Development of the [Boot-Repair] and [Boot-Info] utilities

[oldfred]

It used to be that Ubuntu only installed one grub, either grub-pc or grub-efi-amd64.
But then I saw somewhere that they were installing both. Not quite sure why?

[MAFoElffen]

@oldfred. On Post #11.

I admit that I "used to" do that. Now I try to stay and recommend GPT partitioning and UEFI booting. But some users are still using old hardware.

For me, with CSM or EFI, trying to stay BIOS dual boot capable between, that was years ago. The "reasoning" I did that on 'some' of my hardware, was on servers, where I had GPT disks that was on some Dell PowerEdge 2900's, where if I had a hardware failure, that I could take the disks and just put them in any of my other hardware, no matter whether they were CSM or UEFI boot, and they would boot and run. At the time, that seemed like a good fallback (LOL), but it turned out to be... not that much...

As time went by, everything new was UEFI, so falling back to a CSM machine would have been a step backward. That and all those drives were on Dell PERC RAID Controllers, which couldn't do JBOD, so all disks, if you wanted to treat then as single disks, had to be setup as single disk RAID0 arrays... So I only could go to one of my other servers that could ID that specific animal of through their hardware RAID controllers. (That was another side issue.).

Now a-days, I don't recommend it. Installing both grub-pc and grub-efi-amd64 is just extra work for no reward. That it not even addressing the many drawbacks to MBR partitioning... Let alone to CSM only BIOS booting.

EDIT:
I 'have' seen new SSD's come with MBR partition tables still... Those SSD's were all 500GB and less. So User's not knowing that, or to just start out setting a new disk with a new, fresh GPT partition table, are still getting caught what that when they try to add a 5th partition...

[sudodus]

Hi YannBuntu et. al.,

I just discovered this thread. It will be interesting to follow the discrussion.

Maybe I can help testing too, but at the moment I don't know what it would be ...

---

Please post a link to the test version of Boot-Repair and the Boot-Info script. (I guess there is a test/unstable version somewhere.)

[YannBuntu]

hi Sudodus, good to see you here !

You can test all the configurations that come to your mind (multi-disc / multi-OS / exotic FS / SecureBoot or not ...) :
1) check that the Boot-Info diagnosis is relevant, especially the 'Suggested repair' section at the very bottom.
2) check (preferably in VM) that the actual execution of this suggested repair (via Boot-Repair's 'Recommended Repair' button) correctly works.

(FYI, there is a dev PPA, but I don't recommend to use it at the moment, wouldn't help)

[sudodus]

I installed the Boot-Info script and Boot-Repair into a current Lubuntu Jammy persistent live system.

Then I tested with a working system with two installed systems (installed in BIOS mode) in an old Toshiba laptop. Things worked as expected, the description was correct and Boot-Repair did not damage the system.

After that I did a lot to corrupt the systems (moved the partitions and booted the persistent live system in UEFI model). I ran Boot-Repair but it could not fix the system, not even after I created a FAT32 partition. Obviously this was way too much (I caused too much corruption).

Then I did something more reasonable: Created a fresh GPT with a FAT32 partition and an bios_grub partition. I installed Lubuntu Jammy in UEFI mode, and after that another Lubuntu Jammy system in BIOS mode. Boot-Repair could make the boot system recognize and use both systems.

---

I noticed that the desktop environment's graphics of the running system (the persistent live Lubuntu Jammy) was corrupted after running the scripts. Is this typical or is it happening only in Jammy?

---

I noticed also that sudo update-grub no longer finds and activates other operating systems unless

GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER="true"
is changed to
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER="false"

in /usr/sbin/grub-mkconfig

I think this is a new feature (security-related), and we (who help here and may use Boot-Repair) should be aware of it.
Edit 2: See this bug report.

---

Edit: Please tell me a couple of typical corruptions (that happen to end users), where Boot-Repair should work, and I can create such corruptions and test if I can make Boot-Repair see them and make Boot-Repair fix them.

[MAFoElffen]

Well Dang...
https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/wSbCmPqZGV/

This is a Default Ubuntu 20.04.3 EFI ZFS installation on an AMD64 KVM VM, that is booting fine.... I didn't add any errors to it yet. Any idea what "Error 32" is or should I research that and find out? It's recommending repairs... But aren't needed(?)

