Install media "Failed to verify PE binaries"?

IncusOS
1

I rebooted an IncusOS machine a day or two ago and it asked for the root recovery key, naturally this is the second install I made and I only have it for the first :upside_down_face:. Interestingly systemd-boot only shows 20251210 and 20251225 despite having auto updates on.

I was just going to reinstall and make sure to actually get the key this time. I made a new install media today (USB installation image) but when I try and boot it I only get ā€œIncusOS is startingā€¦ā€ for around 20s, followed by IncusOS failed to verify PE binaries: ERROR: open /boot/EFI/Linux/IncusOS_202601152002.efi: no such file or directory. Nothing else happens even if I leave it for ~15-20min. Any ideas on what to do in such a case?

2

Well, thatā€™s unexpected. Can you connect the USB drive to a normal system, mount the first partition (which is /boot/ during install), and do a ls of the EFI/Linux/ directory?

Our daily tests using that image are passing, and Iā€™ll do a quick reinstall on my physical test system, but my first thought is a bad install media.

3

The install environment might also be getting confused by two /boot/ partitions being present. (One from the previously-installed IncusOS in the main drive, and a second on the USB drive.) Something else you could try doing is wiping the main drive (sgdisk -Z /dev/sdX is easy from a live Linux media), then re-running the install.

1 Like
4

First partition has the file as expected:

[michael@cheddar /mnt]$ ls EFI/Linux/
total 92M
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K Jan 15 20:25 ./
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4.0K Jan 15 20:24 ../
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  92M Jan 15 20:25 IncusOS_202601152002.efi

Good point about the existing /boot, Iā€™ll try wiping the drive now.

5

Yep, wiping the disk worked!

6

Great! I made an issue to see about properly fixing this.