[Nix-dev] Grub problem: external pointer tables not supported

[Tomasz Czyż]

2017-01-23 16:15 GMT+00:00 Roger Qiu <roger.qiu at matrix.ai>:

> Hey,
>
> Changing nixos generations won't affect the grub boot partition, that only
> changes which nixos kernel and initramfs image gets booted.
>
Because all boot options are not working one of my guesses is that in new
nix version, wrong config was generated when I did system update which
broke all options.

> This looks like an error in the Grub partition. Maybe you recently updated
> it or changed it, or the partition got corrupted.
>
It's possible, I tried to boot from USB, do ``nixos-install
--no-root-passwd`` to reinstall the system, but I'm not sure how to force
grub/uefi partition recreation/reinstalling, any idea? Should I just format
it and will be recreated?

> This is why other operating systems tend to make their /boot read-only...
>
> If you can't get into the OS, then you can try booting off a USB, and then
> edit the boot partition. Or run the uefi terminal app (but this one never
> worked for me). If you had cloned/raided boot partitions you can try
> changing the uefi image to boot from in your uefi settings (access it like
> BIOS).
>
I tried that, but I'm not sure what to change. I tried to reinstall grub on
EFI partition but I'm not sure how to do that, is regular grub-install
stuff way to go (I thought I had some issues with that and I tried
nixos-install after that).

> Currently I have 2 uefi boot partitions cloned, but one failed so I've
> been booting off the other one.
>
Nice one, I think I'll try to do something like that.

Thanks Roger.

> Thanks,
> Roger
> On 23/01/2017 10:48 PM, "Tomasz Czyż" <to <tomasz.czyz at gmail.com>
>


> masz.czyz at gmail.com <tomasz.czyz at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> recently my grub said this to me after I restarted computer:
>>
>> Error: external pointer tables not supported
>> Error: you need to load the kernel first.
>>
>> Every option I select with nix (also past generations) shows me this
>> message.
>>
>> I updated the system to 17.03pre99792.c311871 on 2016-12-23 and restarted
>> it before multiple times (and worked). I don't remember if I did other
>> updates, but this is what's grub menu shows me.
>>
>> My disk layout is: EFI boot partition for grub, next partition is
>> encrypted luks volume and ZFS on top of it.
>>
>> This setup worked for me for 1.5 year now without any issue.
>>
>> Anybody is aware of any changes to grub/zfs recently or had same issue?
>> Any suggestions how I can recover from it or what can be wrong?
>>
>> Tom
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> nix-dev mailing list
>> nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl
>> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>>
>>


-- 
Tomasz Czyż
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