[O/S] [ABANDONED] [O/S] New Install of Debian 12.7 Boots to grub> prompt,; key GRUB commands seem not to work

[kevince]

Greetings,

I am fairly new to Linux. I just installed Debian Bookworm 12.7 on a Dell Inspiron 3793 (64-bit PC) laptop (which previously had Ubuntu 22.04 installed), using the Calamares installer on the XFCE LiveDVD. I used manual partitioning to keep the EFI boot partition intact (while setting it to be formatted, still as FAT32) , deleted my previous Ubuntu partition which had the rest of the disk, made a root (/) partition after the EFI boot partition of abbout 316 GB, a home partition after the root of around 645 GB, and a swap at the end of about 38 GB. I placed descriptive labels on all of them when partitioning.

When I booted the first time, GRUB loaded straight into the

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grub>

prompt. It says

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GNU GRUB version 2.06-13+deb12v1

at the top of the screen. The

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ls

command seems to work, but not the

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-l

and

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-h

options.

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ls

shows that all 4 partitions are present. Based on the labels,

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(hd0,gpt4) 

is the root (ext4),

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(hd0,gpt3)

is the swap,

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(hd0,gpt2)

is the home (ext4) and

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(hd0,gpt1)

is the EFI Boot partition.

Also,

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set pager=1

doesn't work.

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set

does not seem to work, it just gives an error message:

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error: Command failed.

The second time I booted, the full Debian GRUB menu with splash screen loaded. When I tried to boot by selecting the option for "Debian GNU/Linux" and pressing enter, it gave this output:

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error: Command failed.
error: Command failed.
error: Command failed.
error: Command failed.
error: Command failed.
error: Command failed.
error: Command failed.
error: Command failed.
Loading Linux 6.1.0-25-amd64 ... 
error: Command failed.
Loading initial ramdisk ...
error: you need to load the kernel first.

I tried a few things with

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set

on this 2nd boot, and still the same errors:

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set pager=1
error: Command failed.

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set root=(hd0,4)
error: Command failed.

I ran

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ls (hd0,gpt4)/boot

efi/ grub/ System.map-6.1.0-25-amd64 config-6.1.0-25-amd64 initrd.img-6.1.0-25-amd64 vmlinuz-6.1.0-25-amd64

The third time I booted, it loaded to the same

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grub>

prompt as the first time, with the

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set

command still not working.

Basically I'm just trying to figure out what I need to change to get my system to boot up properly. Should I install

Boot-Repair

on the LiveSystem and use it? Do I just need to change a few boot parameters? I'm trying to glean answers from tutorials, but as the saying goes, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Any help would be much appreciated. Cheers.

Update: trying to see if these commands mentioned at Grub EFI Reinstall page - Debian Wikiare on the LiveDVD. Not sure if they are.

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user@debian:~$ grub-install --help
bash: grub-install: command not found
user@debian:~$ chroot --help
bash: chroot: command not found
user@debian:~$ 

Is boot-repair safe to install on the LiveSystem, as outlined at https://wiki.debian.org/Boot-Repair?

/Update

[Aki]

Hello,

Is boot-repair safe to install on the LiveSystem, as outlined at https://wiki.debian.org/Boot-Repair?

I've never used it. But other users have used it in other discussions. It should not expose you to major risks, apart from not being hosted in the Debian repositories.

Another tool is available in Debian repositories:

• Package: boot-info-script (0.78-3)

[mrmazda]

What does efibootmgr report?

[kevince]

Thank you both kindly, Aki and mrmazda. When I have a spare computer to try Debian on, I will keep boot-info-script and efibootmgr in mind if I have any boot issues. For now, I'm abandoning this post. I could not get any Debian LiveDVD to boot after the first 2 (the installation and the one I used to make this post - and these 2 only booted once and then stopped working), despite burning 2 more on different DVD-R discs. I did the sha256 checksum on the image when I downloaded it (debian-live-12.7.0-amd64-xfce.iso). I've installed a different OS, also from a home-burned LiveDVD, and it boots. Maybe some data corruption somewhere? A failing disc burner? I don't know. It's been very strange and variable. Take care, and many thanks.