Somehow the EFI partition doesn’t mount and it’s impossible to troubleshoot via phone, she asked me to put back the old system 😞
Sounds like a hardware issue, so …
Seems like only the EFI partition is missing. She told me “ls /home/her name” shows stuff but “ls /boot/efi” is empty
Apparently this happened by itself
I should have chosen something like silverblue but I wasn’t familiar with that
Bluefin or Bazzite are very streamlined and easy to set up, with all the batteries included. The little you need to learn is more than offset by the convenience.
Its not so easy for a user to screw-up that partition. Same things that would do it in Linux would do it in Windows.
How does it even get into emergency mode without the efi partition?
The EFI partition isn’t missing or, you’re right, it wouldn’t boot at all.
If the /boot/efi isn’t set to nofail in fstab then it failing to mount would dump them into emergency mode. This could be cause by something simple like a syntax error in fstab.
It’s also possible that there’s a broken bootloader entry. For example, If the installed with LUKS encryption on the home directory and one of the boot entry doesn’t have the luks module. The system would boot but everything after that would fail because it can’t decrypt and mount /home.
The screenshot isn’t useful, those BPF errors are likely a symptom of the original problem but they pushed the real error off screen. We’d need to see the output of journactl -xb in order to figure it out.
e: I forgot my unhelpful advice: Tell her to try Arch.
This is every kernel update for me on Fedora. For some reason root is not set.
Yours will copy a record in your grub config, for every kernel install, because that’s the easiest way to get your ancillary settings. If it’s happening truly every time, then I’ll bet that’s borked somehow.
I ran into this because grub config now needs an additional magical parameter no one mentions, because it manages new bits to create the parts it needs with your old setup to solve no real problem. It could also be keeping a bad root statement and perennially dropping it into every new boot config. Yay! I don’t remember what it was and I’m not at work, but I’ll try to check later and see if I can offer some help.
Is this a Dell machine or something similar? It’s not impossible that the internal battery has run dry, and it reset the UEFI settings. A lot of setups would refuse to work if internal storage mode has switched from AHCI to hardware RAID
And?
I changed my grandad onto GNU after I’ve distrohopped a few times on my system just so I knew how to do a system install (which is a skill in of itself no matter what OS you are installing)
All the major technical issues for install like getting to boot, display driver issues, etc are solved. Even Nvidia is reccomending people use their open source kernel modules (nvidia-open)
That was likely some kind of kdump error, interested to know what distro you used, I often advise people to use a stable but stale distro like a Debian based distro: Mint or Ubuntu is ideal for stability and ease of install.
I setup my grandad on Mint 2 years ago,was fine but decided to hop to Archlinux KDE Plasma as needed some newer stuff(if you enable the incremental backups its not hard to switch if you think a different one is a better fit), even though Archlinux has a reputation for less stability it’s been pretty good the last year, avoided AUR *mostly for stability, pamac for GUI updater.
Most of what he needs is in the browser and printing. (Printer issues are OS agnostic nowadays as modern printers seem to be very anti-consumer and they mostly use software to make their money, I.E DRM on ink cartridges)
Only issues my grandad had are printer or website related.
(Detail: used the CLI installer)
(DISCLAIMER: I am a qualified computing professional who have used GNU/Linux as daily driver since 2016, for newcomers a Debian based distro would be more the route I would).
Archlinux KDE Plasma
This EFI thing is literally squarely a Microsoft induced problem.
You must work in tech support with that attitude to the problem 🤣
The user has a problem. Do you want to be right or do you want a satisfied user? I can tell you which path popular operating systems choose.
And I say this 5 different OSes at home, 3 of which are Linux distros.
I don’t think that the point here was trying to do anything to say that the user did anything wrong. I think it’s simply pointing out how frustrating it is that Microsoft’s Insistence on various things, as part of their EEE policy, created this situation to begin with, and that it wouldn’t have even broken if not for that.
I’m pretty sure that the person you replied to was really just lamenting that that this is what broke it. And that fundamentally, Microsoft is getting exactly what they wanted as a result. And it’s just frustrating.
