• How does grub work for multiple installations?

    From William Unruh@2:250/1 to All on Wed May 12 18:14:20 2021
    Summary: Problems with grub2 selection of root filesystem on dual boot.

    I have been having problems with grub2. I have two installations-- in my
    case of Mageia-- on a two partitions on a disk. Bothe partions gave a
    /boot/grub2/. On say partition 1 I run MCC wich finds the installation
    on partion 2 and and enters it into the grub.cfg on partion 1 withe the
    right parameters (eg that root is /dev/nvme0n1p2 for the installation
    on partition 2.) I would have expected that is what grub would use at
    bootup-- that is certainlly what shows up in the grub menu on bootup.
    However, in partition2 in the /boot/grub2/grub.cfg, it says that the
    root is partition 1. When I chose from the bootup grub menu the
    partition 2 installation, instead of choosing partition 2 as the root,
    it chooses partition 1 as the root. Ie, grub looks into the
    /boot/grub2/grub.cfg for the root location and boots that up instead.

    To try to make this clearer

    Lets say the UUID of partition 1 is XXXX and of partition 2 is YYYY.

    In parttion 1 grub.cfg there are two stanzas

    $menuentry "Mageia 1" ....
    ......
    if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root XXXX
    else
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root XXXX
    fi
    linux /boot/vmlinuz... root=UUID-XXXX ...
    ......
    $menuentry "Mageia 2" ....
    ....
    if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root YYYY
    else
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root YYYY
    fi
    linux /boot/vmlinuz... root=UUID=YYYYY

    and on partition2's grub.cfg

    $menuentry "Mageia"
    .....
    if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root XXXX
    else
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root XXXX
    fi
    linux /boot/vmlinuz... root=UUID-XXXX ...


    which is wrong, but I would never expect grub to see it


    But what happens is that I see
    Mageia 1
    Mageia 2
    in the grub menu. But when I choose Mageia 2
    it uses partition 1 as its root (UUID=XXXX) even though the Mageai 2
    menu item explicitly said it should use UUID=YYYY.
    When it boots into Mageia 2 it seems to look into the grub.cfg of
    partition 2, and use the root from there.

    This seems to me to be a bug, or I do not understand grub at all (
    which is probable)
    It should be using the data from the grub menu that was displayed at
    boot, not from some other wrong menu in partition 2 which was never
    displayed.


    I ran into this when I copied an Mga7 which was working from partition
    1 to partition 2, so that I could use the Mga8 upgrade to partition 2.
    I did the upgrade (which failed, leaving the grub.cfg on partitoin 2, which pointed to
    partition 1 alone).

    I booted into partition 1 ( which worked) run MCC to install menu items
    to both partition 1 and 2 in the menu, and tried to boot into partition
    2. I could not. No matter what menu item I chose, I always ended up in
    partition 1, even though the grug.cfg menu clearly pointed to the root
    on partition 2. Once it booted, the root was always from partion 1.
    When I went to the grub.cfg on partition 2 and manually altered the
    root= entry frm XXXX to YYYY (Ie so that it pointed to partition 2 as
    the root) the boot process worked. That is NOT how I believe it should
    work.



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  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Wed May 12 20:56:29 2021
    On Wed, 12 May 2021 17:14:20 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:

    But what happens is that I see
    Mageia 1
    Mageia 2
    in the grub menu. But when I choose Mageia 2
    it uses partition 1 as its root (UUID=XXXX) even though the Mageai 2
    menu item explicitly said it should use UUID=YYYY.
    When it boots into Mageia 2 it seems to look into the grub.cfg of
    partition 2, and use the root from there.

    This seems to me to be a bug, or I do not understand grub at all (
    which is probable)
    It should be using the data from the grub menu that was displayed at
    boot, not from some other wrong menu in partition 2 which was never
    displayed.


    I ran into this when I copied an Mga7 which was working from partition
    1 to partition 2, so that I could use the Mga8 upgrade to partition 2.
    I did the upgrade (which failed, leaving the grub.cfg on partitoin 2, which pointed to
    partition 1 alone).

    I booted into partition 1 ( which worked) run MCC to install menu items
    to both partition 1 and 2 in the menu, and tried to boot into partition
    2. I could not. No matter what menu item I chose, I always ended up in
    partition 1, even though the grug.cfg menu clearly pointed to the root
    on partition 2. Once it booted, the root was always from partion 1.
    When I went to the grub.cfg on partition 2 and manually altered the
    root= entry frm XXXX to YYYY (Ie so that it pointed to partition 2 as
    the root) the boot process worked. That is NOT how I believe it should
    work.

    Is this a UEFI or CMS/legacy OS boot?

    What command was used to copy mga7 to the mga8 partition?

    My guess is you used something other than rsync.

    in a root terminal run
    lsblk -o NAME,TYPE,FSTYPE,MOUNTPOINT,LABEL,UUID
    and verify UUIDs are unique.

    Now run update-grub
    and verify that there are no failures, That command generates /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

    I do not use UEFI boot. I use cms/legay boot which requires
    a bios grub partition. As a result I have to run grub2-install.

    That tells grub which /boot/grub2/grub.cfg to use as a menu.
    Otherwise grub would not know which of the nine grub.cfg I
    currently have.

    Be aware that a Mageia out-of-the-box grub install defaults
    to booting the last menu selection that was booted.


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  • From William Unruh@2:250/1 to All on Wed May 12 21:58:51 2021
    On 2021-05-12, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
    On Wed, 12 May 2021 17:14:20 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:

    But what happens is that I see
    Mageia 1
    Mageia 2
    in the grub menu. But when I choose Mageia 2
    it uses partition 1 as its root (UUID=XXXX) even though the Mageai 2
    menu item explicitly said it should use UUID=YYYY.
    When it boots into Mageia 2 it seems to look into the grub.cfg of
    partition 2, and use the root from there.

    This seems to me to be a bug, or I do not understand grub at all (
    which is probable)
    It should be using the data from the grub menu that was displayed at
    boot, not from some other wrong menu in partition 2 which was never
    displayed.


    I ran into this when I copied an Mga7 which was working from partition
    1 to partition 2, so that I could use the Mga8 upgrade to partition 2.
    I did the upgrade (which failed, leaving the grub.cfg on partitoin 2, which pointed to
    partition 1 alone).

    I booted into partition 1 ( which worked) run MCC to install menu items
    to both partition 1 and 2 in the menu, and tried to boot into partition
    2. I could not. No matter what menu item I chose, I always ended up in
    partition 1, even though the grug.cfg menu clearly pointed to the root
    on partition 2. Once it booted, the root was always from partion 1.
    When I went to the grub.cfg on partition 2 and manually altered the
    root= entry frm XXXX to YYYY (Ie so that it pointed to partition 2 as
    the root) the boot process worked. That is NOT how I believe it should
    work.

    Is this a UEFI or CMS/legacy OS boot?

    UEFI


    What command was used to copy mga7 to the mga8 partition?

    rsync -avxAHX / /mga8 (where the second partition was mounted)


    My guess is you used something other than rsync.

    Nope.

    in a root terminal run
    lsblk -o NAME,TYPE,FSTYPE,MOUNTPOINT,LABEL,UUID
    and verify UUIDs are unique.

    I did. They are.


    Now run update-grub
    and verify that there are no failures, That command generates /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

    I do not use UEFI boot. I use cms/legay boot which requires
    a bios grub partition. As a result I have to run grub2-install.

    That tells grub which /boot/grub2/grub.cfg to use as a menu.
    Otherwise grub would not know which of the nine grub.cfg I
    currently have.

    I used the Boot in MCC to generate the grub on partition 1


    Be aware that a Mageia out-of-the-box grub install defaults
    to booting the last menu selection that was booted.

    I have the menu up for 5 sec and choose which one it is supposed to boot
    to. Yes, it does remember which one it did last time.
    But I choose a different one ( and I have done it a few times to make
    sure it was behaving weirdly)



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  • From David W. Hodgins@2:250/1 to All on Wed May 12 22:16:44 2021
    On Wed, 12 May 2021 13:14:20 -0400, William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> wrote:

    I have been having problems with grub2. I have two installations-- in my
    case of Mageia-- on a two partitions on a disk. Bothe partions gave a

    I don't normally use os-prober and keep each install separate. With os-prober, I have too many installs/kernels that are too similar in the way grub2 shows the menu to make it easy to figure out which install will be booted from which grub2 menu entry, plus the boot menu no longer fits on one screen.

