This error occurs when GRUB bootloader cannot locate or map a hard drive during installation or update. It typically happens with misconfigured chroot environments, 4K sector drives, or improper partition mounting during system recovery.
The grub-probe utility is responsible for identifying the block device containing the GRUB bootloader files. When this error appears, it means GRUB cannot determine which physical drive contains the boot files it needs. This commonly occurs during grub-install or update-grub operations, especially when working from a live USB environment or after hardware changes. The error may be harmless in some situations (like when probing USB installation media), but it can be critical if it prevents booting your primary system drive.
If working from a live USB environment, you must mount ALL system partitions before entering chroot. Never mount just the boot partition.
# Mount your root partition first
mount /dev/sdXY /mnt
# Mount all required pseudo-filesystems
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -o bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts
mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /run /mnt/run
mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys
# For EFI systems, also mount boot partition
mount /dev/sdXZ /mnt/boot/efi
# Now safely enter chroot
chroot /mnt /bin/bashReplace /dev/sdXY with your root partition and /dev/sdXZ with your boot partition.
Inside the chroot environment, regenerate the device mapping that GRUB uses to identify drives:
sudo grub-mkdevicemapThis creates or updates the /boot/grub/device.map file which maps hardware devices to GRUB device names.
Generate a fresh GRUB configuration file:
sudo update-grubOr on systems using grub2-mkconfig:
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfgIf the error still appears but the configuration was generated successfully, you can safely ignore it and proceed.
For UEFI/EFI systems, reinstall GRUB to the EFI partition:
sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=grubIf installation still fails, try adding the --removable flag:
sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=grub --removableFor BIOS systems, use the main drive (not a partition):
sudo grub-install /dev/sdXReplace /dev/sdX with your boot drive letter (e.g., /dev/sda, NOT /dev/sda1).
Exit the chroot environment and reboot:
exit
rebootYour system should now boot successfully. If you still experience boot issues, try booting into the live environment again and verifying your /etc/fstab configuration is correct.
Advanced scenarios: (1) 4K sector drives: The Debian bug tracker (#602071) reveals this error occurs on 4K advanced format disks where BIOS cannot boot regardless. Solution: recreate RAID arrays or partitions with 512-byte sectors, or use GPT partitioning with UEFI firmware. (2) Windows dynamic disks: If you have Windows dynamic disks alongside Linux, they interfere with GRUB device detection. Solution: convert to basic disks or remove the dynamic disk before installing/updating GRUB. (3) ZFS on Linux: Users report this error with ZFS pools. Ensure you're in the correct chroot and all ZFS pools are imported before running grub commands. (4) Last resort: You can temporarily replace the grub-probe binary with a script that echoes a known filesystem type, though this is not recommended as a permanent solution. Boot repair tools like Boot-Repair (Ubuntu) can often fix these issues automatically.
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