Bootloader installation error (Manjaro 21.1.6 KDE)

I’m trying to reinstall Manjaro 21.1.6 with KDE Plasma on my SSD because I accidentally selected the wrong drive when trying to install Kubuntu somewhere else the other day. Unfortunately, I keep running into the same problem at the very end of the process:

Bootloader installation error
The bootloader could not be installed. The installation command
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=Manjaro --force
returned error code 1.

I can’t figure out what exactly I’m doing wrong here. At first I thought I forgot yet again to specify the correct drive for the bootloader installation, however when booting the Manjaro 21.1.6 iso, Calamares doesn’t ask me where to install the bootloader to begin with. Please help.

Can you post the partitioning ?

In manual partitioniong, the bootloader is installed on the fat32 folder with mountpoint /boot/efi and flag boot.

Sure thing, but I doubt that this will be particularly helpful, as I’m not going for manual partitioning.

In manual partitioniong, the bootloader is installed on the fat32 folder with mountpoint /boot/efi and flag boot.

That is good to know, however not relevant here as I’m not doing the partitioning myself. I just go with the standard “Erase Disk” option.

error code 1 means → Operation not permitted

Now it would essential to know why is not permitted. A log is needed.

Run calamares with

sudo calamares -d

on the terminal and install it as normal. Then post the full log of the terminal here.

I think your UEFI is incompatible with the tool efibootmgr

Please run also:

efibootmgr -v

I think your UEFI is incompatible with the tool efibootmgr

Interesting. Is efibootmgr being used only since Manjaro 21.0 / 21.1? Because I had, months earlier, successfully installed Ornara (was it 20.2?) on the same drive with the same machine, and I also, just today, successfully installed Manjaro 20.0 (downloaded from the archive) on that same drive with the same machine. For “efibootmgr -v”, this is the output:

efibootmgr -v
** Warning ** : Boot004a is not UEFI Spec compliant (lowercase hex in name)
** Warning ** : Bootffff is not UEFI Spec compliant (lowercase hex in name)
** Warning ** : please recreate these using efibootmgr to remove this warning.
BootCurrent: 0049
Timeout: 2 seconds
BootOrder: 0049,0046,0048,0008,0006,0000,0001,0005,0004,0003,0002,0045,0047,004A
Boot0000 ubuntu VenHw(99e275e7-75a0-4b37-a2e6-c5385e6c00cb)
Boot0001 Windows Boot Manager VenHw(99e275e7-75a0-4b37-a2e6-c5385e6c00cb)WINDOWS…x…B.C.D.O.B.J.E.C.T.=.{.9.d.e.a.8.6.2.c.-.5.c.d.d.-.4.e.7.0.-.a.c.c.1.-.f.3.2.b.3.4.4.d.4.7.9.
5.}…a…
Boot0002 Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS VenHw(99e275e7-75a0-4b37-a2e6-c5385e6c00cb)
Boot0003 Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS VenHw(99e275e7-75a0-4b37-a2e6-c5385e6c00cb)
Boot0004 debian VenHw(99e275e7-75a0-4b37-a2e6-c5385e6c00cb)
Boot0005 ubuntu VenHw(99e275e7-75a0-4b37-a2e6-c5385e6c00cb)
Boot0006 Manjaro VenHw(99e275e7-75a0-4b37-a2e6-c5385e6c00cb)
Boot0008* MATSHITADVD-RAM UJ8E0 BBS(CDROM,0x0)…BO
Boot0008_BbsIndex Could not parse device path: No such file or directory

What I find interesting is that this lists Pop_OS, debian, and ubuntu, despite the fact that I currently do not have these systems installed anywhere, and I do not have any Ventoy drive with ISOs of them either.

Regarding Calamares, I used “$ sudo calamares -d > /home/manjaro/sudo_calamares.txt”. Here’s the hastebin: https://www.toptal.com/developers/hastebin/fupinuveca.makefile
There also was additional console output, not sure if that is relevenat:

QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to ‘/tmp/runtime-root’
QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to ‘/tmp/runtime-root’
chcon: failed to get security context of ‘/’: Operation not supported
chcon: failed to get security context of ‘/boot/efi’: Operation not supported
chcon: failed to get security context of ‘/dev’: Operation not supported
chcon: failed to get security context of ‘/proc’: Operation not supported
chcon: failed to get security context of ‘/run’: Operation not supported
chcon: failed to get security context of ‘/run/udev’: Operation not supported
chcon: failed to get security context of ‘/sys’: Operation not supported
chcon: failed to get security context of ‘/sys/firmware/efi/efivars’: Operation not supported

It has been always used, but you see the warning, right?

That’s what I mean with incompatible. So in this case it is the way how your UEFI name the entries.

Grub just triggers efibootmgr. The error comes clearly from creating an efi entry:

[PYTHON JOB]: "Bootloader: grub (efi)" 
    ..  Running "chroot" ("/tmp/calamares-root-7rg2er_c", "grub-install", "--target=x86_64-efi", "--efi-directory=/boot/efi", "--bootloader-id=Manjaro", "--force") 
    ..  Target cmd: ("grub-install", "--target=x86_64-efi", "--efi-directory=/boot/efi", "--bootloader-id=Manjaro", "--force") Exit code: 1 output:
 Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
** Warning ** : Boot004a is not UEFI Spec compliant (lowercase hex in name)
** Warning ** : Boot004a is not UEFI Spec compliant (lowercase hex in name)
** Warning ** : please recreate these using efibootmgr to remove this warning.
Could not delete variable: Invalid argument
grub-install: error: efibootmgr failed to register the boot entry: Block device required.
WARNING: [PYTHON JOB]: "Command 'grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=Manjaro --force' returned non-zero exit status 1." 
[PYTHON JOB]: "stdout:Installing for x86_64-efi platform.\n** Warning ** : Boot004a is not UEFI Spec compliant (lowercase hex in name)\n** Warning ** : Boot004a is not UEFI Spec compliant (lowercase hex in name)\n** Warning ** : please recreate these using efibootmgr to remove this warning.\nCould not delete variable: Invalid argument\ngrub-install: error: efibootmgr failed to register the boot entry: Block device required." 
[PYTHON JOB]: "stderr:None" 

So delete incompatible entries…

Btw, uhh … interestingly enough, doing just “sudo calamares” allowed me to successfully install Manjaro 21.1.6. I probably should’ve thought of that one earlier. :sweat_smile: So thanks for mentioning that one.

For Boot004a, I am not sure how relevant that really is, primarily because 004a is my external SSD that doesn’t have an OS installed and just serves as storage with an ntfs partition. I also had this bootloader error when that specific drive wasn’t even attached to begin with.

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