    With grub legacy, I used to install the boot loader to the partition containing /boot, and used the gag boot loader to select which grub install to run to allow
    selecting which kernel to boot.

    With grub2, the Mageia tools do not allow selecting a partition for it to be installed on, just a drive, so I now use one install per drive and use the
    bios boot menu to select which one to boot.

    Having more than one install share the same boot drive can be done, but extreme care must be taken to ensure the configurations are compatible.

    Which ever install was last used to update-grub in the drive's mbr will control which partition the grub2 menu is loaded from, and which /etc/default/grub
    file will be used, so care must be taken to keep that file identical on all installs or be prepared for options change depending on which install was
    last used to update-grub.

    On uefi systems I now strongly recommend switching to refind. Only needs to
    be installed once, and doesn't need to be updated after each kernel install
    or uninstall.

    Regards, Dave Hodgins

    --
    Change dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org to davidwhodgins@teksavvy.com for
    email replies.

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  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Wed May 12 22:52:48 2021
    On Wed, 12 May 2021 20:58:51 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-12, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:



    Now run update-grub
    and verify that there are no failures, That command generates
    /boot/grub2/grub.cfg



    I used the Boot in MCC to generate the grub on partition 1

    Thank you for not doing what I indicated.

    That removes one more data point in the debug process towards
    figuring out what is causing your problem.0


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  • From William Unruh@2:250/1 to All on Thu May 13 00:39:26 2021
    On 2021-05-12, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
    On Wed, 12 May 2021 20:58:51 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-12, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:



    Now run update-grub
    and verify that there are no failures, That command generates
    /boot/grub2/grub.cfg



    I used the Boot in MCC to generate the grub on partition 1

    Thank you for not doing what I indicated.

    That removes one more data point in the debug process towards
    figuring out what is causing your problem.0

    This was done in the past. And I am not going to use another hour of my
    life to do it again your way, to see if that also breaks things.
    I finally got things to work by editing the
    /boot/grub2/grub.cfg on partition 2 by hand, inserting the UUID for
    partition 2 into the various root and root= refernces in grub.cfg That
    worked. I was then able to do the update for Mga7 to Mga (on the third
    try, since I had used the Mageai Mirror stanza for the urpmi.cfg file
    which picked up some mirror where Mageai 8 pointed to cauldron, and had
    a bunch of Mga9 files in it which totally messed up the update. I had to re-rsync the original Mga 7 partion, do those same by had edits of
    grub.cfg and /etc/fstab, this time using the princeton mirror for Mga8
    which I had checked that it had no mga9 packages in it. This time it
    worked (updating almost 4000 packages) and I am using that Mga8 as I
    type.
    But I am still curious ( and thoroughly pissed off) at the way grub.cfg
    worked and wasted a couple of hours of my life. And I would like to know
    if this is a bug in grub2 or if it is a "feature".



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  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Thu May 13 01:19:59 2021
    On Wed, 12 May 2021 23:39:26 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-12, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:


    Thank you for not doing what I indicated.

    That removes one more data point in the debug process towards
    figuring out what is causing your problem.0

    This was done in the past. And I am not going to use another hour of my
    life to do it again your way,

    Have it your own way. It does not take an hour for doing the test.

    to see if that also breaks things.

    It is not to see if it breaks things. It verifies that the operation
    completed usefully or if you have problems unique to your system.


    But I am still curious ( and thoroughly pissed off) at the way grub.cfg worked and wasted a couple of hours of my life. And I would like to know
    if this is a bug in grub2 or if it is a "feature".

    Simple logic indicates to me the real problem is between the chair
    and keyboard.

    If it a grub2 problem it sure as hell would have found/reported by now.

    Editing /boot/grub2/grub.cfg is the wrong way to fix this kind of problem.

    Next kernel update will wipe out your fix or might not booting the
    correct kernel.

    Glad I could answer your question about is is a grub2 problem.



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  • From William Unruh@2:250/1 to All on Thu May 13 02:05:34 2021
    On 2021-05-13, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
    On Wed, 12 May 2021 23:39:26 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-12, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:


    Thank you for not doing what I indicated.

    That removes one more data point in the debug process towards
    figuring out what is causing your problem.0

    This was done in the past. And I am not going to use another hour of my
    life to do it again your way,

    Have it your own way. It does not take an hour for doing the test.

    to see if that also breaks things.

    It is not to see if it breaks things. It verifies that the operation completed usefully or if you have problems unique to your system.


    But I am still curious ( and thoroughly pissed off) at the way grub.cfg
    worked and wasted a couple of hours of my life. And I would like to know
    if this is a bug in grub2 or if it is a "feature".

    Simple logic indicates to me the real problem is between the chair
    and keyboard.

    It may be. However, I set up grub on partition 1 in such a way that
    displayed a menu on boot which differentiated between Mga7 on partition
    1 and Mga7 on partion 2, and looking at grub.cfg, it looked like
    everything was pointing at the right partion. root referred to UUID
    which was the partition 2 UUID in both the linux vmlinux.... root=UUID= stanzas, etc. And everything in that that grub.cfg showed up in the menu
    when I booted up. Ie, the menu and the grub.cfg were completely in sync.
    The boot/grub2/grub.cfg on partition 2 pointed back at partition 1
    (since it was a copy of the old partition 1 before I ran the MCC Boot
    process).

    But despite everything on partition 1 being what it should be, when I
    selected the copy on partition 2 in the menu, what I got was a boot into partition 1.
    That had nothing to do with me.

    When I edited /root/grub2/grub.cfg on partition 2 to point to partition
    2 (ie the UUID of partition 2 in the various places in the grub.cfg on partition 2) and changed nothing in partition 1, the selection from the
    menu of the Mga7 ( partition 2) (ie exactly the same as before) now booted into partition 2.

    That suggests to me that problem was not between the keyboard and the
    chair, but a problem with grub itself.

    Unless of course this is the way grub is supposed to behave.

    Your theory that if this were a problem with grub2 then it would have
    shown up before now assumes that Someone else tried what I did, and did
    not simply throw up their hands at the hopelessness of trying to
    understand grub2 (It is a rather rats nest of incomprehensible stuff.)


    If it a grub2 problem it sure as hell would have found/reported by now.

    Editing /boot/grub2/grub.cfg is the wrong way to fix this kind of problem.

    Oh, I agree, but it is a way of figuring out where the problem lies.



    Next kernel update will wipe out your fix or might not booting the
    correct kernel.

    Glad I could answer your question about is is a grub2 problem.

    Yes, you did give an answer, unfortunately not one which is consistant
    with the symptoms I tried to describe.



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  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Thu May 13 05:50:13 2021
    On Thu, 13 May 2021 01:05:34 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:

    Yes, you did give an answer, unfortunately not one which is consistant
    with the symptoms I tried to describe.

    Well since you would not let me vefify that grub works as designed,
    it is a waste of bandwidth, Usenet resources, and everyone's time.

    For any lurkers, running a terminal as root, the verification steps are:

    o mount | grep ' / '
    and verify you are running on the desired partition.

    o update-grub
    will rebuild /boot/grub2/boot.cfg and no errors indicates it worked.

    o grub2-install
    will install grub boot loader and the location of /boot/grub2/boot.cfg

    For users who want to do a release upgrade and still have the old
    release I suggest that you:
    o boot a rescue cd or live iso
    o use gparted to format/label the new partition
    o rsync the old release into the new partition
    o edit the new /etc/fstab and change / to use the new partition
    o boot the old release
    o run update-grub to pickup the new install
    o boot the new install and verify the correct partition is mounted on /
    o run update-grub to pickup the new install
    o run grub2-install so it uses the new install's grub.cfg
    o reboot and verify that new install is booted when the first grub
    selection is selected.
    o change media mirror from old release to new release.
    o download all new release packages and test that they will install.
    o If test passes, do the install.
    o power down
    o boot new install to verify it works



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  • From William Unruh@2:250/1 to All on Thu May 13 06:06:47 2021
    On 2021-05-13, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
    On Thu, 13 May 2021 01:05:34 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:

    Yes, you did give an answer, unfortunately not one which is consistant
    with the symptoms I tried to describe.

    Well since you would not let me vefify that grub works as designed,
    it is a waste of bandwidth, Usenet resources, and everyone's time.