Here is the machine report from system-info:

Starting the Ubuntu Forums 'system-info' Report: 2022-01-12  01:28:14 PST (-0800)
    Part of the Ama-gi Project
    Version: 01.00-02, Script Date: 2021.12.06

---------------------------------------------------------------
Main Complaint: Test
Problem Description:  Test
---------- General Computer Specifications:

  --- Computer/CPU Information from 'lshw -C cpu' --- 
*-Cpu:0
    Description: CPU
    Product: Intel Xeon E312xx (Sandy Bridge, IBRS update)
    Vendor: Intel Corp.
    Physical id: 400
    Bus info: cpu@0
    Version: pc-q35-4.2
    Slot: CPU 0
    Size: 2GHz
    Capacity: 2GHz
    Width: 64 bits
    Capabilities: fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 
        apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall 
        nx rdtscp x86-64 constant_tsc rep_good nopl xtopology cpuid 
        tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq vmx ssse3 cx16 pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 
        x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx hypervisor lahf_lm 
        cpuid_fault pti ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept 
        vpid tsc_adjust xsaveopt arat umip md_clear arch_capabilities
    Configuration: cores=1 enabledcores=1 threads=1
*-Cpu:1
    Description: CPU
    Product: Intel Xeon E312xx (Sandy Bridge, IBRS update)
    Vendor: Intel Corp.
    Physical id: 401
    Bus info: cpu@1
    Version: pc-q35-4.2
    Slot: CPU 1
    Size: 2GHz
    Capacity: 2GHz
    Width: 64 bits
    Capabilities: fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 
        apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall 
        nx rdtscp x86-64 constant_tsc rep_good nopl xtopology cpuid 
        tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq vmx ssse3 cx16 pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 
        x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx hypervisor lahf_lm 
        cpuid_fault pti ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept 
        vpid tsc_adjust xsaveopt arat umip md_clear arch_capabilities
    Configuration: cores=1 enabledcores=1 threads=1

computer
    Description: Computer
    Product: Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009)
    Vendor: QEMU
    Version: pc-q35-4.2
    Width: 64 bits
    Capabilities: smbios-2.8 dmi-2.8 smp vsyscall32
    Configuration:
        boot=normal
        uuid=[REMOVED]

------------------ SMBIOS Information from '/sys/class/dmi/id/' 
Bios Vendor:         EFI Development Kit II / OVMF
Bios Version:        0.0.0
Bios Release:        0.0

Current boot mode:   UEFI Firmware mode
SecureBoot disabled
Platform is in Setup Mode


---------- Memory Information:
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          3.8Gi       2.9Gi       253Mi        10Mi       662Mi       681Mi
Swap:         922Mi       1.0Mi       921Mi

---------- IP Address Information:
  --- IP Address Information from 'ip addr' --- 
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    inet [REMOVED]
    inet6 [REMOVED]
2: enp1s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
    inet [REMOVED]
    inet6 [REMOVED]

  --- Internet Connection Status from 'ping [various addresses]' --- 
Connected to Internet with DNS

  --- Network Device Status Summary from 'ip addr' ---  
These Network Devices are up:
2: enp1s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000

  --- Hostname from 'hostname --fqdn' ---  
The 'Hostname' of the computer system is: MAF-PC-Q35-ICH9-2009


