66
error: file '/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found.
grub rescue>

What can I do? I just sit and stare at it.

I found my old netbook (Dell Inspiron 1010) which I have not used for about four years. I replaced Windows XP with Ubuntu 12.10. I used my bootable USB drive. I installed and rebooted. I got the message that normal.mod is not found.

What should I do? Type exit, reboot, or quit? Should I re-install?

6
  • 1
    THE ANSWER BELOW NEVER WORKS. THIS DOES WORK: re-install your OS, go to "do something else", create your partition tables, then use your windows partition as your primary boot device. That last step is essential. DO NOT USE /boot. There might be another solution: try manually changing your boot device during startup; however, I don't think that will work. This is a long-standing problem that has persisted in Ubuntu up-to and including 17.10. Thank you. Nov 8, 2017 at 5:20
  • None of these instructions worked for me. In fact, using the various recovery tools made the problem worse. I was able to get grub sort of reinstalled but because I use lvm2, the kernel failed to start. If you are using lvm2 for anything, then when this problem happens, you will have to reinstall the OS. As far as I can tell, there is no recovery from a failed kernel update + grub + lvm2 combination. lvm2 sees very little official support despite being pushed for Ubuntu Server LTS at one point. I'm backing up my data and reinstalling the OS and won't touch lvm2 again. Learned my lesson. Feb 23, 2018 at 1:33
  • 1
    I already switched away from lvm2 and have had zero issues since. None of my infrastructure uses it anymore. The default system rescue solutions (both graphical and CLI) are unaware or only barely aware of LVM and that is sufficient reason for me to not use LVM. Even if I followed your directions to recover the system and they worked, the problem would probably happen again in the future. Reinstalling the OS and ditching LVM was the best and fastest option for me. Jan 28, 2019 at 14:47
  • 2
    @Wolfpack in my case the problem is that without normal.mod set prevent me to possibly reinstall ubuntu, the lgoin does nt works. What can I do?
    – HoCo_
    Feb 27, 2019 at 9:03
  • 4
    @Wolfpack'08 Please repost your solution as an answer. Posting solutions as comments is circumventing the site principles. You should also mention which “answer below never works“ since there are more of them.
    – Melebius
    Apr 26, 2019 at 8:30

9 Answers 9

50

Grub has a small core image that is loaded at boot time. The core image dynamically loads modules which provide further functionality. A normal.mod not found error indicates that grub can not load normal.mod, which is a grub module that provides the normal command. To load normal.mod you need to tell grub where it is. To do this you can use the grub command-line (aka Rescue Console). Grub will start the command-line if there is a problem booting, or you can start it manually by holding the shift key as grub starts (to force show the grub menu), and then pressing the 'c' key.

Using the grub and grub rescue shells you can explore the drives, partitions, and filesystems. You need to:

  • Locate the grub install using ls or search.file
  • Set grub variables $prefix and $root
  • Load and run the normal module

Example

The following is just an example. You will need to adapt it to your local drive and partition setup.

Where is normal.mod? Look in some likely locations

grub rescue> ls
(hd0) (hd0,msdos1) (hd0,msdos2)
grub rescue> ls (hd0)
error: unknown filesystem.
grub rescue> ls (hd0,msdos1)/i386-pc/normal.mod
error: file '/boot/grub/x86_64-efi/normal.mod' not found.
grub rescue> ls (hd0,msdos1)/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod
error: file '/boot/grub/x86_64-efi/normal.mod' not found.

Found it at (hd0,msdos1)

grub> ls (hd0,msdos1)/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod
normal.mod

Why did GRUB not find it?
Check $prefix (the GRUB directory's absolute location), and $root (the default device for paths that do not include a device).