    For any lurkers, running a terminal as root, the verification steps are:

    o mount | grep ' / '
    and verify you are running on the desired partition.

    o update-grub
    will rebuild /boot/grub2/boot.cfg and no errors indicates it worked.

    o grub2-install
    will install grub boot loader and the location of /boot/grub2/boot.cfg

    For users who want to do a release upgrade and still have the old
    release I suggest that you:
    o boot a rescue cd or live iso
    o use gparted to format/label the new partition
    o rsync the old release into the new partition
    o edit the new /etc/fstab and change / to use the new partition
    o boot the old release
    o run update-grub to pickup the new install
    o boot the new install and verify the correct partition is mounted on /

    This is where the problem occured. The system booted the old install,
    not the new one, even though I had picked the new one in the menu.

    o run update-grub to pickup the new install

    The problem is which grub.cfg gets changed, the new one or the old. I
    suspect that the new one is.
    o run grub2-install so it uses the new install's grub.cfg
    o reboot and verify that new install is booted when the first grub
    selection is selected.
    o change media mirror from old release to new release.
    o download all new release packages and test that they will install.
    o If test passes, do the install.
    o power down
    o boot new install to verify it works




    About the only change from what I did is that I used MCC boot. I assume
    that the Mageia folks had the process do essntially what you do.
    Further more, as I said, the grub.cfg that was created was exactly what
    I wanted-- it had two groups, one based on the new partition and one on
    the old. And the grub menu that was created was exactly what I wanted--
    to groups, one on the new partition and one on the old. The only problem
    was that when I chose the new partition, the old one would come up.


    Ie, you assume that you know what the outcome of those processes are.
    They are not.


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  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Thu May 13 07:29:14 2021
    On Thu, 13 May 2021 05:06:47 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-13, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:


    o run update-grub to pickup the new install

    The problem is which grub.cfg gets changed,

    update-grub will change /boot/grub2/grub.cfg in the booted/mounted
    partition.



    About the only change from what I did is that I used MCC boot. I assume
    that the Mageia folks had the process do essntially what you do.

    I do not understand the last sentence. The new install upgrade has
    a new kernel which triggers an update-grub execution generating
    a new /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.

    In no way does the update follow "my process"

    Further more, as I said, the grub.cfg that was created was exactly what
    I wanted-- it had two groups, one based on the new partition and one on
    the old.

    Which tells me at least most of the /etc/grub.d/scripts ran ok, but
    I wanted update-grub executed in a root terminal to absolutely know
    there were no problems.

    The only problem
    was that when I chose the new partition, the old one would come up.

    Sounds absolutely correct and normal if you have not told the grub
    boot loader to use /boot/grub2/grub.cfg in the new partition.

    Ie, you assume that you know what the outcome of those processes are.

    Trust me, I know what my process steps do and the great majority of
    my knowledge comes from forgetting to change/etc/fstab, forgetting to
    run grub update, or grub install, or getting the wrong drive with grub
    install at one time or another.

    They are not.

    And yet only you and faeychild are here with grub problems on mga8
    and both solutions seem to be to tell the boot loader which /boot/grub2/grub.cfg to use.

    If my commands/steps do not correct your problem. Then the only thing
    left is you are not installing the mga8 boot loader in the device being
    used for booting.


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  • From William Unruh@2:250/1 to All on Thu May 13 09:34:29 2021
    On 2021-05-13, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
    On Thu, 13 May 2021 05:06:47 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-13, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:


    o run update-grub to pickup the new install

    The problem is which grub.cfg gets changed,

    update-grub will change /boot/grub2/grub.cfg in the booted/mounted
    partition.

    And that was what happened.



    About the only change from what I did is that I used MCC boot. I assume
    that the Mageia folks had the process do essntially what you do.

    I do not understand the last sentence. The new install upgrade has
    a new kernel which triggers an update-grub execution generating
    a new /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.

    No This was before the upgrade. I went to MCC, chose Boot, and had it
    install a new boot. It checked through the partitions to find all
    partitions with Mageia installations and put them into the grub.cfg on
    the partition which I was booted into. The grub.cfg changed. It also
    then set up the boot to place the menue production into the base of the
    disk from which I was booting (my M.2 SSD). This sounds to me like what MCC->Boot does is exactly what you call update-grub and install-grub.
    Before I did this there was just a single menu on bootup, pointing the
    various kernels in the original partitions. After I did this there were
    two menus-- one pointing to the original Mga7 and the other pointing to
    the copied Mga7, with a label giving the partition on which those two
    Mga7 partitions resided. However when I chose the second, new partition,
    I got booted into the old first partition. When I went to the grub.cfg
    on the new partition ( and changed all the UUID references there from
    the first old partition to the second neww partition, (editing the new
    grub.cfg by hand) the system now booted to the second new partition when
    I chose it in the menu, instead of the old first partition. The only
    change was to grub.cfg on the second new partition, ( which was NOT the
    unified menu).


    In no way does the update follow "my process"

    I suspect strongly that what MCC does is to run update-grub and
    install-grub, exactly what you told me to do. Perhaps someone who knows
    MCC Boot can verify, or deny this.


    Further more, as I said, the grub.cfg that was created was exactly what
    I wanted-- it had two groups, one based on the new partition and one on
    the old.

    Which tells me at least most of the /etc/grub.d/scripts ran ok, but
    I wanted update-grub executed in a root terminal to absolutely know
    there were no problems.

    As I said, I ran MCC BOOT not update-grub, but I also expect that
    update-grub is exactly what MCC runs.


    The only problem
    was that when I chose the new partition, the old one would come up.

    Sounds absolutely correct and normal if you have not told the grub
    boot loader to use /boot/grub2/grub.cfg in the new partition.

    Oh dear, lets go through it all again.

    On the old partion, I run MCC-BOOT, which creates a new grub.cfg on the
    old partition which contains menu items for both booting the old
    partition AND the new partition.


    Ie, you assume that you know what the outcome of those processes are.

    Trust me, I know what my process steps do and the great majority of
    my knowledge comes from forgetting to change/etc/fstab, forgetting to
    run grub update, or grub install, or getting the wrong drive with grub install at one time or another.

    They are not.

    And yet only you and faeychild are here with grub problems on mga8
    and both solutions seem to be to tell the boot loader which /boot/grub2/grub.cfg to use.



    If my commands/steps do not correct your problem. Then the only thing
    left is you are not installing the mga8 boot loader in the device being
    used for booting.

    The boot menu that comes up changes. So, the bootloader IS being
    installed on the device used for booting. And the menu that comes up is
    exactly what the is in the old partition's new grub.chg.

    So, lets go through it again.

    I have Mga7 in an old partition, which I will call partition 1. The boot
    menu points to partition 1, and when I boot, it boots up with partition
    1 being the root partitions.

    I now rsync partition 1 to the new partition, partition 2. (being booted
    with partition 1 mounted on /) I change
    /etc/fstab in partition 2 so that partition 2 is mounted on /. The
    grub.cfg on both partitions are identical. Both say that the root is
    partition 1.

    I now run MCC BOOT (with partition 1 mounted on / and partition 2
    unmounted). grub.chg on partition 1 is now changed and has stanzas with root pointing to partition 1 and root pointing to partition 2. grub.cfg on
    partition 2 is unchanged. and root there points to partition 1.

    I reboot, and the boot menu that comes up has menu items which say they
    they will boot up Mga7 on partition1 and menu items which say that they
    will boot up Mga7 on partition 2. These correspond to the items in the
    grub.cfg in partition 1's grub.cfg, and do NOT correspond to what is
    in partitions 2's grub.cfg.

    However, if I now chose from the menu to boot into Mga7 on partition 2
    what comes up is Mga7 with partition 1 mounted on /

    IF I now manually edit the grub.cfg on partition 2 ( which is still
    exactly the same as it was originally on partition 1 with only items
    pointing to partition 1) so that all the UUIDS for partition 1 are
    changed to partition 2 (I do NOT run MCC Boot, I do not do a update-grub
    or install grub, I only manually edit partition 2's grub.cfg to replace
    all of partition 1's UUIDs with partition 2's UUIDs) then when I chose partition 2's MGA7 on the boot menu, I get Mga7 with partition 2 mounted
    on /.

    Ie, the boot menu is partition 1's grub.cfg's menu, but what actually
    gets mounted is partition 2's stuff from its grub.cfg.


