[Solved] Grub-install error (please, specify --target...

enrico68 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 21 Oct 2016 Posts: 130

Hello,

My present sdd is partitioned like so:

sdd1 fat32 /boot
ssd2 ext4 /

but when I run the command

Jaglover · Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 4:32 pm Post subject:

I do not use Grub2, but to my knowledge the so called BIOS partition is required for Grub2.
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enrico68 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 21 Oct 2016 Posts: 130

I thought so, thanks!

Jaglover · Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 5:52 pm Post subject:

There are other bootloaders you could use that do not require this partition.
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eccerr0r · Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2017 10:06 am Post subject:

It looks like you're trying to install on an EFI machine.

EFI machines will require an EFI System Partition (ESP) which needs to be FAT16 or FAT32, and is not a grub2 requirement (I've installed grub2 directly to an ext3 root partition - but this machine is a legacy MBR boot machine.)

Though I've not actually yet "officially" installed grub2 to an EFI machine, I've gotten an EFI machine to boot grub2 - and it only had two partitions, the ESP and Linux/Gentoo root partition. The basics is to get Portage to build grub2 as an EFI binary (grub.efi) and install it on your FAT16/FAT32 ESP. Then it will use the efibootmgr tool to ensure that grub2 is loaded as your boot EFI application. The only EFI machine that I've used I cheated and swiped the grub2.efi binary and moved it to the ESP default boot path, which for my x86 efi machine, \EFI\BOOT\BOOTIA32.efi .
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What am I supposed watching?

fcl · n00b Joined: 31 Dec 2016 Posts: 72

OP, fyi I think you're missing a slash there in the grub-install command

grub-install --target=X86 64-efi --efi-directory=/boot

enrico68 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 21 Oct 2016 Posts: 130

This time I created a BIOS boot partition, but the error remains. here is my partition, using parted:

sdd1 2MB fat32 grub
sdd2 134MB fat32 boot
ssd3 1000MB swap none
sdd4 50GB ext4 rootfs
sdd5 185GB ext4 home

To partition the ssd, I followed the official Gentoo Handbook.

I never had this problem before, and now it is the second time in a row...just in case, I checked ssd2, and it is mounted on /mnt/gentoo/boot.

What is wrong with my setup?

EDIT: as it is shown above, the BIOS boot partition has a fat32 fs. What happens is I do "mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/sdd2" (the boot partition) but, somehow, after I hit enter, also the ssd1 partition shows up as formatted in fat32. I tried that twice, but fat32 shows up on ssd1, no matter what. Maybe that is why I get my error message...

EDIT2: I believe the error lies with the boot partition not being ESP, the Handbook says: "On an UEFI installation, the boot and esp flags will show up on the boot partition". I do not see ESP, only boot, and I have to investigate why my system won't run in EFI mode..that is where the issues is...

enrico68 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 21 Oct 2016 Posts: 130

not a chance...the boot partition has a "boot,esp" flag this time, but I keep getting the same error message...I don't know what else to do....

enrico68 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 21 Oct 2016 Posts: 130

The above issue has been solved, it took me a while, but I was able to solve it!