A satisfied user and RCA are equally important.
It’s good your mom tried. It’s sad she gave up so soon. I’ve helped 4 people switch in the past months. I’ve gotten even more people curious and more open to switch. A success is not only the switch, but that people start to realize that they can. In my opinion. :-)
Really out of my depth here, but anyway—
What model computer does your mom have? Does it by any chance have solid state drives that are RAID 0?
Have you tried Linux Mint? After really struggling with Fedora, I was able to get Mint up and running after a few minimal problems and haven’t looked back since.
RIP, this is sad day today
How is
/etc/fstabconfigured? Partitions should be assigned to mount points by UUID and not by their names (such as/dev/sda1). Names can easily change across boots.Something to look into. Understand the frustrations here, but it looks like something that can be fixed if you are able to get to the machine and troubleshoot.
How the heck is mom supposed to know what an fstab is?
RTFM, Mom!
That happens when I select the wrong kernel in the systemd boot menu, before that screen. Doing nothing after an upgrade also selects the wrong version by default, it’s kinda annoying. I have to select the most up to date version and press Ctrl-D to make it the default on the next boot.
If that’s also what happens here, maybe a solution could be to keep only one kernel version and its fallback. But idk if you’re using systemd-boot or grub
You might try using rEFInd instead.
I also have a “current” kernel and an LTS one. If current ever has an issue, I just reboot into LTS.
It has saved me on Arch at least once.
Loool, all the people who are trying to help you troubleshoot are 1) probably correct and 2) completely missing the point. I have a Windows desktop, a Mac, and a Linux desktop at home and this kind of shit only happens on Linux these days.
My MacBook is getting very long in the tooth and the updates via OCLP are working in creating a system that is painfully slow to use. I’ve been tinkering with various Linux distros for 20 years and the thought of having one as my only daily driver does not sound appealing. I really don’t want to drop the money on a new laptop but I need something to work without constantly troubleshooting.
I have Linux running on 6 different MacBooks (2009 - 2021). They were all EndeavourOS at first though some are Chimera Linux now.
They run great. Even the 2009 really.
How am I the only one who does have annoying issues like this on Windows (except that Windows only gives a useless error code at most) while Linux has failed to boot a total of once (without me explicitly changing nvidia drivers).
System breaking errors that doesn’t allow you to even login?
Windows have lots of issues, but it’s been a while since I found those system breaking issues to be somehow common.
For all their shit, credit myst be given when credit is due. And windows it’s become a really robust systems against layer 8 issues. Even powering off middle update is kind of easy to recover (I have to solve this issue for a user recently).
You aren’t. My bf has constant problems with Windows that he barely knows how to diagnose (not that he isn’t knowledgeable about computers, the problems are just…opaque.) He doesn’t seem to perceive them as being related to Windows, though. I think that might be what’s going on with a lot of people.
You’re right, this never happens on windows. It’s so robust no one ever complains
/s
People complain about all the invasive controlling bullshit Windows does. I haven’t seen any kind of failure to boot issue with windows in a long time and I work in IT. Last thing I really remember being common in our organization was bitlocker getting triggered and people having to call in to get the key to unlock it, and that was back in the windows 7 days.
Literally happened updating just yesterday so I went to an older boot entry. The Matrix channel blamed my hardware, but the older revision boots just fine
Right but you see it never happened to that person so it means it’s like that for everybody else. Clearly you are wrong. /s
If the EFI partition truly was at fault, you wouldn’t get into Linux. And if the issue is mounting the efi partition after booting, that shouldn’t be a critical error. So it sounds like something else is at fault IMO
I gave my dad one of my spare laptops four years ago; it had never had Windows on it (being from the halcyon days when Dell sold laptops with linux pre-installed), so I put Mint on it for him.
Early this year he called and said one of the keys stopped working so he’d bought a newer, used laptop and could I help him put Linux on it, because that’s what he was used to. Over the phone, I helped him download and burn a new Mint image from his ancient desktop, and verbally walked him through switching the bios to boot from the USB, and through the Mint install menus.
