New grub updates

General system Kernel, boot, graphics & hardware
1

I don’t know if anyone’s noticed but there have been two new grub updates over the past couple of days. I just got the second one this morning after reinstalling grub and running the grub update command last night. So i just had to do it again. For those of you who may have forgotten or don’t know it is recommended when you get a new grub package version to reinstall grub and run the grub update command. For those on the default install of eos it is systemd-boot so you don’t have to worry about this. No this is not an April fools joke! The latest grub version this morning.

[ricklinux@rick-ms7c37 ~]$ pacman -Qi grub
Name            : grub
Version         : 2:2.12.r260.gaae2ea61-1
Description     : GNU GRand Unified Bootloader (2)
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/
Licenses        : GPL-3.0-or-later
Groups          : None
Provides        : grub-bios  grub-common  grub-efi-x86_64  grub-emu
Depends On      : device-mapper  gettext  sh  xz
Optional Deps   : dosfstools: For grub-mkrescue FAT FS and EFI support [installed]
                  efibootmgr: For grub-install EFI support [installed]
                  freetype2: For grub-mkfont usage [installed]
                  fuse3: For grub-mount usage [installed]
                  libisoburn: Provides xorriso for generating grub rescue iso using grub-mkrescue
                  lzop: For grub-mkrescue LZO support
                  mtools: For grub-mkrescue FAT FS support [installed]
                  os-prober: To detect other OSes when generating grub.cfg in BIOS systems [installed]
Required By     : grub-btrfs
Optional For    : None
Conflicts With  : grub-bios  grub-common  grub-efi-x86_64  grub-emu  grub-legacy
Replaces        : grub-common  grub-bios  grub-emu  grub-efi-x86_64
Installed Size  : 35.65 MiB
Packager        : Christian Hesse <eworm@archlinux.org>
Build Date      : Thu 27 Mar 2025 05:44:38 PM
Install Date    : Tue 01 Apr 2025 09:06:01 AM
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : Yes
Validated By    : Signature
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2

Thousands of Dollars worth of therapy later, I still get cold sweats remembering the mayhem that a Grub update caused a couple of years ago. :sweat_smile:

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3

Hopefully those who are using grub will pay attention to new grub package versions and remember to do this small manual intervention.

1 Like
4

Usually the update of package grub goes without issue.
The pacman output will inform you to run commands
grub-install and grub-mkconfig with their proper parameters.

If you are not sure what to do exactly, here’s some tips when grub updates:

  • Look at your install log at /var/log, file endeavour-install.log or Calamares.log. Search for grub-install in either of the log files, it will tell you how grub was installed originally. With this info you can create the proper grub-install command.
    Note that this applies only if you haven’t changed the bootloader stuff in any way.
  • For EFI systems, simple grub-install --no-nvram might be enough too.

If you happen to reboot the system before doing the things above, you may need to arch-chroot into the installed system and use the tips above.
See our wiki (Discovery) pages about how to arch-chroot.

4 Likes
5

I just installed latest Grub update via Arch-Update and didn’t do anything after updating. Rebooting was fine, and I’m back without any issues … :thinking:

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6

You may not have any issues but you are using the previous, older EFI binary to boot your system.

Updating the Grub package, provides a new EFI binary, grubx64.efi, with whatever fixes it may contain.

Using the grub-install command, you put this binary into the boot path for it to be used by the firmware of your machine to boot up your system. That’s the reason for the recommendation.

1 Like
7

Ok. Reinstalled Grub …

❯ sudo grub-install --no-nvram
[sudo] Passwort für denalb: 
x86_64-efi wird für Ihre Plattform installiert.
Installation beendet. Keine Fehler aufgetreten.

