Update from this post from the other day: What to know before Dual Booting Windows + Linux?
TLDR: I got it working, started learning, tried to fix a grub issue and borked the whole system.
So after considering all the advice, I went and disabled/prepped/backed up, and started the process. I managed to get Fedora KDE installed on another partition and everything was looking ok. I installed some programs, started learning for a few hours, but there was one small issue. The grub configuration from the video didn’t really work. Windows wasn’t booting by default, and when I tried to do the GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true to have it boot the last OS, it also didn’t work. When booting windows, a message would flash by saying '/EFI/fedora/grubenv' not found.
Looking more into it, the video says to use sudo grub2-mkconfig -o boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg but I think the correct one now is grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg? I found this thread, but I couldn’t run the first command because it gave a conflict error, and I think there were two versions of grub2 installed?
So anyways, I tried running the setup again, thought it was ok and did a reboot to test… and got hit with a black screen with minimal BASH like line editing is supported.
At this point I’m a little worried and lost, thinking maybe I wasn’t ready to try this, and trying to get it back the way it was. I found this guide, but I get stuck trying to mount the EFI partition.
Any tips on where to go from here? Right now I plugged in the USB I used earlier, booted Fedora from it, and opened the terminal. Past that I’m a bit lost on how to fix grub.
I recently had GRUB issues which I managed to fix so I’m a little fresh in my mind. It’s 10pm here so I’ll be sleeping soon though.
Check the Arch wiki for how to fix GRUB, it has a lot of helpful tips: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB
I put Mint onto a USB and then booted into the Live to be able to have full OS to fix GRUB, rather than using the rescue interface. So definitely do that if you have a spare PC you can use to put an image on a USB.
Here’s some other links I saved:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=283343
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_system_partition#Mount_the_partition
https://superuser.com/questions/165116/mount-dev-proc-sys-in-a-chroot-environment
And I’ll post my commands I used to rebuild GRUB
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82/boot/grub$ find . -name normal.mod
./x86_64-efi/normal.mod
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82/boot/grub$ ls
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82/boot/grub$ vi grub.cfg
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82/boot/grub$ cd …/…
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo mount -o bind /dev dev
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo mount -o bind /proc proc
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ chroot .
chroot: cannot change root directory to ‘.’: Operation not permitted
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo chroot .
[root@mint /]# find . -name grubx64.efi
[root@mint /]# sudo fdisk -l
sudo: unable to allocate pty: No such device
[root@mint /]# exit
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ mount -o bind /dev/pts dev/pts
mount: /media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82/dev/pts: must be superuser to use mount.
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo mount -o bind /dev/pts dev/pts
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo chroot .
[root@mint /]# sudo fdisk -l
[root@mint /]# lsblk
lsblk: failed to access sysfs directory: /sys/dev/block: No such file or directory
[root@mint /]# exit
exit
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo mount -t sysfs /sys /mnt/sys
mount: /mnt/sys: mount point does not exist.
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo mount -t sysfs /sys
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo mount -t sysfs /sys sys
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82$ sudo chroot .
[root@mint /]# lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
loop0 7:0 0 2.6G 1 loop
sda 8:0 1 14.6T 0 disk
└─sda1 8:1 1 14.6T 0 part
sdb 8:16 0 476.9G 0 disk
└─sdb1 8:17 0 476.9G 0 part
sdc 8:32 1 232.9G 0 disk
├─sdc1 8:33 1 223.1G 0 part
└─sdc2 8:34 1 9.8G 0 part [SWAP]
sdd 8:48 1 14.6T 0 disk
└─sdd1 8:49 1 14.6T 0 part
sde 8:64 1 29.1G 0 disk
├─sde1 8:65 1 2.8G 0 part
├─sde2 8:66 1 4.1M 0 part
└─sde3 8:67 1 26.4G 0 part
nvme0n1 259:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 500M 0 part
├─nvme0n1p2 259:2 0 2G 0 part
└─nvme0n1p3 259:3 0 929G 0 part /
[root@mint /]# fdisk -l
[root@mint /]# mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /efi
[root@mint /]# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=efi --bootloader-id=GRUB
Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
Installation finished. No error reported.
So for a step by step,
I booted into Mint and opened a terminal and cd to my OS drive.
I checked my grub folder:
mint@mint:/media/mint/a96b3354-70dd-45ed-8c6c-95171e9f1e82/boot/grub$ ls
fonts grub.cfg grub.cfg.broke grubenv locale themes x86_64-efi
made an edit with vi (irrelevant here)
went back to / on my OS drive
mounted the various partitions needed, that’s all the mount -o bind commands, dev, proc, dev/pts, sys
then chroot to my OS drive so that I’m working inside my Arch install not the Mint install
then I mount the efi and grub install
[root@mint /]# mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /efi
[root@mint /]# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=efi --bootloader-id=GRUB