Updating to Steam OS 3.5.5 appears to have "removed" Refind + SteamOS from boot options

[MrFums]

As per the title, updated to the new stable release of 3.5.5 today and it will only boot into Windows. Cant see reFind or SteamOS in boot options - any suggestions??

[jlobue10]

Yes, alongside the 3.5.5 update was a BIOS update for most people (unless they had manually done it previously). What this means is that most likely many of the EFI entries were cleared. Then typically, Windows EFI entry gets re-added by the firmware if its EFI file is found on the /esp partition. If you had my GUI workign before this update, just manually boot into SteamOS from its EFI file. Press Vol+ and Power to get into BIOS and go to the lower left boot from file option and boot from /esp/efi/steamos/steamcl.efi . Once in SteamOS, if you had the systemd service running, the missing EFI entries should have been recreated for SteamOS and rEFInd. You may also need to redo the Windows Powershell script or disabling of the Windows EFI entry again.

I am working as quickly as possible to fix other issues that have arisen with 3.5.5, but hopefully that guidance above can get you on the right track for now.

[MrFums]

Thank you, good job i refreshed this as I just sorted it myself and was about to close the issue!!

Yep, I just booted from the file into SteamOS, went into desktop mode, and re-did all of the GUI settings (Pacman, install, create install etc) - not sure if this is needed, I imagine not looking at what you have posted?
Booted into Windows re-ran the boot order switcheroo thingy and restarted. All seems working now, thank you!

What issues have you noticed with 3.5.5 so far just out of interest?

[jlobue10]

Yeah just getting into SteamOS, and re-doing the create config, install config would probably have been enough on SteamOS side, and you did the necessary Windows step with baldsealion's script.

The installer is hilariously broken with 3.5.5, so I'm trying to get away from needing pacman entirely and just provide a flatpak and/ or PKGBUILD prepared file for a local pacman install after download. This is very much a work in progress but will be a much more resilient solution going forward (when it's ready).

I also have a few nice QoL updates to add like the ability to randomize backgrounds if people want, and potentially removing the need to type the user password for the install config step.

[jlobue10]

The updated installer with new 1.3.1 version has been released. Going forward, a design goal will be to have pacman make no system changes other than installing the GUI package that I provide locally. I think this is a much better approach than what I did previously.

I just had to be resourceful in finding an Arch system with matching glibc and libstdc++ dependencies to be my compile VM. For this purpose, a slightly modified ChimeraOS 43-1 virtual machine has worked quite well.