On Sunday, 11 January 2026 14:43:45 Greenwich Mean Time [email protected] wrote: > (sent via web mail) > > Greetings, > > I'm still trying to recover my local mail server from the problem I > had before Christmas. > > I've always used bootctl from systemd-utils to manage booting. It > gives a nice menu of kernels to boot. So I booted SysRescCD from USB, > restored all the partitions from backup, chrooted into the restored > system and ran 'bootctl install' followed by 'bootctl list' and > 'bootctl status', which told me the system was not booted from a > supported loader.
When you chrooted into your system, did you mount the ESP at /efi and the XBOOTLDR partition at /boot? I don't use bootctl, but I understand it expects to find these two partitions in the above mountpoints, or you'll have to use the appropriate '--esp-path' and '--boot-path' options with it. In addition, you need to check the SysRescCD kernel has CONFIG_EFI_STUB=y - I haven't used it since it moved away from OpenRC. > Next, I ran isohybrid from syslinux to make the iso bootable in UEFI, > dd'd the now UEFI image to USB and tried again. Same result. > > One last try: I repartitioned the USB as GPT with a UEFI FAT-32 > partition and a blank partition, then ran dd again into the blank > partition. > > I still get the same error. If the error was about the system *loader*, then I would guess your /efi and /boot mountpoints were not correctly set. > I'm now out of ideas, and I still can't boot the box. What's more, my > desktop box is suffering the same problem, so I have only one other > system, on which I'm writing this. I daren't shut it down to test > anything. :( > > Regards, > Peter. In the first instance you can use the efibootmgr command to set up the desired gentoo kernel image to boot with natively. Once you've booted back into your restored system you can reinstall/configure your bootctl setup in the way you're familiar with, without SysRescueCD interfering. Alternatively, the UEFI firmware (BIOS) menu may recognise the bootctl binary in your EFI partition and boot from it, as long as its config is set up as desired. I've noticed when the default OS boot option in the UEFI menu has changed, the UEFI firmware will probe block devices to identify an EFI executable to run/boot with.
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