---------- File system specs from 'df -h':
Filesystem                                       Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_64fs0l                         zfs        15G  3.5G   12G  24% /
rpool/USERDATA/mafoelffen_7vzpaq                 zfs        12G  3.2M   12G   1% /home/mafoelffen
rpool/USERDATA/root_7vzpaq                       zfs        12G  256K   12G   1% /root
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_64fs0l/var/games               zfs        12G  128K   12G   1% /var/games
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_64fs0l/var/mail                zfs        12G  128K   12G   1% /var/mail
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_64fs0l/var/lib                 zfs        13G  863M   12G   7% /var/lib
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_64fs0l/var/log                 zfs        12G  2.7M   12G   1% /var/log
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_64fs0l/var/snap                zfs        12G  640K   12G   1% /var/snap
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_64fs0l/srv                     zfs        12G  128K   12G   1% /srv
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_64fs0l/var/www                 zfs        12G  128K   12G   1% /var/www
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_64fs0l/usr/local               zfs        12G  128K   12G   1% /usr/local
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_64fs0l/var/spool               zfs        12G  128K   12G   1% /var/spool
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_64fs0l/var/lib/apt             zfs        12G   84M   12G   1% /var/lib/apt
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_64fs0l/var/lib/AccountsService zfs        12G  128K   12G   1% /var/lib/AccountsService
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_64fs0l/var/lib/NetworkManager  zfs        12G  256K   12G   1% /var/lib/NetworkManager
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_64fs0l/var/lib/dpkg            zfs        12G   36M   12G   1% /var/lib/dpkg
bpool/BOOT/ubuntu_64fs0l                         zfs       655M  206M  450M  32% /boot
/dev/vda1                                        vfat      511M   14M  498M   3% /boot/grub
/dev/sr0                                         iso9660   2.9G  2.9G     0 100% /media/mafoelffen/Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS amd64

---------- Disk/Partition Information From 'fdisk':

Disk /dev/vda: 20 GiB, 21474836480 bytes, 41943040 sectors
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: gpt
Disk identifier: 4BD32A91-14FF-40C9-8092-0277030D90F5

Device       Start      End  Sectors  Size Type
/dev/vda1     2048  1050623  1048576  512M EFI System
/dev/vda2  1050624  2940927  1890304  923M Linux swap
/dev/vda3  2940928  4984831  2043904  998M Solaris boot
/dev/vda4  4984832 41943006 36958175 17.6G Solaris root

---------- Disk/Partition Information From 'lsblk':
NAME    SIZE FSTYPE     LABEL                    MOUNTPOINT                                 MODEL
sr0     2.9G iso9660    Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS amd64 /media/mafoelffen/Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS amd64 QEMU_DVD-ROM
vda      20G zfs_member rpool                                                               
|-vda1  512M vfat                                /boot/grub                                 
|-vda2  923M swap                                [SWAP]                                     
|-vda3  998M zfs_member bpool                                                               
`-vda4 17.6G zfs_member rpool                                                               
   ------- 'lsblk' information continued ...
NAME   HOTPLUG PARTUUID                             UUID
sr0          1                                      2021-08-19-11-03-38-00
vda          0                                      11989003535406521883
|-vda1       0 8a44c030-0723-40df-b1ab-51280a5fcf1e FF71-A6FE
|-vda2       0 f47b0331-0704-6e49-9e21-0515611c582a 1d4f42f7-d8fe-4536-92f0-1dcf1422d394
|-vda3       0 e4f84806-109c-fc4e-b5e8-913884780152 6409571740606934475
`-vda4       0 d7df17c7-df9f-d343-81f6-5949b2c22f59 11989003535406521883

---------- Mount Details of '/etc/fstab':
UUID=FF71-A6FE  /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0022,fmask=0022,dmask=0022      0       1
/boot/efi/grub    /boot/grub    none    defaults,bind    0    0
UUID=1d4f42f7-d8fe-4536-92f0-1dcf1422d394    none    swap    discard    0    0

---------- Current Mount Details of 'mount':
/dev/fuse on /root/.cache/doc type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0)
/dev/sr0 on /media/mafoelffen/Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS amd64 type iso9660 (ro,nosuid,nodev,relatime,nojoliet,check=s,map=n,blocksize=2048,uid=1000,gid=1000,dmode=500,fmode=400,iocharset=utf8,uhelper=udisks2)
/dev/vda1 on /boot/grub type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)

---------- USB Information from 'lsusb -t -v':
/:  Bus 04.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M
    ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
/:  Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M
    ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
/:  Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M
    ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci-pci/6p, 480M
    ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 480M
        ID 0627:0001 Adomax Technology Co., Ltd 

---------- Video Details from 'lshw':

  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: QXL paravirtual graphic card
       vendor: Red Hat, Inc.
       physical id: 1
       bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0
       version: 04
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: vga_controller bus_master rom
       configuration: driver=qxl latency=0
       resources: 
           irq:21 
           memory:c4000000-c7ffffff 
           memory:c0000000-c3ffffff 
           memory:c8c84000-c8c85fff 
           ioport:1040(size=32) 
           memory:c0000-dffff

