Full transparency on the GRUB issue - Updated 2022-08-29

From my own experience, I can only recommend that you always have a live USB to hand.

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Thanks dalto!

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This is just good practice no matter what boot manager, boot loader or distro you are using. The ability to live boot, chroot into your installation and take corrective actions is IMHO the most powerful recovery mechanism available.

ā€¦ and if you just donā€™t feel like you want to put the effort into fixing your current install, you already have a live USB and skip right to reinstalling :slight_smile:

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You are right and I actually had a live USB at hand, unfortunately that was an 2021 Version from Endeavour, so of no use as it wasnā€™t possible to boot my PC with it, as the Kernel Version was way too old for the Processor :smiley:
So I had to recreate the USB Drive to get a bootable one.

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I have one more question on this topic 'cause thereā€™s still one thing I donā€™t understand.

So the solution for ppl who havenā€™t already updated their system was to run ā€œsudo grub-installā€ after updating and before restarting.
But why and how exactly does this prevent the problem? I mean, Grub is already installed and the update is installed also. So what does this command do that isnā€™t done by pacman when updating your system?

Iā€™ll paraphrase the basics of what happens ā€¦ the new version of grub software is installed by yay/pacman and it expects some specific grub configuration data to be in place to work correctly. If you simply update with yay or pacman and reboot, this configuration data isnā€™t in place and bad things happen. Running the grub-install command puts the additional configuration data in place allowing the latest version of grub to work and keeping bad things from happening.

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Just came by to say thank you and emphasize how professionally the whole EndeavourOS team handled this situation.
I had 3 machines nuked by this bug. But your team reacted quickly. The information necessary to repair was very easy to find just by visiting your website.
I guess having a rolling release with all the latest software updates comes at a cost eventually.
I am Endeavour user since the first release and this was the first time something happened to me. Itā€™s completely normal.
For those who are mad I just want to remind you of the recent Windows updates. I believe since Windows 8 there were not many updates that didnā€™t completely break your system or resulted in a blue screen/crash. And thatā€™s a multi billion dollar company.
I love endeavourOS and the Linux community.

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There are two parts to grub. The piece that lives in the EFI and the piece that lives in userspace.

When you update grub and/or call grub-mkconfig that updates only the userspace components.

When you call grub-install, it updates the part in the EFI. The issue here is that new functionality was added and you need an updated grub in the EFI for it to be properly supported. Historically this has not been the case.

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Iā€™m aware many ppl donā€™t like Windows at all, but thatā€™s more than just exaggeration. Iā€™ve been using 8.1 for multiple years and I canā€™t remember any update that ā€œcompletly broke my systemā€. And the famous blue screen? I saw it once, maybe twice on 8.1. (Definitly more often on 7)

Good points. Itā€™s useful to keep things in perspective. On Windows 10 Pro I have disabled feature updates and delayed security updates for 4 days. Why not apply security patches immediately? Because Iā€™m more afraid of Micro$oft updates than I am of some sort of vulnerability exploit, thatā€™s why! I like to complain that EndeavourOS is so stable itā€™s boring. Even this latest GRUB bug didnā€™t affect me. Iā€™ve been using EOS Cinnamon for 18 months and itā€™s as reliable as a claw hammer. When I was distro hopping I was pretty good at tinkering with my AiO WiFi printer/scanners until I got them working but EOS took even that away from me. Set up took minutes and they have run without a glitch ever since.

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I was unlucky once recently, got a Lenovo desktop for work, I switch it on with windows, and tried installing one and only one driver for a camera and got a blue screen! :rofl: Itā€™s almost like people who try to switch to Linux but feel insecure and go back to Mac or windows after couple of days. first thing I wiped windows and got back to my comfortable Linux. :hugs:

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Well yeah, maybe indeed unlucky :wink: But I guess this was either W10 or 11 and I canā€™t say anything about those versions since I never used them.

I was checking the bug reported in archlinux and it is already closed (as NOT a bug), they ultimately blamed arch dependent distrosā€¦

(check latest comment).

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Umm, wow. I refuse to repost what they said but thatā€™s frigging nasty. Itā€™s their package and they donā€™t want to maintain it, I really think EOS should maintain their own bootloader at this point. Itā€™s too critical a component.

Hmmm, I sense basically a ā€˜FUā€™ response (yes I read it). I donā€™t know technically if the person closing it is in the right or notā€¦but passive aggressive lately ?

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Yeahā€¦side topic but they show attitude like that, then wonder why derivatives exist, and then deride them for being derivatives.

But I still love Endeavor. If only itā€™s origins were lessā€¦disreputable I guess? Or itā€™s upstream rather.

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Which is a bit ironic because Arch users were affected too (the issue is constantly brought up on r/archlinux too), so much so that they even made an announcement about it, so I donā€™t get the logic here.

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just change to systemd-boot, runs like a charm here. I changed after this grub disaster and well iā€™m not going back for sure.

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Canā€™t. Couple reasons.

  • I use BTRFS snapshots. systemd-boot canā€™t handle booting to them
  • My eyesight isnā€™t the greatest in the world and I find systemd-bootā€™s menu to be hard to read. Currently I have grub configured with a larger font so I have an easier time with it.

If EOS decided to switch to systemd-boot I suppose Iā€™d go along with it, I wouldnā€™t have a lot of choiceā€¦though I might migrate to rEFInd instead. RIght now I have grub being ignored in pacman.conf though, and I wonder if thatā€™s also a viable option for the ā€œderivativeā€ distros. Looks like HoloISO went that way too.

The text is indeed a bit small sized, on that no comment.

I also have btrfs and am currently looking into using clonezilla as backup tool (clone full systemdisk to img file). On the other hand ā€¦ backing up data is easy and reinstall the OS goes fast anyway if you record all steps and changes done very well. Snapshots however would be great to have under systemd, still looking around here if thereā€™s some possibilities out there for snapshots that donā€™t need a zillion hours of reading ā€¦