$prefix is set when grub is installed by grub-install, and $root is initially set to the device from $prefix

grub rescue> echo $root
hd0,msdos2
grub rescue> echo $prefix
(hd0,msdos2)/boot/grub

Root and prefix are pointing to the wrong partition (hd0,msdos2), so we must set them to point to (hd0,msdos1), the partition where normal.mod is actually located

grub rescue> set root=(hd0,msdos1)
grub rescue> set prefix=(hd0,msdos1)/boot/grub

Load and run normal module

grub rescue> insmod normal
grub rescue> normal

Some other commands that may be helpful

ls: List all devices and partitions

grub> ls
(hd0) (hd0,msdos5) (hd0,msdos1)

ls Partition

grub rescue> ls (hd0,msdos1)
        Partition hd0,msdos1: Filesystem type ext* - Last modification time
2014-05-08 15:56:38 Thursday, UUID c864cbdd-a2ba-43a4-83a3-66e305adb1b6 -
Partition start at 1024KiB - Total size 6290432Kib

ls Filesystem (note / at end)

grub rescue> ls (hd0,msdos1)/
lost+found/ etc/ media/ bin/ boot/ dev/ home/ lib/ lib64/ mnt/ opt/ proc/
root/ run/ sbin/ srv/ sys/ tmp/ usr/ var/ vmlinuz initrd.img cdrom/

Look inside /boot/grub
presence of i386-pc directory means this is a BIOS install
presence of x86_64-efi directory would indicate an EFI install

grub rescue> ls (hd0,msdos1)/boot/grub
i386-pc/ locale/ fonts/ grubenv grub.cfg

13
  • +1 After following these steps to boot into my ubuntu installation I ran sudo grub-install /dev/sdX to install my grub. I think the LVM install confused my grub somehow.
    – DavidGamba
    Sep 19, 2014 at 3:39
  • 1
    I guess if you get "Unknown command 'search-file' like I just did, it is time to give up. My advice to folks is never install Ubuntu without a Windows Recovery DVD. As I just found out, having a recovery partition is not enough once Grub gets messed up. And also, never install Ubuntu on someone else's Windows computer, because if it messes up they will be really pissed.
    – Scooter
    Oct 28, 2014 at 1:46
  • 1
    @Scooter See this answer for instructions on reinstalling Grub by booting a live CD/USB.
    – bain
    Oct 28, 2014 at 11:34
  • @bain Thanks for the reply. In my case did a reinstall from the Ubuntu iso disk. Ubuntu figured out that grub was messed up or maybe it just automatically writes over it, but it redid it to where I was back to being able to boot into Windows again.
    – Scooter
    Oct 28, 2014 at 12:27
  • 1
    Yepp. The author did not read the question. grub rescue shell != grub shell.
    – JPT
    Aug 26, 2015 at 6:13
38

Solved this on a machine this afternoon. It seems that one cause of this problem is the installer thinking that you have EFI secure boot, when you don't and therefore loading the incorrect GRUB files.

What you need to do is install GRUB 2. To do this you need to boot to the live instance, mount your root partition and install.

From a live instance, find the partition on which your root partition is loaded. GParted will tell you this, or you could use

sudo fdisk -l

Go for the partition in which ubuntu is installed.

Once you have your partition you need to mount it. Assuming the root partition is on /dev/sda5, that'd be:

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt

Then install GRUB 2

sudo grub-install /dev/sda --boot-directory=/mnt

Original solution for this was from here: http://ubuntujournal.blogspot.com/2012/11/fix-new-install-of-ubuntu-1210-wont-boot.html

9
  • 1
    Didn't work for me. I have the same problem and I'm still looking for a solution. Nov 7, 2013 at 12:58
  • 4
    --root-directory is now --boot-directory in grub2
    – bain
    May 8, 2014 at 15:32
  • 1
    Another easy fix that worked for me is to copy the grup backup located in /etc/grub.d/backup to /boot/grub. Check the attached readme for appropriate folders and paths.
    – jhexp
    Jul 17, 2015 at 17:27
  • In my case the problem was I have 2 hard drives and the bios sequence was looking on the wrong drive first. That drive had an old corrupted grub installation.
    – imbr
    May 7, 2017 at 20:58
  • If you cant tell which is the right one from fdisk, this SO can help (it helped me find which device /media/ubuntu/some-name was on) unix.stackexchange.com/questions/11311/…
    – Michael
    Jun 8, 2017 at 4:08
3

Other solutions may not work if you get to the grub-rescue prompt and/or your configuration uses LVM, this one should.

