Hey Pascal, On Tue, May 05, 2026 at 01:32:17PM +0200, Pascal Hambourg wrote: >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
Yup, that's exactly where I was going. Unfortunately, lots of people just end up copying a grub binary into place once (whether by directly copying, or by using grub-install manually) and that works *now* but leaves them primed for a fall on future upgrades. It's been a problem for years with BIOS boot, but we can't 100% solve that due to the space limitations and needing a core images. Switching to the monolithic image for EFI is possible, and it's time we just did it. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. [email protected] "This dress doesn't reverse." -- Alden Spiess
