Fedora dissappeared on boot after Windows reinstall

Ask Fedora
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22

I followed what you mentioned earlier and this happened

$ sudo vgchange -a y nobaraVG
  2 logical volume(s) in volume group "nobaraVG" now active
[liveuser@localhost-live ~]$ mount -t ext4 /dev/mapper/nobaraVG-root /mnt
mount: /mnt: must be superuser to use mount.
       dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
[liveuser@localhost-live ~]$ su
[root@localhost-live liveuser]# mount -t ext4 /dev/mapper/nobaraVG-root /mnt
[root@localhost-live liveuser]# for PART in /sys /proc /run /dev ; do
    mount -o bind $PART /mnt/$PART
done
[root@localhost-live liveuser]# chroot /mnt
[root@localhost-live /]# mount -a
mount: /boot/efi: can't find UUID=4CE8-F8E9.
mount: /home: special device /dev/mapper/nobara_localhost--live-home does not exist.
       dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
23

The most important thing is to start via Super Grub Disk your Fedora system. It’s not necessary to touch Windows. If you can start your Fedora system. than login and follow the Fedora QuickDocs to install grub again and create the grub-config file. That’s all. If this is not your way I strongly recommend you to reinstall your Fedora system again. Repairing via Live-system is something for experienced Linux user and not for newbies. To rescue your data try to start a Fedora Live system and backup your data on an external storage medium.

For me it’s the easiest way for you.

24

I am no expert and definitely a newbie. So I agree that this seems easy.

I might be wrong but the docs mentions creating a new partition, and there’s a very good chance I might format the wrong partition, or make a mistake and mess up the entire thing.

I know its my fault for not knowing a lot of things but I am learning.

25

Did anyone check efibootmgr -v? That is the only thing I could imagine MS-Windows would be messing with

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26

That’s not true, if you have an boot partition already. Look at your parttion layout and check the structure of your boot parttion and adapt the QuickDocs instruction to your system.

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27

Now you have to do 2 things.

  1. find out the UUID for the efi partition
    lsblk -o FSTYPE,PATH,UUID /dev/nvme0n1
  2. Edit the /etc/fstab in the chroot environ you are in and
    a. change the UUID for /boot/efi
    b. change the VG in the path name for both / and /home to the new VG name
  3. Then after saving the file repeat the mount -a command.

Once that completes successfully then you should be able to complete the recovery steps you were following.

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28

In case you had not noticed, we are recovering grub in the fedora way, not using the Super Grub Disk. We are also not touching windows since that will boot normally at this time. Please stop with the distracting instructions.

The OP did a new install of windows which overwrote the efi partition (including changing the UUID). This is a recovery from that.

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29 
$ lsblk -o FSTYPE,PATH,UUID /dev/nvme0n1
FSTYPE      PATH           UUID
            /dev/nvme0n1   
vfat        /dev/nvme0n1p1 9839-34AF
            /dev/nvme0n1p2 
ntfs        /dev/nvme0n1p3 1E1C3A571C3A2A63
ntfs        /dev/nvme0n1p4 DE96364096361A0B
ext4        /dev/nvme0n1p5 ae022667-835d-4df9-8e5e-8028d1e40488
LVM2_member /dev/nvme0n1p6 SAX4bc-2pXh-qcTf-Pplt-igbp-4xZU-f6N6tN

This is the output, however I am not familiar how to do the steps you mentioned in 2a and 2b. Apologies again, since I am unfamiliar with so many things here.

30

@computersavvy : super grub disk is only a start-medium helping to start a hiden OS and had in this case nothing to do with recovering Fedora in any way.

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31

To edit that file you can use nano and must already be root (or use sudo) to do so. Use the command nano /etc/fstab then make the changes I noted
There should be 3 lines that need edited.
One line should start with UUID=4CE8-F8E9 and according to your output above that will need changed to UUID=9839-34AF
The other 2 lines should begin with /dev/mapper/nobara_localhost–live-home and /dev/mapper/nobara_localhost–live-root, and will need changed to /dev/mapper/nobaraVG-home and /dev/mapper/nobaraVG-root respectively.
First you can use `cat /etc/fstab to see exactly what is there now
Then use the nano command to open and edit it.
When you have completed the edits the prompts at the bottom of the nano window will tell you how to save and exit.

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32

The OP cannot start fedora as noted throughout this thread. The efi partition was overwritten by a new windows install.

While I am sure the Super Grub Disk is a wonderful tool, I am not familiar with it and did not want to venture into unfamiliar waters while doing a full recovery without damaging the users system in any way.

I appreciate your attempt to help though. :smiley:

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33 
$ cat /etc/fstab
vartmp   /var/tmp    tmpfs   defaults   0  0

The output seems unusual. I couldn’t find any of the 3 lines you mentioned

34

You need to be in the chroot environment as you were before. That looks like the fstab from the live environment.

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35

OK nasty. Don’t you wish you had the OP’s computer in front of you so you could fix it in 10 minutes or less. Respect!

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36

I have mad respect for him too tbh! I am just a random newbie and he’s talking a lot of time to go into details and help me! :heart:

37

Do you think this may cause an issue? or something I can ignore?

[root@localhost-live /]# mount -a
mount: (hint) your fstab has been modified, but systemd still uses
       the old version; use 'systemctl daemon-reload' to reload.

I went ahead with the grub reinstall.

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38

I certainly do. :nerd_face:

39

When you reboot that will be not an issue.

As long as the mount -a worked properly then the reinstall should work fine.

Let us know the results of the grub reinstall and the following reboot to see if this fixes the issue. – it should–.

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40

It didn’t xD
At first it booted directly to Windows11
I changed the priority in the BIOS and it booted again this time to Live USB
Removed the USB and booted for the third time, this showed up
Reboot and Select proper Boot device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key

I am pretty sure the installation went alright, I saw some repositories I personally added during the installation.

41

What is seen in the bios boot menu? The one that shows the bootable devices, not the boot order (priority) selection. On my laptop that is the F8 key during boot.

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