[Solved] How to boot Debian from a USB hard drive using UEFI from different computers

[s3a]

<Edit>
For what it's worth, I changed the subject of the first post / this thread from what it used to be, "I upgraded my CPU and a UEFI Debian installation I have no longer works!", to "How to boot Debian from a USB hard drive using UEFI from different computers".
</Edit>

I upgraded my CPU (but not motherboard) and a UEFI Debian installation I have no longer works!

For future reference, is there a way that's possible to have a Debian installation that's installed to a USB hard drive be able to boot from two (x86_64 / x64 / amd64) computers?

If so, what would I need to do?

I booted a live Debian session and chrooted into the installation and did

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grub-install /dev/sdX --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi/

with X replaced with the letter that the live session gave.

More specifically, if I remember correctly I had done.:

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cryptsetup open --type luks /dev/mapper/sdX3 sdc3_crypt

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mount -o autodefrag,compress=zstd,subvol=@rootfs /dev/mapper/debian-vg /mnt

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mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts

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mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev

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mount /dev/sdX2 /mnt/boot

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mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt/boot/efi

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chroot /mnt

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grub-install /dev/sdX --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi/

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update-grub && update-initramfs -u && updategrub

When I reboot, it just doesn't detect anything. It's not like Debian boots but has errors; it just doesn't get detected at all.

Could someone please help me fix this?

Also, is it possible to make it so that I can boot the USB installation on two different computers? If so, what would I have to do?

I also vaguely recall having done

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efibootmgr add 1 /dev/sdX

in different rescue attempts of mine, one attempt outside the chroot (in the live Debian) and one inside the chroot.

Any input would be GREATLY appreciated!

[Aki]

Hello,

Perhaps your BIOS erased the motherboard's NVM (non-volatile memory), which holds the UEFI configuration variables, in the process of changing the CPU.

[..]
is there a way that's possible to have a Debian installation that's installed to a USB hard drive be able to boot from two (x86_64 / x64 / amd64) computers? If so, what would I need to do?
[..]

If all your computers are EFI-enabled, you can install the Debian EFI grub boot loader in the "removable media path" (see [1]).

The EFI firmware in each of your computers should allow you to select the drive to boot by pressing a pre-defined key before booting (the key changes depending on the firmware).

Hope this helps.

Note: I would suggest you to change the subject of the first post from:

• "I upgraded my CPU and a UEFI Debian installation I have no longer works!"

to

• "How to boot Debian from a USB hard drive using UEFI from different computers"

---
[1] Debian Wiki - UEFI - Force grub-efi installation to the removable media path

[lewulff]

Have you tried the efibootmgr program? I tend to run multi boot systems, and have used efibootmgr to alter boot order in NVM, and to create new NVM boot entries.

[s3a]

Hello,

Perhaps your BIOS erased the motherboard's NVM (non-volatile memory), which holds the UEFI configuration variables, in the process of changing the CPU.

[..]
is there a way that's possible to have a Debian installation that's installed to a USB hard drive be able to boot from two (x86_64 / x64 / amd64) computers? If so, what would I need to do?
[..]

If all your computers are EFI-enabled, you can install the Debian EFI grub boot loader in the "removable media path" (see [1]).

The EFI firmware in each of your computers should allow you to select the drive to boot by pressing a pre-defined key before booting (the key changes depending on the firmware).

Hope this helps.

Note: I would suggest you to change the subject of the first post from:

• "I upgraded my CPU and a UEFI Debian installation I have no longer works!"

to

• "How to boot Debian from a USB hard drive using UEFI from different computers"

---
[1] Debian Wiki - UEFI - Force grub-efi installation to the removable media path

Thanks a lot! Copy-pasting the data and then doing the dpkg-reconfigure command worked!

[s3a]

Have you tried the efibootmgr program? I tend to run multi boot systems, and have used efibootmgr to alter boot order in NVM, and to create new NVM boot entries.

Thanks for the response, and I'll keep this in mind in general for a future problem, but the removable path way would just always work regardless of which computer I boot from and with the use of efibootmgr, I'd have to keep running a command on each computer, right?

All my operating systems are on USB drives, so it's not a problem for me that only one can be detected at a time (which, if I understood correctly, is a limitation of that method) (because I can easily remove the other drives).

[LinuxOS]

If your operating system is on a USB drive, you probably should add --force-extra-removable argument.

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grub-install /dev/sdX --target=x86_64-efi --force-extra-removable --efi-directory=/boot/efi/

It should install /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/ directory required to boot removable USB device from any UEFI-aware machine.