And updated Grub …

❯ sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
GRUB-Konfigurationsdatei wird erstellt …
Thema gefunden: /boot/grub/themes/Endeavouros/theme.txt
Linux-Abbild gefunden: /boot/vmlinuz-linux-zen
Initrd-Abbild gefunden: /boot/initramfs-linux-zen.img
Found fallback initrd image(s) in /boot:  initramfs-linux-zen-fallback.img
Linux-Abbild gefunden: /boot/vmlinuz-linux-lts
Initrd-Abbild gefunden: /boot/initramfs-linux-lts.img
Found fallback initrd image(s) in /boot:  initramfs-linux-lts-fallback.img
Warnung: Zur Erkennung anderer bootfähiger Partitionen wird os-prober nicht ausgeführt.
Die darauf befindlichen Systeme werden nicht zur GRUB-Bootkonfiguration hinzugefügt.
Schauen Sie in den Dokumentationseintrag GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER.
Bootmenü-Eintrag für UEFI-Firmware-Einstellungen wird hinzugefügt …
Detecting snapshots ...
Found snapshot: 2025-04-01 20:00:31 | @/.snapshots/87/snapshot | single | timeline                                                                 |
Found snapshot: 2025-04-01 19:16:05 | @/.snapshots/86/snapshot | post   | ca-certificates-mozilla expat gdbm grub jansson lib32-expat lib32-nss li |
Found snapshot: 2025-04-01 19:15:57 | @/.snapshots/85/snapshot | pre    | pacman --color always -Syu                                               |
Found snapshot: 2025-04-01 19:13:49 | @/.snapshots/84/snapshot | single | timeline                                                                 |
[...]
Found 39 snapshot(s)
Unmount /tmp/grub-btrfs.Q2CMmZLNvQ .. Success
abgeschlossen

Now I’ll reboot. Fingers crossed that I’m back in some seconds … :wink:

3 Likes
8

I’m back. So I think all is fine? How can I verify that my grub installation is up-to-date? :thinking:

9

The two commands you already have run after the update to the Grub package is to make sure that your Grub bootloader and grub.cfg are up-to-date.

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10

So I should be fine … Thank you very much! :+1:

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11

At least,something good seems to come from this update.

[roger@roger-lenovo ~]$ sudo os-prober
[sudo] Mot de passe de roger : 
/dev/nvme0n1p1@/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi:Windows Boot Manager:Windows:efi
/dev/nvme0n1p7:ArcoLinux (rolling):ArcoLinux:linux
/dev/sda3:ArcoLinux (rolling):ArcoLinux1:linux
[roger@roger-lenovo ~]$

As you can see, os-prober now does not produce any “segmentation fault” like it did for the last six weeks. That’s quite an achievement. :grinning_face:

2 Likes
12

Yeah, better now:

$ sudo os-prober 
/dev/sda3:EndeavourOS Linux (rolling):EndeavourOS:linux
/dev/sdb1:EndeavourOS Linux (rolling):EndeavourOS1:linux
$
13

I never had these issues, and I’m using Windows 11 in dual boot with os-prober in grub. :thinking:

14

Why were there two updates in such quick succession? Was it because of the recent blog posting by Microsoft highlight some bugs found in GRUB2?

15

You’d have to ask the Arch package maintainer(s) about the rapid releases. Unless they were quoted somewhere, we’ll never know.

16

Unfortunately, it’s still not fixed - my non-microsoft dual boot would not boot after updating. Had to go back to 2.12.3.

17

Well it’s probably something specific in your case. I have not had any issues with the grub updates.

18

It began this way

or this way

19

Yes…
I don’t have os-prober enabled so I’m not running into that issue. I can run the grub-update command on dual boot with windows and the Windows entry remains.

20

I just enabled os-prober and ran the grub update command and didn’t run into this issue.

[ricklinux@eos-kde ~]$ sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found background: /usr/share/endeavouros/splash.png
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-linux
Found initrd image: /boot/amd-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-linux.img
Found fallback initrd image(s) in /boot:  amd-ucode.img initramfs-linux-fallback.img
Warning: os-prober will be executed to detect other bootable partitions.
Its output will be used to detect bootable binaries on them and create new boot entries.
Found Windows Boot Manager on /dev/nvme0n1p1@/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
Adding boot menu entry for UEFI Firmware Settings ...
done
[ricklinux@eos-kde ~]$