My new grub menu will not boot any distro

General Linux Question
1

I recently did a fresh hard install of Void Linux ( x86-64, musl), on its own, on an old 2Tb hdd. I wanted it as an isolated testbed for virt-manager networking.
While it was there, I decided to let Void install grub on that disk… just to see how Void goes controlling grub.
The disk has its own EFI partition so I did

grub-install  --efi-directory=/boot/efi
update-grub

it all went smoothly, but
When I tried booting from that disk , I got a grub menu, but every distro in the menu refused to boot with the message

error: symbol 'grub_is_shim_lock_enabled'  not found

What is this about shims? My computer is so old it does not have secure boot.
After some reading I found that what I should have done in Void was

grub-install --disable-shim-lock --efi-directory=/boot/efi

It now boots all distros perfectly.
I never needed that before?
I can think of 2 explanations

  • Void used a very new version of grub
  • Void sets some different default grub parameters

Has anyone else with an old pre-secure-boot computer observed this?
It may be Void specific, or it may be going to happen with all distros soon.

3 Likes
2

Hi Neville, :waving_hand:

I did some research on the issues you ran into.
I might be interested in installing Void myself one day because it seems to be one of the most stable rolling release distros.
I think I may try it as a virtual machine first.

On distrowatch´s Void package list it says:


  •  grub-2.12_2
  •  grub-i386-efi-2.12_2
  •  grub-x86_64-efi-2.12_2

So, Void Linux is shipping GRUB 2.12 (with _2 meaning the second revision of Void’s packaging).

  • GRUB 2.12 seems to be pretty recent (released in December 2023) and contains many changes compared to the older 2.06 that most distros still use.

  • One of the key changes (which matters most in your case):
    Secure Boot / shim lock support was reworked and is now enabled more aggressively by default. That’s why you suddenly needed to use
    grub-install --disable-shim-lock --efi-directory=/boot/efi .

Your analysis seems perfect, Neville. :+1:

  • Void used a very new version of grub
  • Void sets some different default grub parameters: Their GRUB package is built with shim_lock enabled by default
  • It may be Void specific, or it may be going to happen with all distros soon: very possible indeed.

Thanks for the post, Neville. :heart:
It may be interesting to other Void users as well.

Many greetings from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

3 Likes
3

Hi Rosika,
My main grub on my SSD is controlled by MX which has grub 2.06… it gives no trouble at the moment.
So I think you are right… other users are going to have this problem soon
Regards
Neville

3 Likes
4

Hi Neville, :waving_hand:

thanks for the feedback.

The main thing is you could solve the issue at hand.

was the way to go, as it turned out.
It may help others, too.

Cheers from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

3 Likes