Since then, he’s called me once for technical support for getting his printer connected.
Dad’s in his 80’s and was a cop with an associate’s degree; he’s never claimed to be a brainiac. That is what convinced me Linux is ready for anyone, but that the choice of distribution is important. I think dad never upgrades or installs new software, but that’s OK. I have to update and reboot every week because I’m stupidly loyal to Arch.
I’m sorry that your mom had a bad experience; that’s super frustrating.
Great example of why a safety net is required.
Yes hopefully the “base” setup works once you installed it, hopefully manage through some updates, some even tinkerings… but what happens when it break?
Windows (despite all the criticism, and I’m one of the first to complain about Microsoft the corporation) usually has been fallback mechanisms. It can usually rollback an update. It usually has a hidden recovery partition. It usually has an alternative medium to recover (e.g. USB stick, CD-ROM back in the days, etc).
So… you genuinely did try to help your mother but do not give up. Try instead to provide a better safety net so that she is genuinely safer. In fact I would recommend testing it together, make it a learning adventure. One way to do so would be to go there, help her fix it… then botcher the setup together! Delete system files, etc, then try again. Obviously the 1st step is insuring her own data (e.g. family photo, documents, etc) is safe.
While doing so, you might also want to setup up remote control, or not. Anyway a LOT of things to genuinely discover together.
IMHO if you do do it, she will not only appreciate the effort but assuming you do manage, she’ll have a new sense of pride, both in you but also herself and share the experience with her friends. This in turn might bring more people in!
There also are distros with some kind of similar safety net. Immutable distros usually let you Boot previous versions if an update breaks something. This usually means that they need a lot of storage tho. https://itsfoss.com/immutable-linux-distros/
I have had to do this with fedora in the past and i was able to fix my boot issues and then go back to the newest version
I used to recommend Mint with Timeshift. Timeshift has saved my ass (or has made fixing stuff way easier) a couple of times. Now my go to is Aurora.
I believe that immutable distros are a game changer (god I hate this expression) for nebws.
I find it’s super rare any form of recovery actually works. best thing to do is pull the files you need off with a nvme/sata adapter then reinstall and replace those files. 90% when windows actually breaks there’s not much to be done (I try all forms of recovery every time though).
plus, 9/10 times the reinstall process is actually way faster than fighting with windows or searching for the problem online and getting hundreds of people asking you to run sfc \scannow.
super rare any form of recovery actually works. […] 90% when windows actually breaks
To clarify I used Windows as an example of an OS which manages its own recovery. I’m absolutely not suggesting to use Windows.
I’m personally using Debian so here are some examples of official resources :
- https://wiki.debian.org/SystemRescue
- https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch08s06.en.html
- https://wiki.debian.org/RescueLive which seems to rely https://wiki.debian.org/LiveCD which seems impractical for most, instead one could consider https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/apas02.en.html#howto-getting-images-usb
Honestly none of these look like practical options for somebody who is not working in IT.
Here are examples of community provided resources :
The very last one, namely Ventoy Linux Recovery Helper, looks quite interesting. Unfortunately there is literally 0 issue https://github.com/zudsniper/VLRH/issues which makes me think very few people might be actually using it. In fact while creating the first issue https://github.com/zudsniper/VLRH/issues/1 I noticed
# Created by Claude for Jasonin the header leading me to believe this was AI generated. Regardless of how it was done (sigh) it seems it was not thoroughly tested so I clearly would look for another alternative.How do I see the hidden header?
At least your mom was cool enough to try. I had to trick my mom into using linux by putting a macOS themed, KDE, debian on an old macbook that was identical to her dead macbook
Was she tricked? I would think the jog would be up the second she clicked on something.
Would be tricked if you just say “apple forced an update.”
My mom is old. Her whole workflow is just open the browser and go to gmail, and forward me a bunch of spams…
Whether its on iOS or debian, you can’t tell the difference unless you’re looking hard
