"Reboot Into Firmware Interface" instead of old generations

Help
1

Hi,

I’ve tried to add ntfs support to my working just fine nixOS. As I’ve already had zfs support I’ve modifed the line:

boot.supportedFilesystems = [ "zfs" "ntfs" ];

However it didn’t work:

# nixos-rebuild switch --show-trace
building Nix...
building the system configuration...
these derivations will be built:
  /nix/store/1q4klhg04z38sz1ryqwhi6q9qnfmp2s6-stage-2-init.sh.drv
  /nix/store/bjh7i791mi5j00qbhwiq647sdmkkyc55-system-path.drv
  /nix/store/a2s4fx8rg0m4hx8gvyc1kyajyw4kqs81-dbus-1.drv
  /nix/store/yxgqg4rmyvffc7jqa60zzyki3wdrs4l9-unit-dbus.service.drv
  /nix/store/2anan8xp4lnhnywz9hd69in6868nvx8a-user-units.drv
  /nix/store/4a10qm09k07mdzw6qx74by1avzirq00c-unit-dbus.service.drv
  /nix/store/6y0dy2irad2fmzl7ywj6nyd21z5dgw61-unit-polkit.service.drv
  /nix/store/s7nbbij84q5d6qficzddjniwclp8j4va-unit-systemd-fsck-.service.drv
  /nix/store/ail4y79aqip0hfbsmz8i77l63rkrxiqq-system-units.drv
  /nix/store/c0cvvlb9i5i49yv084wz3xmjki9mbjym-etc.drv
  /nix/store/2f5z2m85wyldxxc5nnanj8k001lllqbn-nixos-system-nixos-19.09.941.27a5ddcf747.drv
these paths will be fetched (0.05 MiB download, 0.06 MiB unpacked):
  /nix/store/4fv75rir86ddgqbg18vdg47b6bhyblm4-ntfs3g-2017.3.23-doc
  /nix/store/5i84zmdzcykz1d3nkd86rlv0mpwgfywh-ntfs3g-2017.3.23-man
copying path '/nix/store/4fv75rir86ddgqbg18vdg47b6bhyblm4-ntfs3g-2017.3.23-doc' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/5i84zmdzcykz1d3nkd86rlv0mpwgfywh-ntfs3g-2017.3.23-man' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
building '/nix/store/1q4klhg04z38sz1ryqwhi6q9qnfmp2s6-stage-2-init.sh.drv'...
building '/nix/store/bjh7i791mi5j00qbhwiq647sdmkkyc55-system-path.drv'...
created 6225 symlinks in user environment
building '/nix/store/a2s4fx8rg0m4hx8gvyc1kyajyw4kqs81-dbus-1.drv'...
building '/nix/store/6y0dy2irad2fmzl7ywj6nyd21z5dgw61-unit-polkit.service.drv'...
building '/nix/store/s7nbbij84q5d6qficzddjniwclp8j4va-unit-systemd-fsck-.service.drv'...
building '/nix/store/4a10qm09k07mdzw6qx74by1avzirq00c-unit-dbus.service.drv'...
building '/nix/store/yxgqg4rmyvffc7jqa60zzyki3wdrs4l9-unit-dbus.service.drv'...
building '/nix/store/ail4y79aqip0hfbsmz8i77l63rkrxiqq-system-units.drv'...
building '/nix/store/2anan8xp4lnhnywz9hd69in6868nvx8a-user-units.drv'...
building '/nix/store/c0cvvlb9i5i49yv084wz3xmjki9mbjym-etc.drv'...
building '/nix/store/2f5z2m85wyldxxc5nnanj8k001lllqbn-nixos-system-nixos-19.09.941.27a5ddcf747.drv'...
mktemp: failed to create directory via template ‘initrd-secrets.XXXXXXXXXX’: Read-only file system
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/nix/store/w2qf4b1gyb0bkk9r5vq0fnh27x3k047x-systemd-boot-builder.py", line 240, in <module>
    main()
  File "/nix/store/w2qf4b1gyb0bkk9r5vq0fnh27x3k047x-systemd-boot-builder.py", line 209, in main
    write_entry(*gen, machine_id)
  File "/nix/store/w2qf4b1gyb0bkk9r5vq0fnh27x3k047x-systemd-boot-builder.py", line 95, in write_entry
    subprocess.check_call([append_initrd_secrets, "/boot%s" % (initrd)])
  File "/nix/store/zqr5sy6dxnas41s0axyhhvlqnhwj0ywk-python3-3.7.5/lib/python3.7/subprocess.py", line 363, in check_call
    raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['/nix/store/fhc7by398nqhsrckxmwkib0yknpimf98-append-initrd-secrets/bin/append-initrd-secrets', '/boot/efi/nixos/hyka0zhzpcqrgvksq1brdah7fa0rs07s-initrd-linux-4.19.80-initrd.efi']' returned non-zero exit status 1.
warning: error(s) occurred while switching to the new configuration

Trying to remove that line caused:

building Nix...
building the system configuration...
mktemp: failed to create directory via template ‘initrd-secrets.XXXXXXXXXX’: Read-only file system
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/nix/store/w2qf4b1gyb0bkk9r5vq0fnh27x3k047x-systemd-boot-builder.py", line 240, in <module>
    main()
  File "/nix/store/w2qf4b1gyb0bkk9r5vq0fnh27x3k047x-systemd-boot-builder.py", line 209, in main
    write_entry(*gen, machine_id)
  File "/nix/store/w2qf4b1gyb0bkk9r5vq0fnh27x3k047x-systemd-boot-builder.py", line 95, in write_entry
    subprocess.check_call([append_initrd_secrets, "/boot%s" % (initrd)])
  File "/nix/store/zqr5sy6dxnas41s0axyhhvlqnhwj0ywk-python3-3.7.5/lib/python3.7/subprocess.py", line 363, in check_call
    raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['/nix/store/fhc7by398nqhsrckxmwkib0yknpimf98-append-initrd-secrets/bin/append-initrd-secrets', '/boot/efi/nixos/hyka0zhzpcqrgvksq1brdah7fa0rs07s-initrd-linux-4.19.80-initrd.efi']' returned non-zero exit status 1.
warning: error(s) occurred while switching to the new configuration

Unfortunately I rebooted the machine hoping to just use older generation, instead of that I’ve got one liner menu with:
"Reboot Into Firmware Interface"

Could someone elaborate what has happened?
Is there any chance to revive my system or should I revert it from my backups?

2

If this is the “press del to enter setup”, I"d love it if somebody knew how to add it to grub.

3

This doesn’t seem like it has anything to do with the ntfs driver thing. It looks like you’re using boot.initrd.secrets, and the part of the switch-to-configuration script which handles that is failing because its working directory is a readonly file system. This errors the script, leaving things in a dirty state.

First of all, I’d file this as a bug. An error case like this should not result in a dirty state.

Secondly, I’d wager you can still recover by booting a live disk, mounting your file systems appropriately at /mnt, and simply running nixos-install. This will leave the system intact as it was while redoing the boot loader configuration.

4

I had a similiar problem: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/73404

Please try to reinstall the bootloader: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Bootloader

5

Thank you, with more advanced NixOS friend’s help we did nixos-install from live image. Worked!

@h0m1 - sounds like similar issue, however in my case I was in mounted external drive directory: /mnt/hdd

Regards,