Grub-tools doesn't work if "grub-silent aur" is installed

joekamprad · November 19, 2020, 5:42pm

grub-tools doesn't work if "grub-silent aur" is installed

opened 11:41AM - 19 Nov 20 UTC

closed 05:29PM - 28 Nov 20 UTC

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/grub-silent/ grub-silent is a grub substit…ute to get rid of the "Welcome to grub" message at the begin of the grub boot sequence. It is particularly useful if a grub theme is installed. Then this short flickering up "Welcome to grub" message can be annoying before the grub theme shows up. If grub-silent aur is installed on EndeavourOS then an grub update will lead to a corrupt grub.cfg file and no os-prober menuentry will start anymore. The corrupted line in /boot/grub/grub.cfg is: initrd /boot/intel-ucode.img^/boot/initramfs-linux.img Instead of an empty space character there's a "^" character in the middle of the line that isn't correct. Tested with: EndeavourOS 2020.09.20 release installed in german language (don't know if this is relevant)

crosslinked

jonathon · November 19, 2020, 7:48pm

Likely to be down to

github.com

endeavouros-team/PKGBUILDS/blob/master/grub-tools/grub-fix-initrd-generation

#!/bin/bash
#
# A workaround for grub-mkconfig's initrd line generation problem on some distros.
# This modifies two files, see their names (in "local file=...") in the functions below.
#
# NOTE: to restore old behavior, simply reinstall packages 'grub' and 'os-prober'.

_log2() {
    echo "$@" >&2
}

_logfile() {
    echo "$@" >> $log
}

_log() {
    _log2 "$@"
    _logfile "$@"
}

This file has been truncated. show original

?

manuel · November 19, 2020, 9:16pm

I’ll look into this as soon as possible.

But until the reason is found, we can consider grub-silent and grub-tools “conflicting”.

manuel · November 22, 2020, 7:54pm

Packages grub-silent and grub-tools may not be fully compatible. Especially future changes of grub-silent may complicate things further because grub-silent and grub-tools have (partially) been changing the same grub source code files.

Anyway, after replacing grub with grub-silent, you should run commands

  grub-fix-initrd-generation
  grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

to make grub-silent and grub-tools work together (but no guarantees!).

And if you update grub-silent later, you may need to run those commands again.

EDIT: as mentioned below by @mireiner , grub-fix-initrd-generation will update grub, so a separate command for updating grub is not needed.

mireiner · November 23, 2020, 8:36am

Hello Manuel,

thank you for the fix. It works!

I suspect that you can skip the “grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg” command. Because I got the impression that the command “grub-fix-initrd-generation” already does a grub update as last step.

When I saw this when running the command “grub-fix-initrd-generation” I didn’t run the “normal” grub update after that. And it worked.

So I suspect if you have grub-silent installed you just have to run “grub-fix-initrd-generation” to update grub instead of “grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg” and you’re done.

In the long run the ideal solution might be to include the code of grub-silent into EndeavourOS grub-tools - or make it in some way optional.

Thanks again,
mireiner

manuel · November 23, 2020, 11:13am

That’s true! I had already forgot it, as the initial version of grub-fix-initrd-generation did not update grub.
Anyway, thanks for reminding!

By the way, welcome aboard! :

Pudge · November 23, 2020, 5:19pm

Welcome to the forum @mireiner I hope you enjoy your time here.

Pudge

mireiner · November 24, 2020, 6:58am

Hello Manual & Pudge,

thank you both for your welcome.

I have to correct myself. Now as the first kernel update came in I saw that ‘grub-fix-initrd-generation’ didn’t automatically call ‘grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg’. Probably it’s doing this only for a fresh grub install.

So it’s just as Manual stated: Both commands have to be called after another if the kernel has updated. A bash alias can make it more handy:

alias update-grub=‘sudo grub-fix-initrd-generation && sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg’

manuel · November 24, 2020, 4:11pm

A pacman hook
/etc/pacman.d/hooks/grub-update-after-kernel.hook
calls grub-mkconfig ... when a kernel or microcode is installed or removed.
Grub doesn’t need to be updated if kernel is updated.

Another pacman hook
/etc/pacman.d/hooks/grub-fix-initrd-generation.hook
calls grub-fix-initrd-generation when either grub or os-prober is updated.

joekamprad · February 9, 2021, 10:56am

is this solved?

manuel · February 9, 2021, 11:54am

Yes (so far) in the 4th post here. Just need to run those 2 commands as root after installing or updating grub-silent.

The problem is in the grub-silent package.

Edit: in fact I’ll add grub-silent to the same hook as grub currently is.