    But nothing, especially grub should be reading partition 2's grub.cfg. I
    am booting partition 1's grub.cfg, as is evidenced by the menu items on
    the boot menu.


    All that either MCC BOOT or update-grub/install-grub do is to set up and
    change the grub.cfg files ( and presumably the pointers in /boot/EFI/EFI/mageia/grub64.efi)

    So why is the grub.cfg on partition 2 affecting the bootup which should
    be being controlled by the grub.cfg on partition 1?



    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.21 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From Herman Viaene@2:250/1 to All on Thu May 13 13:22:25 2021
    Op Wed, 12 May 2021 19:19:59 -0500, schreef Bit Twister:

    On Wed, 12 May 2021 23:39:26 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-12, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:


    Thank you for not doing what I indicated.

    That removes one more data point in the debug process towards figuring
    out what is causing your problem.0

    This was done in the past. And I am not going to use another hour of my
    life to do it again your way,

    Have it your own way. It does not take an hour for doing the test.

    to see if that also breaks things.

    It is not to see if it breaks things. It verifies that the operation completed usefully or if you have problems unique to your system.


    But I am still curious ( and thoroughly pissed off) at the way grub.cfg
    worked and wasted a couple of hours of my life. And I would like to
    know if this is a bug in grub2 or if it is a "feature".

    Simple logic indicates to me the real problem is between the chair and keyboard.

    If it a grub2 problem it sure as hell would have found/reported by now.

    I hate to against Bittwister, but there is a problem with Mageia/grub2 and
    I opened a bug report on this, the bug is still open; bug 22675.
    It only shows up when the number of entries on the grub menu exceeds some limit.
    In my case the laptop has Win10, M8 for real use, another M8 for testing updates and (for the time being) an M7 for the same purpose. I have to remember quite strictly to remove older kernels from any of the Mageia installations when new kernels come along, but that sometimes is
    forgotten and then it goes wrong. I even had once the situation when I installed kernel 5.10.29 (if I remember well, and in the same MCC
    operation removed kernel 5.10.20 - there was a 27 in between), the
    default entry in the resulting grub menu pointed to the 5.10.20 kernel
    which wasn't there anymore, go figure.
    I mostly use grub-customizer to get things straightened out.

    Herman Viaene



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    * Origin: Aioe.org NNTP Server (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Thu May 13 13:46:31 2021
    On Thu, 13 May 2021 12:22:25 +0000 (UTC), Herman Viaene wrote:
    Op Wed, 12 May 2021 19:19:59 -0500, schreef Bit Twister:

    If it a grub2 problem it sure as hell would have found/reported by now.

    I hate to against Bittwister,

    Do not ever worry about that, I still make mistakes and need
    to be corrected from time to time.

    but there is a problem with Mageia/grub2 and
    I opened a bug report on this, the bug is still open; bug 22675.
    It only shows up when the number of entries on the grub menu exceeds some limit.

    Ah frap I did forget about
    https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22675

    @William: what kind of boot is being done, efi or cms?

    How many kernels are in /boot/?
    Mine has
    $ ls /boot/vmlinuz-*mga* | wc -l
    1

    I do a cms with mbr install and there are 9 installs with one kernel
    because I always remove old kernel if there is no problems show up
    during new kernel boot.


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    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From TJ@2:250/1 to All on Thu May 13 14:36:49 2021
    On 5/12/21 5:16 PM, David W. Hodgins wrote:
    On uefi systems I now strongly recommend switching to refind. Only needs to be installed once, and doesn't need to be updated after each kernel install or uninstall.

    I have never used uefi, so I know next to nothing about it. Nor do I, at
    this point in time, have any desire to start using it. So far, mbr and
    grub2 are working just fine for me.

    However, I seem to remember complaints a couple of years ago regarding
    Mageia grub2 updates messing up refind. Is that still a thing, or is it recommended that grub2 be uninstalled if refind is being used?

    TJ

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    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From David W. Hodgins@2:250/1 to All on Thu May 13 19:44:01 2021
    On Thu, 13 May 2021 04:34:29 -0400, William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> wrote:
    Mga7 partitions resided. However when I chose the second, new partition,
    I got booted into the old first partition. When I went to the grub.cfg
    on the new partition ( and changed all the UUID references there from
    the first old partition to the second neww partition, (editing the new grub.cfg by hand) the system now booted to the second new partition when
    I chose it in the menu, instead of the old first partition. The only
    change was to grub.cfg on the second new partition, ( which was NOT the unified menu).

    My guess is that the initrd was not rebuilt in the new install, so the boot loaded the initrd from the new install but that initrd has the hard coded
    uuid of the old install and the old fstab, so that's what it boots.

    Regards, Dave Hodgins

    --
    Change dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org to davidwhodgins@teksavvy.com for
    email replies.

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    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From William Unruh@2:250/1 to All on Thu May 13 21:23:41 2021
    On 2021-05-13, David W. Hodgins <dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
    On Thu, 13 May 2021 04:34:29 -0400, William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> wrote:
    Mga7 partitions resided. However when I chose the second, new partition,
    I got booted into the old first partition. When I went to the grub.cfg
    on the new partition ( and changed all the UUID references there from
    the first old partition to the second neww partition, (editing the new
    grub.cfg by hand) the system now booted to the second new partition when
    I chose it in the menu, instead of the old first partition. The only
    change was to grub.cfg on the second new partition, ( which was NOT the
    unified menu).

    My guess is that the initrd was not rebuilt in the new install, so the boot loaded the initrd from the new install but that initrd has the hard coded uuid of the old install and the old fstab, so that's what it boots.

    Well, no, because if I change the root UUID pointer by hand in the new (partition2) grub.cfg, the boot works properly and boots to the new partition. Ie, I do not change initrd, or anything else. Just the UUID in grub.cfg
    which is not the grub.cfg that the system is supposed to be booting
    from.

    So the question still is "why is the grub boot looking into a grub.cfg
    which NOT the one that produces the boot menu"? Note that there is
    nothing in grub.cfg which does produce the boot menu which points to or references the other grub.cfg


    Regards, Dave Hodgins


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    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From David W. Hodgins@2:250/1 to All on Thu May 13 22:13:29 2021
    On Thu, 13 May 2021 09:36:49 -0400, TJ <TJ@noneofyour.business> wrote:
    However, I seem to remember complaints a couple of years ago regarding
    Mageia grub2 updates messing up refind. Is that still a thing, or is it recommended that grub2 be uninstalled if refind is being used?

    Not one I've encountered. The only thing about having both is that update-grub has to be run manually after each kernel update.

    Regards, Dave Hodgins

    --
    Change dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org to davidwhodgins@teksavvy.com for
    email replies.

    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.21 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Fri May 14 00:26:33 2021
    On Thu, 13 May 2021 14:44:01 -0400, David W. Hodgins wrote:
    On Thu, 13 May 2021 04:34:29 -0400, William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> wrote:
    Mga7 partitions resided. However when I chose the second, new partition,
    I got booted into the old first partition. When I went to the grub.cfg
    on the new partition ( and changed all the UUID references there from
    the first old partition to the second neww partition, (editing the new
    grub.cfg by hand) the system now booted to the second new partition when
    I chose it in the menu, instead of the old first partition. The only
    change was to grub.cfg on the second new partition, ( which was NOT the
    unified menu).

    My guess is that the initrd was not rebuilt in the new install, so the boot loaded the initrd from the new install but that initrd has the hard coded uuid of the old install and the old fstab, so that's what it boots.

    I would have thought that the first mga8 kernel would have picked up
    the mga8 partition, The next mga8 kernel update would then be in sync
    for sure let alone the others.

    $ uidx kernel-desktop-devel updates-0008 64.rpm kernel-desktop-devel-latest-5.10.19-1.mga8.x86_64.rpm 64K 27-Feb-2021 00:49 kernel-desktop-devel-latest-5.10.20-2.mga8.x86_64.rpm 64K 05-Mar-2021 22:06 kernel-desktop-devel-latest-5.10.25-1.mga8.x86_64.rpm 63K 20-Mar-2021 21:16 kernel-desktop-devel-latest-5.10.27-1.mga8.x86_64.rpm 62K 31-Mar-2021 03:31 kernel-desktop-devel-latest-5.10.30-1.mga8.x86_64.rpm 62K 14-Apr-2021 15:21 kernel-desktop-devel-latest-5.10.33-1.mga8.x86_64.rpm 61K 28-Apr-2021 19:20





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    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 01:52:37 2021
    On Thu, 13 May 2021 08:34:29 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:


    Which mode did you set the bios, efi or cms/letacy ?

