GRUB Menu not Installing On B650 MOBO

Help
1

Hello everyone,

I recently upgraded from a B550 MOBO to a B650 MOBO. I previously had GRUB working but it reset back to systemd-boot after upgrade.

Steps taken (with no result)

  • Fresh reinstall of nixos
  • Using boot.loader.grub.efiInstallAsRemovable and booting from it’s UEFI entry in the MOBO
  • Changing boot.loader.grub.device to point to my NVME ssd
  • Changing the boot order in efibootmgr
  • Booting with both Linux Boot Manager and UEFI OS entries in the boot menu

My configuration.nix looks like the following:

  boot.loader = {
   efi = {
     canTouchEfiVariables = true;
     efiSysMountPoint = "/boot/efi";
    };
    grub = {
      enable = true;
      efiSupport = true;
       # efiInstallAsRemovable = true; # in case canTouchEfiVariables doesn't work for your system
      device = "nodev";
    };
  };

efibootmgr output:

BootCurrent: 0007
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0007,0002,0000
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager	HD(1,GPT,f7e569fa-2130-4aac-ae92-fa8229f775e3,0x800,0x32000)/\EFI\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI57494e444f5753000100000088000000780000004200430044004f0042004a004500430054003d007b00390064006500610038003600320063002d0035006300640064002d0034006500370030002d0061006300630031002d006600330032006200330034003400640034003700390035007d00000064000100000010000000040000007fff0400
Boot0002* Linux Boot Manager	HD(1,GPT,51c58a1d-f4b7-45ca-ae5d-e93ab9ad2b2d,0x1000,0x100000)/\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi
Boot0007* UEFI OS	HD(1,GPT,51c58a1d-f4b7-45ca-ae5d-e93ab9ad2b2d,0x1000,0x100000)/\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI0000424f

How can I get GRUB to install correctly again?

Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance!

2

I would set device = "nodev";, I would not set efiInstallAsRemovable, and I would manually delete systemd-boot from the ESP because NixOS won’t do that for you. Finally, run nixos-rebuild --install-bootloader boot. That should take care of everything

(as an aside, I do genuinely find systemd-boot to be more reliable, so maybe consider using it).

3

Thanks for the response. I know it’s a bit of a novice question but I did fiddle around with efibootmgr and I wasn’t able to remove it from my ESP. I ran efibootmgr -A -b 0002 and it returned

efibootmgr: Boot entry 2 not found
Could not set active state for Boot0002: No such file or directory

I might try and use it actually, it’s really quick. The only reason I want to use GRUB is for themeing.

4

I figured out how to remove the entry for systemd-boot, I ran sudo efibootmgr -b 0002 -B. Then I ran sudo nixos-rebuild --install-bootloader boot --flake /etc/nixos#default. This created the new entry for GRUB.

efibootmgr output:

BootCurrent: 0007
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0001,0007,0000
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager	HD(1,GPT,f7e569fa-2130-4aac-ae92-fa8229f775e3,0x800,0x32000)/\EFI\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI57494e444f5753000100000088000000780000004200430044004f0042004a004500430054003d007b00390064006500610038003600320063002d0035006300640064002d0034006500370030002d0061006300630031002d006600330032006200330034003400640034003700390035007d00000064000100000010000000040000007fff0400
Boot0001* NixOS-boot-efi	HD(1,GPT,51c58a1d-f4b7-45ca-ae5d-e93ab9ad2b2d,0x1000,0x100000)/\EFI\NixOS-boot-efi\grubx64.efi
Boot0007* UEFI OS	HD(1,GPT,51c58a1d-f4b7-45ca-ae5d-e93ab9ad2b2d,0x1000,0x100000)/\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI0000424f

However, this EFI entry does not survive system reboot

5

Typically that means the entry fails to boot. i.e. The UEFI tried to boot the new entry, it failed immediately, and so it erased the bad boot entry.

1 Like
6

Welp, I’m out of ideas. Guess I’m using Systemd-boot despite how ugly it is. I really do appreciate the help tho

7

My solution to that has been setting boot.loader.timeout = 0;, which causes systemd-boot to not appear at all. Whenever I want a boot menu, I can just hold spacebar during boot to cause it to show up despite timeout = 0

1 Like
8

Ooh, I like that idea. Thanks for the heads up!