOWS AT ALL
Cheers