    Did you do the rsync on Original while Original 7 was running? (yes/no)

    What you say does not make sense to me.

    Tell me which grub menu is to in control, Original 7 or Cloned 7?

    I would like to see the results of
    grep ' / ' /etc/fstab
    from both installs.


    I would like to see the results of
    lsblk -o NAME,TYPE,MOUNTPOINT,LABEL,UUID

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  • From William Unruh@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 05:07:38 2021
    On 2021-05-15, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
    On Thu, 13 May 2021 08:34:29 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:


    Which mode did you set the bios, efi or cms/letacy ?

    EFI

    But with the old partition table.

    Did you do the rsync on Original while Original 7 was running? (yes/no)

    Yes.


    What you say does not make sense to me.

    I am just reporting.


    Tell me which grub menu is to in control, Original 7 or Cloned 7?

    When I had all of the problems, it was
    Original 7. I could not boot into Cloned 7. I run drakboot on the
    Original 7 and it installed stanzas for both the Original 7 and Cloned
    7, as shown by direct inspection of Original 7 /boot/grub2/grub.cfg and
    the boot menu which came up when I tried to reboot into Cloned 7. But it failed, apparently because the Cloned 7 /boot/grub2/grub.cfg still
    pointed to UUID of the partition of Original 7.

    Now after I edited by hand the cloned grub.cfg to have the Cloned 7 grub point to the
    cloned partition UUID, I finally could boot into the cloned partition and update it to Mga8, and Mageia drakboot then installed the boot onto
    the cloned grub.cfg.
    So, now everything works. But it is still mysterious why it behaved the
    way it did.



    I would like to see the results of
    grep ' / ' /etc/fstab

    on original
    /dev/nvme0n1p1 / ext4 noatime,acl 1 1
    on cloned
    /dev/nvme0n1p2 / ext4 noatime,acl 1 1

    As I said, I made sure that I changed the cloned partitions /etc/fstab
    to point to the correct partition.



    from both installs.


    I would like to see the results of
    lsblk -o NAME,TYPE,MOUNTPOINT,LABEL,UUID
    NAME TYPE MOUNTPOINT LABEL UUID

    sr0 rom
    nvme0n1 disk
    ├─nvme0n1p1 part /mga7 e76f54d8-f768-467f-82b1-d486efbd6553
    ├─nvme0n1p2 part / f6eb6173-2ec7-4a23-9531-3e1ba6cc1c8a
    ├─nvme0n1p3 part
    ├─nvme0n1p5 part [SWAP] 15151eca-592a-498d-a348-80af8a151965
    ├─nvme0n1p7 part /boot/EFI B528-DEB3 └─nvme0n1p8 part /local ab3dffdc-b651-4d58-ad5e-ae71f3c0bf52

    So, no, no repeated UUIDs, as I have told you.


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  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 06:13:29 2021
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 04:07:38 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-15, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:

    Did you do the rsync on Original while Original 7 was running? (yes/no)

    Yes.

    Not good. the contents of all the temp/in memory only stuff would
    be copied to the target partition. :(

    Those sub-directories should not have files in them. You will need
    to keep that in mind anytime you are wondering about missing disk space.

    You did not answer my question. I do not want to hear what is happening.
    I want YOU to to indicate which partition YOU want to proved the boot menu.

    Tell me which grub menu is to in control, Original 7 or Cloned 7?

    So, no, no repeated UUIDs, as I have told you.


    Hehe, if this was a court of law, everything up to your reply
    was hearsay and no facts.

    I just making sure of the facts to make sure of what you do have
    and more impotently, how things were mounted after grub.
    There were a few things I needed to rule out.
    I also needed facts so I know what advice/commands I might what
    to give at anytime in the future.

    Thank you for the hard copy. I am assuming you did not trim anything
    from the outputs.

    FYI For any lurkers:
    Unless you keep current with what is mounted in memory only,
    I can recommend not rsync'ing a mounted / to another partition.
    William's lsblk indicates only two OS partitions.
    I that setup the only option is to boot a live iso or a rescue cd.
    to do the rsync operation. rsync arguments I use are --delete -aAHSXxv





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    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From William Unruh@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 06:47:47 2021
    On 2021-05-15, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 04:07:38 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-15, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:

    Did you do the rsync on Original while Original 7 was running? (yes/no)



    Yes.

    Not good. the contents of all the temp/in memory only stuff would
    be copied to the target partition. :(

    Those sub-directories should not have files in them. You will need
    to keep that in mind anytime you are wondering about missing disk space.

    But completely irrelevant to the problem at hand. Also, those temporary directories are erased on a reboot, and I did the rsync immediately
    after booting into Original 7.


    You did not answer my question. I do not want to hear what is happening.
    I want YOU to to indicate which partition YOU want to proved the boot menu.

    ??? Yes, I did answer every one of your questions.

    Tell me which grub menu is to in control, Original 7 or Cloned 7?

    I gave you the evidence that I have that both are in "control"
    The grub.cfg are the original ones, since I made an exact copy of the
    Original 7 partition by cloning it. I then booted into Original
    Partition and run drakboot. That changed Original 7 grub.cfg, but did
    not change Clone 7 grub.cfg. The original 7 had pointers to both the
    Original 7 partition and to the Clone 7 partition and evidenced by the
    UUID to which the stanzas pointed. The Clone7 grub.cfg only pointed to
    the Original 7 partition, since drakboot did not change it at all. The
    boot menu corresponded to the new contents of the Original 7
    partition's grub.cfg (each entry in its grub.cfg correspoinded to a
    line in the boot menu.) However there were both entries in there which
    pointed to the Original 7 partition AND to the Clone partition in
    different stanzas. The menu had two main entries -- to Mageia and to
    Mageia 7 (on partitin nvme0n1p2), and had Advanced menu entries to the
    individual kernels and their recovery brothers on the two partition.

    However If I chose the entry labeled Mageia 7 (on nvme0n1p2) which
    should have booted me into the Clone 7 partition, instead it booted me
    into the Orignal 7 partition. However when I changed the UUIDs in the
    Clone 7 grub.cfg to point to the clone partition ( remember these had
    not been touched by drakeboot and thus still pointed to Orinal 7
    partition) then it did boot into the Clone 7 partition.

    (This is only the 4th time I have explained this.


    So, no, no repeated UUIDs, as I have told you.


    Hehe, if this was a court of law, everything up to your reply
    was hearsay and no facts.

    Uh, no. It was reports of investigations I had carried out. It was not
    hearsay. It was a report of my direct observations. You simply refused
    to accept them.


    I just making sure of the facts to make sure of what you do have
    and more impotently, how things were mounted after grub.
    There were a few things I needed to rule out.
    I also needed facts so I know what advice/commands I might what
    to give at anytime in the future.

    Fine, I have given them to you.



    Thank you for the hard copy. I am assuming you did not trim anything
    from the outputs.

    FYI For any lurkers:
    Unless you keep current with what is mounted in memory only,
    I can recommend not rsync'ing a mounted / to another partition.
    William's lsblk indicates only two OS partitions.
    I that setup the only option is to boot a live iso or a rescue cd.
    to do the rsync operation. rsync arguments I use are --delete -aAHSXxv

    I used --delete -avxAHX

    But it really is irrelevant to this problem. grub.cfg is NOT a hard
    link, does not have non-trivial acls, etc. and is certainly NOT a sparse
    file.






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    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 07:19:20 2021
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 05:47:47 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-15, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 04:07:38 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-15, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:

    Did you do the rsync on Original while Original 7 was running? (yes/no)



    Yes.

    Not good. the contents of all the temp/in memory only stuff would
    be copied to the target partition. :(

    Those sub-directories should not have files in them. You will need
    to keep that in mind anytime you are wondering about missing disk space.

    But completely irrelevant to the problem at hand.

    Very true.

    Also, those temporary
    directories are erased on a reboot, and I did the rsync immediately
    after booting into Original 7.

    And the ones I am talking about are created before you can get
    to a login prompt.

