Hi, New to Manjaro, moving from Ubuntu. I installed it but can’t boot. DISTRIB_RELEASE=22.0.4. Was expecting a dual booting. Partitions are from gparted:
Disk /dev/sda: 476.94 GiB, 512110190592 bytes, 1000215216 sectors
Disk model: SAMSUNG MZ7LN512
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 2048 210635742 210633695 100.4G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 210636800 211888127 1251328 611M 27 Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sda3 211892222 1000215144 788322923 375.9G 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 329078784 348608511 19529728 9.3G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 348610560 543920127 195309568 93.1G 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 543922176 1000215144 456292969 217.6G 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 * 211892224 329075817 117183594 55.9G 83 Linux
Bios options:
secure boot off
legacy first.
The manjaro partition is marked boot as it should be. I tried to update the grub after .iso booting but to no avail. When I enter the bios and select my SSD disk, nothing happens just redisplay of BIOS startup options. Is the MBR broken although the partition table seems OK.
I had a look in the forum but didn’t see anything to fix this.
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found theme: /usr/share/grub/themes/manjaro/theme.txt
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-6.1-x86_64
Found initrd image: /boot/intel-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-6.1-x86_64.img
Found initrd fallback image: /boot/initramfs-6.1-x86_64-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.
ERROR: mkdir /var/lock/dmraid
grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sdb1. Check your device.map.
grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sdb1. Check your device.map.
Found Windows 10 on /dev/sda1
Root filesystem isn't btrfs
If you think an error has occurred, please file a bug report at "https://github.com/Antynea/grub-btrfs"
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+/memtest.bin
Found memtest86+ EFI image: /boot/memtest86+/memtest.efi
done
PS. By the way, I’m a bit puzzled at the notifications fields in the user profile of the forum. I’d just like to receive an email when reply is posted. How do I do that?
Added verbose so that you can see what’s going wrong. I have a feeling that it skips writing the MBR, because there is a problem of some sort. --force will write it regardless.
Thanks. I tried that but failed. Now, in the output of grub-install, apparently it doesn’t detect the manjaro partition which is flagged bootable. Also, the output of the MBR by dd lists a string “GRUB GeomHard DiskRead Error” which seems to indicate that the MBR is not right. Finally, is it necessary to recreate the grub.cfg file after grub install?
in mbr mode , calamares cant install with extented partitions :
no more than 4 primary partitions
so it fails on both case mbr ( using extend partition ) and efi ( not gpt partition )
I noticed that fdisk warned that the partitions were not in the right order. I fixed that with the option x and f and thought this was the culprit but no. As there was a string of chars in the MBR saying grub bad disk geometry, I tried to regenerate the MBR. I found a debian program install-mbr and executed it to fix this. That chain of chars disappeared. Good. but not enough. I tried to see if in Ubuntu the problem would be the same and it is. I can’t boot the machine. I must stay I’m a bit at my wits’ end with this. Of course, I could try GPT and UEFI but I fear to loose my windows 10 since I haven’t got any installation copy of the system and programs so I’d rather not do that.
From my perspective, I would encourage you to use UEFI and GPT on your system. I don’t see what benefit you get when using modern OS’s. OK, you can install older OS’s with legacy support or use secure boot for Windows, while Linux be installed in legacy. But GPT is a good replacement for the outdated MS-DOS and is more stable and nowadays better supported.
But yeah, I get that, you need to back up everything and reinstall everything on GPT. It is your choice.
I still have this string of chars in the MBR: GRUB GeomHard DiskRead Error. This puzzles me. The /dev/sda has 1Mib room at the beginning of /dev/sda to store the grub image. So this should be fine. I checked the partition alignment of manjaro partition, fine.
Since Linux is installed inside a LBA, I would say there is something broken on the LBA, so that your BIOS / Grub cannot read it correctly. Logical partitions are very nasty and are rather a hack in my view. I guess there is nothing you can do on a LBA.
However, what about adding just a boot partition, which is not a logical partition and mounted at /boot? This boot partition can be flagged with boot instead of the root partition then. Of course, you have to reinstall grub entirely then.
That is the only idea I have here. Otherwise: Reinstall
Thanks. Well, I tried a few things but nothing really convincing and stable for the future. It even broke my windows (loadwin.exe). So I decided to erase everything and go with uefi and gpt. I reflashed the Bios to the latest version and reinstalled windows. Another uefi partition for manjaro and installation went OK. Well, I wasn’t expecting so many difficulties to start with…but eventually things seem to be OK now.