Kernel install (make install) + grub config

[velladecin]

I've setup /efi and many months I was happily compiling kernels and used 'make install' to install them into that directory and update grub.cfg (also under /efi). One day I made an update and 'make install' started installing into /boot instead.
I found out the hard way when after reboot I could not boot, grub menu was offering old entries which did not have corresponding kernel and ramdisk in /boot.

Since then I'm manually entering details via grub shell to be able to boot. AFAIK my grub menu is loaded from /efi containing the old entries but looks for kernels in /boot - I'm bit confused as to how this happens.. Mind you, I'm rather enjoying the use of grub shell these days

But there must be a parameter that decides where grub menu is loaded from and where grub looks for kernels. I tried /etc/conf.d /etc/default but nothing obvious there. Any suggestions?

[John R. Graham]

Grub looks for the kernels & initramfs images where it was told to by the command line options used with grub-install, but this defaults to /boot. Is it possible you reinstalled grub to your boot disk at some point? To help figure this out, could you post your /etc/fstab file and also the output of

[velladecin]

Thanks to using grub shell/cli I've now worked out how the grub menu works and see the paths definitions when passing linux and initrd options. I've hacked the menu and can boot directly via grub menu - well, until I re-run grub-install and the modified menu gets overwritten

So my question is how to force 'make install' to deposit kernels to /efi instead of /boot and when it runs grub-install to work with grub under /efi instead of /boot and to specify the right paths in grub.cfg

Also, I was thinking about removing /boot altogether to see if that forces 'make install' to use alternate location, specifically /efi..? But nicer would be to actually have control that's for sure.

[velladecin]

Hi John,

I'm sure that grub did get re-installed as part of the update but I would have done the same number of times before. I can't remember what I did during the install and how/if I installed grub specifically into /efi. But will have a look at how to install grub to certain location.


## /etc/fstab

[velladecin]

adding fdisk -l of /efi which has some additional output, nothing special for /root which also contains /boot

[sublogic]

@velladecin, I had a similar situation on a fresh install. I ended up splitting my /efi partition into an /efi and a /boot, as recommended in the Gentoo handbook.
Here's the forum thread.

[John R. Graham]

[Nowa]

[John R. Graham]

[GDH-gentoo]

You can convince make install to install the kernel in the EFI System Partition (ESP) by appropiately setting USE flags for sys-kernel/installkernel. But I don't think that you can convince grub-mkconfig to look for kernels in places other that /boot. If you managed to do that in the past, I don't know how you did it.

That said, I don't see the point of installing kernels in the ESP unless they are EFI stubs that will be booted directly by the UEFI firmware (which you are not doing if you use GRUB), or you are using a bootloader that can't deal with filesystems other than FAT (again, not GRUB's case). And I don't see the point of installing a UKI either, unless you are using secure boot.
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[sublogic]

[pietinger]

[sublogic]

Ok, so the handbook is fine. Good.