Boot on a rescue disk (tip : I keep a small distribution on a dedicated partition of my backup USB disk).

If you use LVM, find the name of your volume group with lvdisplay or another LVM-related commands. Activate it (otherwise you'll get a mount: special drive /dev/volumegroupname/partition does not exist error when trying to mount) :

vgchange -a y volumegroupname

Now mount your usual / partition, e.g. on /mnt :

mount /dev/volumegroupname/partition /mnt

Mount a few special devices as well (as well as /boot if on a separate partition) :

mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -t sysfs /sys /mnt/sys

Then chroot into your usual distribution :

chroot /mnt

Finally, reinstall GRUB2 — commands may vary depending on your distribution, this works on Slackware (if your drive is /dev/sda) :

grub-install /dev/sda
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Reboot and you should be done.

2

I didn't find that information on forums, so I want to share some information despite the fact that this question was asked a long time ago:

If you have a large (e.g. 1TB) partition with Ubuntu installed and you didn't allocate additional one for /boot/, it could be the reason of such errors. When GRUB starts, it uses biosdisk driver for reading normal drivers from the /boot/grub/ directory. Sometimes, this directory could be physically located on the hard drive somewhere after the maximum supported by biosdisk sector. The issue could appear, for example, after system upgrade. Also, I am always face that issue after fresh installation Ubuntu 13.10, but it could differ, as it depends on motherboard/bios.

You can check that using grub recovery - after setting correct PREFIX and ROOT, try to ls /boot - if you don't see anything, but can see files there when booting from live cd/flash drive - than you have the issue described above.

You can do different things to make system bootable, but the only way to avoid that issue in future (during dist-upgrades) is to put /boot directory on a separate small partition.

1

I had the same issue and could not get it resolved using Grub-Rescue. I tired most of the solutions offered here.

I then booted off the Ubuntu live media (DVD or USB) and installed the boot-repair-tool and this resolved it for me

How to install the Boot-Repair tool in an Ubuntu live disc?

0

Reinstalling grub from the above answer from MorrisseyJ (https://askubuntu.com/a/286028/795299) helped, but I still had the module not found error. It was looking for the files at /grub.. instead of /boot/grub.. Even after reinstalling grub with several methods, something kept pointing there (grubenv maybe). Finally, I renamed the /boot directory and used the grub-install /dev/sda --boot-directory=/mnt/boot command and it finally changed the $prefix location.

0

After 4 hours into this mess, I figured out that FS Labels ARE NOT simple names that will appear somewhere.

Seems obvious in hindsight, but well... it wasn't.

The Lubuntu 22.04 installation brought me here and simply reinstalling it WITHOUT those labels solved the issue in a x64, EFI machine.

I really hope you, fellow searcher, figure this out faster than I did :).

0

In my case the UEFI boot manager was lost from bios setup.

This article from itsFOSS solved the problem:

I simply added an entry pointing at that file shimx64.efi

-5

This is tested-working, in case the above solutions are still non-working:

i. Backup your important files, first.

  1. Re-install your OS, go to "do something else", create your partition tables,
  2. Use your windows partition as your primary boot device.

The second step is essential.

DO NOT USE /boot.

There might be another solution: try manually changing your boot device during startup; however, I don't think that will work, and I have yet to test it.

This is a long-standing problem that has persisted in Ubuntu up-to and including 17.10.

--Update-- I got a lot of down-votes on this. I just want to say that this error can be caused by more than one antecedent. Even though this has worked for me, it might not work for you so backup your important files before fiddling with things.

The top-rated solution worked for me on some devices, also, but it did not work on one of my devices so I created this answer rather than amending other answers.

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