[SOLVED] For Informational Purposes Only: How Do I Deal when GRUB Fails?

kevinbenko · 05-04-2022, 11:00 PM

*: I had a stroke in 2011, and am brain-damaged.

What if GRUB fails, and I get the basic GRUB menu, how do most effectively deal with this nightmare?

I guess it's called a rescue prompt... I guess.....

{{Yes, it happened a few years ago, I did a Netinstall and fixed the root directory, sort of, but I rebuilt the system/root directory/whatever}}

But I have always wondered on how to most effectively deal with this nightmare.

Thank for any answers, and have an excellent day!

mrmazda · 05-05-2022, 12:40 AM

Much depends on what caused the failure, but typically: have rescue media available, such as the original installation media or a supergrub USB stick, boot it, chroot into the installed system, then reinstall grub and/or regenerate grub.cfg, which lives in /boot/grub/ or /boot/grub2/, depending on your distro's name for grub.

pan64 · 05-05-2022, 01:49 AM

(additionally) I use another boot device (live CD or similar) and you can access the system. A backup can be useful too.

colorpurple21859 · 05-05-2022, 05:34 AM

Are you booting more than one distro? Most grub-rescue prompts are a result of deleting/formatting the root/boot partition of the distro controlling grub when adding or removing a distro to a multi-boot system. The other possibility is a corrupt file system.
As has already been mentioned use a live iso to chroot into the system to fix