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

[Tomasz Czyż]

It looks like I hit some ZFS feature that it's not supported by grub module.

How I found that?
In grub, you can list files in zfs volumes by doing ``ls $drive/@/home``
etc.
I could list ``ls $drive/@/nix`` or ``ls $drive/@/nix/var`` but not ``ls
$drive/@/nix/store`` where I kept the kernels.

I found some explanations about lot's of files and lot's of hardlinks (nix
store had at that time more than 130G and probably triggered the feature).

nix-collect-garbage -d didn't help.

I solved the problem by using boot.loader.grub.copyKernels = true;

Kernels were copied to the same volume but to /boot where there is smaller
number of files and worked perfectly.


2017-01-23 16:44 GMT+00:00 Tomasz Czyż <tomasz.czyz at gmail.com>:

>
>
> 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
>



-- 
Tomasz Czyż
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