   --- Graphics Environment Continued from 'various graphics ENVs' ----
The Current Configured Destop is: ubuntu:GNOME 
The Current Desktop Session is: ubuntu 
The Current X Desktop Information Details from 'xrandr' are: 
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1024 x 768, maximum 8192 x 8192
Virtual-1 connected primary 1024x768+0+0 0mm x 0mm
The Current Session Type is: x11 
The Current Display Manager is: gdm3
The Current Desktop Theme: 'Yaru'
The Current Virtual TTYs being used are:
    TTY#    Used By
    tty2    gdm-x-session
    tty2    Xorg
    tty2    gnome-session-b

---------- Repository Information from '/etc/apt/sources.list and etc/apt/sources.list.d/':

Sources List:
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal main restricted
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates main restricted
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal universe
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates universe
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security main restricted
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security multiverse

Sources List from SourcesD:
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/yannubuntu-ubuntu-boot-repair-focal.list:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/yannubuntu/boot-repair/ubuntu focal main

---------- Other Details from 'Various':
The current kernel version is:       5.11.0-46-generic 
The current release description is:  Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS 
Original Installation Date:          2022-01-12+00:21:00 
Original Installation Media: Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20210819)
Do-Release-Upgrade Date: This system may have not had a 'Release Upgrade' through 'do-release-upgrade'

These are the current kernel ranges for HWE kernels for this release.
   --- HWE Kernel Reference from 'apt-cache show':
For HWE Package: linux-image-generic-hwe-20.04, Kernel Version: 5.11.0.46.51
For HWE Package: linux-image-generic-hwe-20.04, Kernel Version: 5.4.0.26.32

   --- HWE Package Status from 'dpkg':
Package linux-generic-hwe-20.04 is installed.

   --- Certified Hardware Platform Status: (By the Ubuntu Wiki Standards)
Ubuntu Certified Hardware Platform. Safe to install 
the Hardware Enablement Stack (HWE).

Currently logged in User(s):
NAME     LINE         TIME         COMMENT
mafoelffen :0           Jan 12 00:47 (:0)

The User running this script was: mafoelffen
uid=1000(mafoelffen)
gid=1000(mafoelffen)
groups=1000(mafoelffen),4(adm),24(cdrom),27(sudo),30(dip),46(plugdev),
120(lpadmin),132(lxd),133(sambashare)

---- Required Programs For Report.
    All required programs installed for report. 

*** End Of Report ***

That is from the script from the PPA... I could run that to one of my ZFS-on-root Server images, because I don't have X installed to them, but I can run a Boot-Repair ISO on them... Would you like me too? Or I can install a minimal X to them to test on.(?)

[MAFoElffen]

This is just a test, that I don't think will appear, but does open other possibilities:
https://pastebin.ubuntu.com/p/7GynDCfG2b/

It does identify that it was booted as EFI, but is misidentifying if it has an ESP or not. Because of that, it misdiagnoses the repair, missing that is has grub-efi-arm64-signed installed. (so is recommending purging and (re)installing grub-pc?)

Here is a machine report::
https://pastebin.ubuntu.com/p/rh53Q7BSPn/

[oldfred]

Is that an Arm system?
And ESP is FAT16.
FAT16 is allowed but was more for tiny devices. Ubuntu was in the very beginning using FAT16 for everything but then changed to FAT32.

[MAFoElffen]

Yes it is... LOL

It was installed from 18.04 LTS Server ARM64 ISO. It was release upgraded to 20.04 LTS. It is an Ubuntu ARM64 Server with a minimal X and LXQT installed so I could run the boot-info script on it.

I created it originally to test the system-info script on...

[YannBuntu]

Thx MAF for your feedback. wow, that's challenging configs!

1st case: l.11 bootinfoscript doesn't list the partitions
l.15 partition missing
l.26 output of df -Th / is empty !! how can this be?
l.400: errors code 32 , shouldn't try to mount these.

2nd case:
l20: bootinfoscript doesn't list the LVM volumes
l66: the ESP is not recognized correctly, with the consequence you mention on the suggested repair.

You gave me work for several weeks