    For example:
    [bittwister@wb ~]$ ls -1A /sys/ | wc -l
    11
    [bittwister@wb ~]$ ls -1A /mga6/sys/ | wc -l
    0

    [bittwister@wb ~]$ ls -1A /dev/ | wc -l
    231
    [bittwister@wb ~]$ ls -1A /mga6/dev/ | wc -l
    0



    You did not answer my question. I do not want to hear what is happening.
    I want YOU to to indicate which partition YOU want to proved the boot menu.

    ??? Yes, I did answer every one of your questions.

    Tell me which grub menu is to in control, Original 7 or Cloned 7?

    Damn it, RTFQ. You are not answering MY question.
    Just tell me which grug.cfg you want to be in control.
    Original 7 or Cloned 7?
    All I am asking is which one you want in control upon boot.

    The answer YOU need to give is Original or Cloned???



    This is only the 4th time I have explained this.
    And yet again I am not asking for that explanation.
    Read the above again.

    But it really is irrelevant to this problem. grub.cfg is NOT a hard
    link, does not have non-trivial acls, etc. and is certainly NOT a sparse file.

    Very true, but if you are copying / I suggest to you need an exact copy
    of /, not just grub.cfg.

    Always keep in mind I am always reply to a post but I am writing
    for any lurkers or anyone who runs across this thread in the future.


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  • From William Unruh@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 10:06:52 2021
    On 2021-05-15, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 05:47:47 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-15, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 04:07:38 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-15, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:

    Did you do the rsync on Original while Original 7 was running? (yes/no) >>


    Yes.

    Not good. the contents of all the temp/in memory only stuff would
    be copied to the target partition. :(

    Those sub-directories should not have files in them. You will need
    to keep that in mind anytime you are wondering about missing disk space.

    But completely irrelevant to the problem at hand.

    Very true.

    Also, those temporary
    directories are erased on a reboot, and I did the rsync immediately
    after booting into Original 7.

    And the ones I am talking about are created before you can get
    to a login prompt.


    rsync -axvAHX
    The -x says stay within the one filesystem. /sys is a separate
    filesystem


    For example:
    [bittwister@wb ~]$ ls -1A /sys/ | wc -l
    11
    [bittwister@wb ~]$ ls -1A /mga6/sys/ | wc -l
    0

    [bittwister@wb ~]$ ls -1A /dev/ | wc -l
    231
    [bittwister@wb ~]$ ls -1A /mga6/dev/ | wc -l
    0

    Yup. Thats what -x does for you.




    You did not answer my question. I do not want to hear what is happening. >>> I want YOU to to indicate which partition YOU want to proved the boot menu. >>
    ??? Yes, I did answer every one of your questions.

    Tell me which grub menu is to in control, Original 7 or Cloned 7?

    Damn it, RTFQ. You are not answering MY question.
    Just tell me which grug.cfg you want to be in control.
    Original 7 or Cloned 7?
    All I am asking is which one you want in control upon boot.

    Eventually Clone 7. But at the time Original 7, because I wanted to get
    into Clone 7.


    The answer YOU need to give is Original or Cloned???

    At the time Original 7 (I thought that was clear) Once I had updated
    clone7 to Mga8, I wanted clone 7 (now 8) to be in charge. But the
    problem was what was happening when Original 7 was supposed to be in
    charge, but Clone 7 was getting involved when it should not be.

    Ie again, all evidence from the format of Original 7 grub.cfg, and the
    boot menu was that Original 7 was in charge, but from the boot behaviour,
    Clone 7 grub.cfg was in charge IF I choose Clone 7 partition to boot from in the menu.



    This is only the 4th time I have explained this.
    And yet again I am not asking for that explanation.
    Read the above again.

    But it really is irrelevant to this problem. grub.cfg is NOT a hard
    link, does not have non-trivial acls, etc. and is certainly NOT a sparse
    file.

    Very true, but if you are copying / I suggest to you need an exact copy
    of /, not just grub.cfg.

    mount /dev/nvme0e1p2 /mga7
    Again rsync -avxAHX / /mga7/
    makes an exact copy of / (from /dev/nvme0n1p1) to nvme0n1p2. Amongst
    which it makes an exact copy of grub.cfg


    Always keep in mind I am always reply to a post but I am writing
    for any lurkers or anyone who runs across this thread in the future.

    Fine, but you need to read what I write, so the lurkers do not have to
    read me giving the same information 4 or 5 tmes.



    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.21 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 13:10:41 2021
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 09:06:52 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:

    All right. What I hear you telling me is you want
    /dev/nvme0n1p1 to be in charge of booting.

    That is what I call "The Production bootloader"

    Lets talk about what you did here

    mount /dev/nvme0e1p2 /mga7
    Again rsync -avxAHX / /mga7/
    makes an exact copy of / (from /dev/nvme0n1p1) to nvme0n1p2.

    That is not true. Click up a root terminal and run
    lsof

    You should see more than a few open files.
    One or more files may have pending writes.
    Sql operations may have ongoing transactions which
    may cause problems in the clone. Some cron job
    might run during the rsync,....

    FACT: you do not have an exact copy and could
    cause weird problems in the clone at some point.

    I noticed you have a /local partition.
    Since you might have to do the mga7 to mga8 more than once
    you might consider writing a cloning script in
    that partition. I suggest using labels to make
    script writing a bit easier and lowers the chance
    of a /dev/nvmeVWXYZ typeo.

    As far as I am concerned, the clone is corrupt
    so the clone contents need removal.

    You are booting efi and therefore might have
    grub problems if too many kernels are installed.
    Solution is to remove all un-needed kernels.
    I would create mount points /mga7 and /mga8 and
    add the /mga8 mount point to /etc/fstab with
    ,noauto argument.

    run grub2-install to set mga7 as the bootloader
    in charge of booting.


    Day one cloning an install for update testing follows:

    Download latest (~717M) systemrescue iso from
    https://www.system-rescue.org/Download/
    burn it to usb thumb drive using instructions at https://www.system-rescue.org/Installing-SystemRescue-on-a-USB-memory-stick/

    Boot it. Slide mouse over icons in bottom task bar
    to find/launch gparted.

    Create/format/label target partition to be the clone.
    In your case I would Label File System it mga8.
    While in gparted, I would use Label File System to set nvme0n1p1 media label as mga7.
    I would use Name Partition to set partition label
    same as partition label. I do/OK each step instead
    of doing several operation at at time.

    Exit gparted.
    Let's do the clone
    mkdir /src
    mkdir /dest
    mount -t auto LABEL=mga7 /src
    mount -t auto LABEL=mga8 /dest
    rsync -aAHSXxv /src/ /dest

    Now modify clone's fstab
    geany /dest/etc/fstab
    change /dev/nvme0n1p1 /
    to /dev/nvme0n1p2 /

    change /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mga8
    to /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mga7

    save/exit geany

    umount /src /dest

    I would run poweroff, remove usb drive
    power on the system and boot the mga7 install and run update-grub to pickup the new install

    boot the new install and verify the correct partition is mounted on /
    run dracut -f
    run update-grub to pickup the new install just
    to have a good grub.cfg on /mga8

    NOTE: Mageia will continue to boot mga8 by default
    until you boot mga7.

    Since mga7's grub.cfg is the "Production bootloader"
    the menu will not boot the mga8 kernel after you
    do the mga7 to mga8 upgrade.

    After the upgrade, boot mga7 and run
    update-grub to pick up the upgraded mga8 kernel.

    Any mga8 kernel updates will require you to
    boot mga7 and run update-grub to get the new
    kernel in the mga7 "Production bootloader" menu.

    I highly recommend that you download/burn the Mageia-8-x86_64.iso so that you can use the
    Rescue mode to re-install the desired bootloader
    in the event of grub menu will not work at all.






    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.21 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 13:23:53 2021
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 07:10:41 -0500, Bit Twister wrote:
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 09:06:52 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:

    All right. What I hear you telling me is you want
    /dev/nvme0n1p1 to be in charge of booting.

    That is what I call "The Production bootloader"

    WARNING: you need to make the system boot using mga7's grub.cfg
    before you start my instructions.

    If you can not boot mga7 (original) and make it use
    /boot/grub2/grub.cfg from /dev/nvme0n1p1 then you will need
    to re-install the boot loader via the Rescue mode from the
    Mageia-8-x86_64.iso


    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.21 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 14:53:35 2021
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 07:23:53 -0500, Bit Twister wrote:
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 07:10:41 -0500, Bit Twister wrote:
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 09:06:52 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:

    All right. What I hear you telling me is you want
    /dev/nvme0n1p1 to be in charge of booting.

