I’ve been using Manjaro on this laptop for several months. Before coming across this issue I tried to boot Manjaro LiveUSB without success. And now I have also this issue.
I figure you’ll have to reinstall grub. For which you’d need a live environment. I’m thinking one of two things why you can’t boot into it:
- The BIOS/UEFI isn’t set to check for USB devices; or
- a faulty USB thumb drive.
You’d have to correct whichever one it is. Afterwards:
How to chroot
-
Ensure you’ve got a relatively new ISO or at least one with a still supported LTS kernel.
-
Write/copy/
ddthe ISO to a USB thumb drive. -
When done, boot with the above mentioned USB thumb drive into the live environment.
-
Once booted, open a terminal and enter the following command to enter the
chrootencironment:
manjaro-chroot -a
- If you have more than one Linux installation, select the correct one to use from the list provided.
When done, you should now be in the chroot environment.
But, be careful, as you’re now in an actual root environment on your computer, so any changes you make will persist after a restart.
Reinstalling grub from chroot environment.
Once in the live environment, you have to reinstall GRUB. To do so, run the following:
grub-install --recheck --force --target=x86_64-efi --boot-directory=/boot --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=Manjaro
Followed by:
update-grub
When successfully completed, exit the chroot environment:
exit
Followed by rebooting and seeing if it worked.
If it did, feel free to heap on the praise. If, however, it didn’t, well, then is wasn’t me and I’m innocent!
Edit:
If this happened out of the blue, it might be a sign of hardware failure. So in the live environment, before entering the chroot environment, do a smart test on the hard drive to make sure there’s nothing wrong with it:
- Install
smartmontoolsif it’s not already installed:
pamac install smartmontools
- Run the check:
sudo smartctl -a <device>
Where <device> is the identifier of your harddrive. For example, /dev/sda, /dev/sdb or /dev/nvme0
If all is well, there should be something similar to:
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
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It doesn’t see USB stick with LiveUSB at all! No matter what I use to write a disk image (balenaEtcher or Rufus), it just doesn’t see USB stick nor in BIOS menu nor in F12 Boot menu.
How did you install manjaro ?
I installed Manjaro using LiveUSB. But now my laptop doesn’t recognize LiveUSB stick. I have no idea, why.
It would help to provide some basic info, like what brand/model of laptop you use…
It might be possible to change your UEFI-BIOS settings to recognize the USB as bootable medium, if not you have bigger problems…
My laptop is Acer Aspire A317-53-78W9 and there is no way to provide system information
Did you try all USB-slots ?
Did you try an other USB-stick ?
The only slots I have on boot priority are:
- HDD0:
- “*”
I used two USB sticks, both 32GB. Wrote disk image using Rufus or balenaEtcher
Also, does grub configuration has anything to do with this issue?
It’s too late for me to dig in the user manual of your laptop: Acer A315-53 Manuals | ManualsLib
But im sure there must be a way to allow it to use the USB…
Most likely your USB was formatted wrongly to be recognized properly using an UEFI-BIOS in SecureBoot mode…
How many USB-Slots do you have ? 3? 2? USB-3 USB-2 ?
Some sticks may not be bootable in one slot, but in an other one
A possible slot is only visible to UEFI when a stick was inserted at boot-time
Are the sticks USB2 or USB3 ?
Do you have the stick you used to install manjaro ?
Perhaps. But without Live-USB it won’t be easy.
Can you boot with the repaired grub entry?
Do you have the information you need (UUIDs and kernel name…) on paper?
Can you extract them with the grub console?
If “yes, yes, yes”, then maybe someone who knows better than me can help you.
In the meantime, I would focus on getting a live USB to work again.
Is secure boot disabled ?
Secure boot is disabled. I wrote LiveUSB image on computers, which have no UEFI (Rufus option: MBR and BIOS/UEFI).
‘uname -r’ output is ‘6.0.19-3-MANJARO’
Here are my boot manager option and ‘blkid’ output.
The system boots, when I choose ‘fallback initramfs’ option despite failing to boot with a default option.
try using ventoy to flash the iso…
Hi there! I’ve noticed I can boot Manjaro with “fallback initramfs” option. Will there be any issues, if I reinstall grub not from chroot environment but after booting Manjaro with “fallback initramfs” option? I mean using sudo grub-install --recheck --force --target=x86_64-efi --boot-directory=/boot --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=Manjaro command?
If you are able to boot using that option it means you problem is not Grub related…
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To add:
you should check /etc/default/grub → the parameters in the line starting with
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=
and
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=
the second one is usually empty (“”)
you should also check /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
the line starting with
HOOKS=
perhaps you changed something there?
Found the same issue in Manjaro works only in fallback mode initramfs topic. Solved this by prompting sudo mkinitcpio -P. System works fine after reboot. The only issue left is that uefi doesn’t recognize LiveUSB stick. Thank you everyone for your help!
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If you can start with “fallback” then the special initramfs file seems to be missing/broken.
Each time mkinitcpio is run, both initrd files are prepared. (so you’re good now)
- One is small and only contains files collected specifically for your PC. This will boot quickly.
- One is large and contains ALL files that might be needed to boot. This will boot slower.
If the 1st is missing, you can always use the “fallback”.
If you changed hardware while the PC was off, it’s possible that “fallback” booting is the better option, as some files needed for the new hardware may be missing from the small initramdisk.
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