On 05/05/2026 at 12:34, Steve McIntyre wrote:
OK, this is 99.9% certain to be a mismatch between the grub core image
and the modules installed in /boot/grub. If you're on a Pi, then it's
very likely you're booting using the removable media path.
U-boot logs seem to confirm it:
Cannot persist EFI variables without system partition
Without EFI variables, only the removable media path can be used.
If U-Boot loads GRUB from the EFI partition removable media path, it
means the copy of GRUB core image in /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/ was not updated
after upgrading to the new GRUB version. It should be updated
automatically if grub2/force_efi_extra_removable is set to 'false' in
debconf. You can check with
debconf-show grub-efi-arm64
In addition, this system does not seem to use the monolithic signed
image (grub-efi-arm64-signed) which does not need external modules and
would avoid the module version mismatch (but if is not updated in the
boot location then the old version will still be used).