    That is what I call "The Production bootloader"

    WARNING: you need to make the system boot using mga7's grub.cfg
    before you start my instructions.

    And to be clear, the Original mga7's grub.cfg better boot Original
    mga7



    If you can not boot mga7 (original) and make it use
    /boot/grub2/grub.cfg from /dev/nvme0n1p1 then you will need
    to re-install the boot loader via the Rescue mode from the Mageia-8-x86_64.iso



    --
    The warranty and liability expired as you read this message.
    If the above breaks your system, it's yours and you keep both pieces.
    Practice safe computing. Backup the file before you change it.
    Do a, man command_here or cat command_here, before using it.

    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.21 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From William Unruh@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 17:35:06 2021
    On 2021-05-15, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 09:06:52 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:

    All right. What I hear you telling me is you want
    /dev/nvme0n1p1 to be in charge of booting.

    That is what I call "The Production bootloader"

    Lets talk about what you did here

    mount /dev/nvme0e1p2 /mga7
    Again rsync -avxAHX / /mga7/
    makes an exact copy of / (from /dev/nvme0n1p1) to nvme0n1p2.

    That is not true. Click up a root terminal and run
    lsof

    Yes. it is true. It is an exact copy of / at a certain time. You are
    correct that there is a danger of open files being in a somewhat werid
    state when you copy them, but that is low probability on a pretty quiet fielsystem. Far far less than the probability of having trouble if you
    do a fresh install.
    And many of them are open for reading (eg all the library files)

    You should see more than a few open files.
    One or more files may have pending writes.
    Sql operations may have ongoing transactions which
    may cause problems in the clone. Some cron job
    might run during the rsync,....

    FACT: you do not have an exact copy and could
    cause weird problems in the clone at some point.

    I noticed you have a /local partition.
    Since you might have to do the mga7 to mga8 more than once
    you might consider writing a cloning script in
    that partition. I suggest using labels to make
    script writing a bit easier and lowers the chance
    of a /dev/nvmeVWXYZ typeo.
    Since I cannot boot from /local, running the script from /local does not alleviate the problem you are pointing out.

    As far as I am concerned, the clone is corrupt
    so the clone contents need removal.
    We differ. But this is also completely irrelevant to the problem I am
    trying to understand. Why is Clone 7 grub.cfg getting involved in a boot
    where the menu is from the grub.cfg on Original 7?



    You are booting efi and therefore might have
    grub problems if too many kernels are installed.
    Solution is to remove all un-needed kernels.
    I would create mount points /mga7 and /mga8 and
    add the /mga8 mount point to /etc/fstab with
    ,noauto argument.

    Not a problem. There were three kernels involved in each of the 7
    partitions.

    run grub2-install to set mga7 as the bootloader
    in charge of booting.

    grub2 is one of the most idiotic user programs around. It has around a
    million completely incomprehensible options, any one of which wrong
    gives nonesense.]


    Day one cloning an install for update testing follows:

    Download latest (~717M) systemrescue iso from
    https://www.system-rescue.org/Download/
    burn it to usb thumb drive using instructions at https://www.system-rescue.org/Installing-SystemRescue-on-a-USB-memory-stick/

    Boot it. Slide mouse over icons in bottom task bar
    to find/launch gparted.

    Create/format/label target partition to be the clone.
    In your case I would Label File System it mga8.
    While in gparted, I would use Label File System to set nvme0n1p1 media label as mga7.
    I would use Name Partition to set partition label
    same as partition label. I do/OK each step instead
    of doing several operation at at time.

    Exit gparted.
    Let's do the clone
    mkdir /src
    mkdir /dest
    mount -t auto LABEL=mga7 /src
    mount -t auto LABEL=mga8 /dest
    rsync -aAHSXxv /src/ /dest

    Now modify clone's fstab
    geany /dest/etc/fstab
    change /dev/nvme0n1p1 /
    to /dev/nvme0n1p2 /

    change /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mga8
    to /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mga7

    save/exit geany

    umount /src /dest

    I would run poweroff, remove usb drive
    power on the system and boot the mga7 install and run update-grub to pickup the new install

    boot the new install and verify the correct partition is mounted on /

    Which was where everything fell apart. I could NOT boot into the new
    install. It consistantly grabbed the wrong (the old install) as the root partition, despite the grub.cfg listing the new one as as the install directory.

    Everything else was fine. Your suggestion to make a copy using
    systemrescue it a good sugestion, but irrelevant to the problem I was
    having.


    run dracut -f
    run update-grub to pickup the new install just
    to have a good grub.cfg on /mga8

    NOTE: Mageia will continue to boot mga8 by default
    until you boot mga7.

    Of course.


    Since mga7's grub.cfg is the "Production bootloader"
    the menu will not boot the mga8 kernel after you
    do the mga7 to mga8 upgrade.

    fine


    After the upgrade, boot mga7 and run
    update-grub to pick up the upgraded mga8 kernel.

    Any mga8 kernel updates will require you to
    boot mga7 and run update-grub to get the new
    kernel in the mga7 "Production bootloader" menu.

    I acually want mga8 to be the production bootloader finally, but yes,
    once I managed to be able to boot into mga8 by manually editing the mga8 grub.cfg, I could run drakboot to make mga8 the production bootloader.



    I highly recommend that you download/burn the Mageia-8-x86_64.iso so that you can use the
    Rescue mode to re-install the desired bootloader
    in the event of grub menu will not work at all.

    Which uses drakboot essentially to install the bootloader. Which is what
    I do anyway.







    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.21 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From Doug Laidlaw@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 18:59:24 2021
    .. On 13/5/21 3:14 am, William Unruh wrote:
    I have been having problems with grub2. I have two installations-- in my
    case of Mageia-- on a two partitions on a disk. Bothe partions gave a
    /boot/grub2/. On say partition 1 I run MCC wich finds the installation
    on partion 2 and and enters it into the grub.cfg on partion 1 withe the
    right parameters (eg that root is /dev/nvme0n1p2 for the installation
    on partition 2.) I would have expected that is what grub would use at
    bootup-- that is certainlly what shows up in the grub menu on bootup.
    However, in partition2 in the /boot/grub2/grub.cfg, it says that the
    root is partition 1. When I chose from the bootup grub menu the
    partition 2 installation, instead of choosing partition 2 as the root,
    it chooses partition 1 as the root. Ie, grub looks into the
    /boot/grub2/grub.cfg for the root location and boots that up instead.

    To put it at its simplest, you don't need two installations of Grub on
    one machine. In the days of LILO, you had only the one bootloader, and
    it chose the OS to run. GRUB and Grub2 both work in exactly the same
    way that LILO used to.


    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.21 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: Aioe.org NNTP Server (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From William Unruh@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 20:34:45 2021
    On 2021-05-15, Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@hotkey.net.au> wrote:
    . On 13/5/21 3:14 am, William Unruh wrote:
    I have been having problems with grub2. I have two installations-- in my >> case of Mageia-- on a two partitions on a disk. Bothe partions gave a
    /boot/grub2/. On say partition 1 I run MCC wich finds the installation
    on partion 2 and and enters it into the grub.cfg on partion 1 withe the
    right parameters (eg that root is /dev/nvme0n1p2 for the installation
    on partition 2.) I would have expected that is what grub would use at
    bootup-- that is certainlly what shows up in the grub menu on bootup.
    However, in partition2 in the /boot/grub2/grub.cfg, it says that the
    root is partition 1. When I chose from the bootup grub menu the
    partition 2 installation, instead of choosing partition 2 as the root,
    it chooses partition 1 as the root. Ie, grub looks into the
    /boot/grub2/grub.cfg for the root location and boots that up instead.

    To put it at its simplest, you don't need two installations of Grub on
    one machine. In the days of LILO, you had only the one bootloader, and
    it chose the OS to run. GRUB and Grub2 both work in exactly the same
    way that LILO used to.

    The question is not if I need them, but if a second version of grub.cfg, one that does NOT determine the boot menu, exits, it seems to affect the
    boot process. There was nothing with lilo that prevented two lilo.conf existing. It was just that only one of them (chosen by your on setup)
    conrols the boot process. The contents of the other do not matter. With
    grub2 the contents of the non-controlling grub.cfg seem to affect the
    boot process, which I agree it should not.



