Hello all.
I need some help.
Firstly: Please forgive the formatting - I'm new to this medium and not sure what the
accepted conventions are, the HyperKitty interface is ...very basic. Also please forgive
the length, I just don't know how to make it shorter without losing potentially
relevant detail. If I've asked this in the wrong place, by all means punt my backside
in the direction of the right place.
I seem to have got myself in a bit of a mess and I’ve having trouble finding documentation
that I can apply directly to my case . This is my first time on Linux so I’m not familiar
with much of the terminology or background of these systems.
**Background**
I have an internal drive that used to successfully dual boot windows and a LUKS-encrypted
F36 installation with BTRFS.
I also had some spare unpartitioned space, which I used to fully install some other linux
distros (including another F36 installation) to troubleshoot other minor problems (a
tri-boot, so to speak)
**What went wrong**
The new distros installed fine, but I discovered afterwards I could no longer find/boot
into my original LUKS F36 installation. In my igornance, I tried deleting clearing the new
installation partitions, and now, if I select the Fedora option thru my BIOS boot menu, I
just get to a 'grub> ’ prompt.
I’ve tried a few commands there to boot manually but nothing worked and it wouldn’t even
decrypt the root partition, worse still, somehow this process accidentally wiped the
ORIGINAL LUKS F36 /boot partition too. I have no idea how.
**What I have now**
Partitioning follows:
nvme0n1p1: EFI partition (both win and DF36)
nvme0n1p2: MS Reserved
nvme0n1p3: Win10
nvme0n1p5: Original Fedora /boot (accidentally wiped)
nvme0n1p6: LUKS volume
nvme0n1p7: Former ‘third OS’ boot partition (wiped)
nvme0n1p8: Former ‘third OS’ root partition (also wiped)
nvme0n1p4: Win Recovery
**What I am trying to do**
Unbork everything, somehow?
I tried using these instructions in the official Fedora Docs, but they seem to be …wrong?
Out of date? They didn’t work, I suspect due to LUKS/BTRFS. [
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/23/html/Multiboot_Guide/commo...]
The I found these...other Fedora Docs? Which seemed more up to date and looked like they
had relevant bits, bit still seem directly applicable and didn't work.
[
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/bootloading-with-grub2/#r...]
The only success I’ve had is with this guide:
https://fedoramagazine.org/os-chroot-101-covering-btrfs-subvolumes/ .
I’ve managed to chroot (a very dumb word) thru a LiveUSB session, with the following
commands:
>cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvme0n1p6 fedora_crypt
>mount /dev/mapper/fedora_crypt /mnt/ -t btrfs -o subvol=root
>mount /dev/mapper/fedora_crypt /mnt/home -t btrfs -o subvol=home
>mount /dev/nvme0n1p5 /mnt/boot
>mkdir /mnt/boot/efi
>mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/efi
>mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
>mount -t proc /proc /mnt/proc
>mount -t sysfs /sys /mnt/sys
>mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /mnt/run
>mkdir -p /mnt/run/systemd/resolve/
>nano /mnt/run/systemd/resolve/stub-resolv.conf (enter 'nameserver 1.1.1.1',
save)
>chroot /mnt
I can ping google, and browse the original home folder with ls, so it looks like ‘im in’
the original installation via chroot (which is still a dumb word)
What the problems are
From there, I go back to the Fedora Docs and run
>dnf reinstall grub2-efi grub2-efi-modules shim
That seems to work? Downloads and seems to install without any errors.
The next step though;
>grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
fails with the following:
> /usr/sbin/grub2-probe: error: failed to get canonical path of
‘/dev/mapper/fedora_crypt’
I have no idea what that means.
On the side, I also sees that despite the grub reinstall, theres no vmlinuz or initramfs
kernel files in the reconstructed /boot partition, so I tried running
>dracut --regenerate-all
which results in
>dracut: Can’t write to /boot/efi/[long-ass id code string]/[kernel
version]: Directory /boot/efi/[long-ass id code string]/[kernel version] does not exist or
is not accessible.
This is true - that folder isn’t in /boot/efi. But I dont remember ever seeing it there,
and just to check I did a fresh test install on another drive and theres nothing like that
there either.
So now I’m lost
What I’m looking for
I’m fairly sure the error messages I’m seeing are a result of oversights from my
cobbled-together method and gneral lack of understanding. So if anyone knows what I missed
and how/why, that’d help …but honestly I still really don’t know what’s going on and
suspect I’m probably going to run into another problem just as quick
Really, I’m after some sort of clear, up to date walk-through with entry-level
language/detail, on how exactly to rebuild from scratch the EFI/boot partitions for F36
with a LUKS encrypted root, using BTRFS. I know the installation itself is fine and should
be recoverable, I just dont know how all these different bits fit togther, and none of the
guides out there seem to explain/unify the different bits into a cohesive procedure for
the unfamiliar.
Thanks very much.