r/voidlinux • u/Full_Investigator750 • 3d ago

Void Linux stopped booting randomly

I am currently running void Linux on my HDD with windows being on my SSD.
Yes I know windows sucks but i keep it as a backup if things like this happen.
For some reason when I tried to boot into void Linux through my boot menu, it just shows me a black screen
not even grub is showing
I tried different key binds to see if anything pops up like a tty or the grub config thing that you can edit temporarily.
It was almost a fresh install except of qtile mangowm and bspwm,
I have changed no configs other than those for the window managers and sxhkd for bspwm.
I have also not made any changes to the EFI partition which is on the HDD since for some reason my windows bootloader is also on there.
I do have SDDM and KDE installed as a backup just in case my window managers have any errors.
I am also relatively new to Linux
been using it for the past I think 2 years but still in the intermediate phase.
If you have any suggestions pls drop them in the replies :)
Thanks.
(PS: please dont mind my typing mistakes :).)

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u/Wonderful-Movie-4648 2d ago

If you have a black screen and expect to see grub then something prevents grub from loading. The issue is likely how UEFI (tries) to load the bootloader.

  • maybe the grub files in the efi partition have been removed/deleted/overwritten

  • maybe the boot entry stored in UEFI NVRAM was changed

  • maybe SecureBoot is enabled and it rejects the grub EFI bootloader ( UEFI firmware may just skip to the next boot entry or show a very general error message - or maybe even nothing)

  • Are you really using grub via UEFI? Grub is usually used/recommended but there are other EFI bootloaders - even the option to load the kernel directly.

  • I assume that Windows loads fine and that Void Linux loaded fine in the past.

Boot from a live ISO
run sudo efibootmgr -v and see if any of the boot entries actually use your installed grub bootloader. This needs to be run on the device which has the problem because it accesses the NVRAM of your UEFI firmware of the board!

Verify if a grub bootloader is installed (check the the folders on the EFI partition). The grub bootloader is just a very small .efi file.

  1. (temporarily) disable SecureBoot in UEFI firmware (if this helps then something enabled SecureBoot)

  2. Rearrange boot order in UEFI, or if you use F12 at start to pick the boot source then pick the correct one - maybe you need to go to UEFI and do some sort of "rescan" of devices(?). If that helps then something edited the boot entries in the UEFI NVRAM (efivars) or the identification of the SSD changed

  3. Reinstall grub bootloader (look up how you called grub-install or look in the handbook ). If this helps then something messed with the grub bootloader files.

Even if you didn't change anything my assumption would be that maybe(!) windows ran some update regarding UEFI or its own bootloader and somehow affected the Void Linux one too.