    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.21 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 20:56:32 2021
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 16:35:06 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-15, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 09:06:52 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:

    All right. What I hear you telling me is you want
    /dev/nvme0n1p1 to be in charge of booting.

    That is what I call "The Production bootloader"

    Lets talk about what you did here

    mount /dev/nvme0e1p2 /mga7
    Again rsync -avxAHX / /mga7/
    makes an exact copy of / (from /dev/nvme0n1p1) to nvme0n1p2.

    That is not true. Click up a root terminal and run
    lsof

    Yes. it is true.

    I am beginning to believe you have to have the last word in any argument/discussion.


    It is an exact copy of / at a certain time.

    FRAP, The Point of this process to have a WORKING clone of mga7 in which
    to do an upgrade. To start out with an incontinent/incomplete setup.

    You are
    correct that there is a danger of open files being in a somewhat werid
    state when you copy them, but that is low probability on a pretty quiet fielsystem.

    I suggest to you it is not as auiet as you think. You might want
    to run top and just watch it for two minutes.

    Far far less than the probability of having trouble if you
    do a fresh install.
    And many of them are open for reading (eg all the library files)

    Yes but that is no germane to this argument we are having.

    I am done arguing about this. For any lurkers, I am saying is is
    a bad methodology to rsync an running /. To get a valid cone it
    needs to done when / is not use.


    As far as I am concerned, the clone is corrupt
    so the clone contents need removal.
    We differ. But this is also completely irrelevant to the problem I am
    trying to understand. Why is Clone 7 grub.cfg getting involved in a boot where the menu is from the grub.cfg on Original 7?

    The given process is get the current install to a known/desired state,
    clone it correctly, configure the clone to boot with the new /. and
    get the clone in the boot menu of the Original install.

    It is not to get you to understand why you have an intermixed
    original/clone problem.



    You are booting efi and therefore might have
    grub problems if too many kernels are installed.
    Solution is to remove all un-needed kernels.
    I would create mount points /mga7 and /mga8 and
    add the /mga8 mount point to /etc/fstab with
    ,noauto argument.

    Not a problem. There were three kernels involved in each of the 7
    partitions.

    Which means the efi grub menu will have 6 kernels and gets you
    closer to having the efi grub menu problems.

    Yes /local is not able to boot.
    You would boot the sysrecue usb drive, bring up a terminal and
    mkdir /local
    mount -t auto LABEL=local /local
    /local/clone_mga7

    System would power off, you would remove usb drive and power up.

    Dead simple/foolproof if the /local/clone_mga7 script is written
    correctly.





    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.21 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From William Unruh@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 21:22:20 2021
    On 2021-05-15, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 16:35:06 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-15, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 09:06:52 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:

    All right. What I hear you telling me is you want
    /dev/nvme0n1p1 to be in charge of booting.

    That is what I call "The Production bootloader"

    Lets talk about what you did here

    mount /dev/nvme0e1p2 /mga7
    Again rsync -avxAHX / /mga7/
    makes an exact copy of / (from /dev/nvme0n1p1) to nvme0n1p2.

    That is not true. Click up a root terminal and run
    lsof

    Yes. it is true.

    I am beginning to believe you have to have the last word in any argument/discussion.

    If You tell me something is not true, when it is true, yes. If you tell
    me something that helps me figure out what is going on, then I am more
    than happy to let you have the last word (except for my thanking you.)



    It is an exact copy of / at a certain time.

    FRAP, The Point of this process to have a WORKING clone of mga7 in which
    to do an upgrade. To start out with an incontinent/incomplete setup.

    It was a working copy of Mga7. I upgraded it without problem after I
    fixed the problem a not booting into the copy I wanted to upgrade ( and
    then the problem of the mirror chosen by Mageia being an incompetent
    mirror). I am running Mga8 now without issue. Maybe I am lucky.

    You are
    correct that there is a danger of open files being in a somewhat werid
    state when you copy them, but that is low probability on a pretty quiet
    fielsystem.

    I suggest to you it is not as auiet as you think. You might want
    to run top and just watch it for two minutes.

    Far far less than the probability of having trouble if you
    do a fresh install.
    And many of them are open for reading (eg all the library files)

    Yes but that is no germane to this argument we are having.

    I am done arguing about this. For any lurkers, I am saying is is
    a bad methodology to rsync an running /. To get a valid cone it
    needs to done when / is not use.

    And I have accepted that. Yes, for you lurkers, it is good idea to copy
    a non-active partition. The copy will be a good copy, but it may have
    problems due to open files which are being written to and the rsync
    producing the copy just as the file is in the midst of a write.
    I happen not to be as worried about it, but if you believe in "better
    safe than sorry" do the copy from and to partitions which are not in use
    while the copy is taking place.



    As far as I am concerned, the clone is corrupt
    so the clone contents need removal.
    We differ. But this is also completely irrelevant to the problem I am
    trying to understand. Why is Clone 7 grub.cfg getting involved in a boot
    where the menu is from the grub.cfg on Original 7?

    The given process is get the current install to a known/desired state,
    clone it correctly, configure the clone to boot with the new /. and
    get the clone in the boot menu of the Original install.

    It is not to get you to understand why you have an intermixed
    original/clone problem.

    I agree. That has always been my question and desire. But there is zero evidence that a bad copy was the source of my problems. That I could fix
    the problem by a hand edit of a grub.cfg (a very bad idea in general,
    but this was for diagnosing the problem) indicates that it being a bad
    copy was not the problem.





    You are booting efi and therefore might have
    grub problems if too many kernels are installed.
    Solution is to remove all un-needed kernels.
    I would create mount points /mga7 and /mga8 and
    add the /mga8 mount point to /etc/fstab with
    ,noauto argument.

    Not a problem. There were three kernels involved in each of the 7
    partitions.

    Which means the efi grub menu will have 6 kernels and gets you
    closer to having the efi grub menu problems.

    Yes /local is not able to boot.
    You would boot the sysrecue usb drive, bring up a terminal and
    mkdir /local
    mount -t auto LABEL=local /local
    /local/clone_mga7

    System would power off, you would remove usb drive and power up.

    Dead simple/foolproof if the /local/clone_mga7 script is written
    correctly.

    I disagree. The problem was not with a bad clone, as I have tried to say
    many times, and give evidence for that conclusion. And I still do not
    have an aswer to the question: Why is grub, booted from a menu controlled
    by grub.cfg on Original 7, using the grub.cfg on Clone 7 to determine
    the bootup?






    --- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.21 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
    * Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)
  • From Bit Twister@2:250/1 to All on Sat May 15 23:00:20 2021
    On Sat, 15 May 2021 20:22:20 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh wrote:
    On 2021-05-15, Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> wrote:

    FRAP, The Point of this process to have a WORKING clone of mga7 in which
    to do an upgrade. To start out with an incontinent/incomplete setup.

    It was a working copy of Mga7. I upgraded it without problem after I
    fixed the problem a not booting into the copy I wanted to upgrade ( and
    then the problem of the mirror chosen by Mageia being an incompetent
    mirror).

    Then I can guess that mga8 is now set as the "Production bootloader"

    I would boot the mga7 install and run update-grub just to have a
    valid/known mga7 grub.cfg. Note that I did not say to run mcc.

    I am running Mga8 now without issue. Maybe I am lucky.

    I would say so. I did a MariaDB update once which clobbered the database.
    My update script will now stop the mysqld service, do the update and
    start the mysqld service.



    Yes /local is not able to boot.
    You would boot the sysrecue usb drive, bring up a terminal and
    mkdir /local
    mount -t auto LABEL=local /local
    /local/clone_mga7

    System would power off, you would remove usb drive and power up.

    Dead simple/foolproof if the /local/clone_mga7 script is written
    correctly.

    I disagree.

    Hehehehehehe, I am saying the script would create a valid clone.

    The problem was not with a bad clone, as I have tried to say
    many times,

    Which I am not arguing about.

    My process produces a reliable/repeatable setup which should have
    a known/correct/working grub.cfg. If no mistakes are made and grub.cfg
    has to be modified, then there is a bug that would need to be reported.

    At this point in time I can see I have no further interest in this thread.

    Oh yeah, I assume you have removed the mga7 kernels from the mga8 install
    and will continue to keep installed kernels to around 3 to keep away from
    the too many kernels grub menu problem.


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