On 02/01/2014 01:57 AM, Andrey Borzenkov wrote:

В Fri, 31 Jan 2014 19:06:13 -0500 Anton Aylward пишет:

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Foolish me!

I've been running 12.3 quite happily. I bought a new drive and decided to install 13.1 on it. That went OK. But *sigh* the need for more config tweeks!

The real problem s that I _thought_ I was installing the boot on the mbr of the new drive. Apparently not. My mistake!

I was hoping to use the BIOS device boot selection to choose whch disk ... You know the rest.

I do not.

*sigh* BIOS can set order to boot from, which device first, so you can set it to boot from the CD *if* there is one in preference to the hard drive. There's also the option "Press F11" to choose which device to boot from" that presents a menu of all connected devices and you can choose explicitly, so over-riding the defaults. Doesn't your BIOS have a similar capability?

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I'm not hoping that there's some way I can correct this,

Correct *what*? I still do not understand what the problem is. Did you install booltoader onto the "wrong" drive?

That's how it looks The bootloader for the 13.1 is on the drive that has the 12.3 and I can't boot the 12.3. Yes, I've tried YAST/bootloader to put it on the drive with the 13.1 but that still leaves me with an inaccessble 12.3. And I'm not entirely sure about the drive with the 13.1......

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have the mbr of sda boot from the /boot on /sda and the mbr on sdb boot from the /boot on sdb.

To literally do what you describe you need to install generic MBR on both /dev/sda and /dev/sdb,

Yes I understand that.

mark partitions with /boot as active,

Yes I understand that

install bootloaders into /boot partitions boot block and somehow select your boot drive in BIOS every time you want to boot from another drive.

That's what I thought the install process on the new drive was doing. It appears it didn't.

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I thought grub2 was supposed to scan for these things?

Which things? It is hard to guess what you expect here.

I thought that grub2 used something like os-prober to find all the available operating system images ... -- STATUS QUO is Latin for "the mess we're in." -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Le 01/02/2014 14:37, Carlos E. R. a écrit :

On 2014-02-01 14:16, Anton Aylward wrote:

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Doesn't your BIOS have a similar capability?

Yes, but your wording was unclear. The "You know the rest" confused me.

and don't forget we have more and more efi bioses, that give access not only to the disks but to the partitions for booting jdd -- http://www.dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

В Sat, 01 Feb 2014 08:16:26 -0500 Anton Aylward пишет:

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I'm not hoping that there's some way I can correct this,

Correct *what*? I still do not understand what the problem is. Did you install booltoader onto the "wrong" drive?

That's how it looks The bootloader for the 13.1 is on the drive that has the 12.3 and I can't boot the 12.3.

Can you boot 13.1? There are unfortunately mostly emotions and very little factual information in your message.

Yes, I've tried YAST/bootloader to put it on the drive with the 13.1 but that still leaves me with an inaccessble 12.3.

You tried it when? When you installed 13.1? After installation when you tried to repair?

And I'm not entirely sure about the drive with the 13.1......

Nor do I understand what you want to say here.

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have the mbr of sda boot from the /boot on /sda and the mbr on sdb boot from the /boot on sdb.

To literally do what you describe you need to install generic MBR on both /dev/sda and /dev/sdb,

Yes I understand that.

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mark partitions with /boot as active,

Yes I understand that

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install bootloaders into /boot partitions boot block and somehow select your boot drive in BIOS every time you want to boot from another drive.

That's what I thought the install process on the new drive was doing. It appears it didn't.

It does what it is told. If you go to bootloader installation details, you will see various checkmarks (MBR, /boot, root etc). Yast will install bootloader boot code in every checked location. The one thing that may be confusing - MBR means "MBR of the very first drive" and you need to double check drive order and which drive is considered the first. I always prefer to uncheck everything and explicitly select disk where I want bootloader to be installed (on the same screen). Oh, and of course instead of using generic MBR + bootloader in partition you may just as well install bootloader into MBR directly. As long as no Windows is involved it is simpler and more robust.

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I thought grub2 was supposed to scan for these things?

Which things? It is hard to guess what you expect here.

I thought that grub2 used something like os-prober to find all the available operating system images ...

it does but it is disabled by default in 13.1, you need to go into yast bootloader settings and enable it explicitly. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 02/01/2014 08:54 AM, Andrey Borzenkov wrote:

В Sat, 01 Feb 2014 08:16:26 -0500 Anton Aylward пишет:

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I'm not hoping that there's some way I can correct this,

Correct *what*? I still do not understand what the problem is. Did you install booltoader onto the "wrong" drive?

That's how it looks The bootloader for the 13.1 is on the drive that has the 12.3 and I can't boot the 12.3.

Can you boot 13.1? There are unfortunately mostly emotions and very little factual information in your message.

Yes I'm emotional -its called FRUSTRATION. I thought it was clear, implicit, that could boot into 13.1 That I can ONLY boot nto 13.1

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Yes, I've tried YAST/bootloader to put it on the drive with the 13.1 but that still leaves me with an inaccessble 12.3.

It does what it is told. If you go to bootloader installation details, you will see various checkmarks (MBR, /boot, root etc). Yast will install bootloader boot code in every checked location.

No confusion about that.

The one thing that may be confusing - MBR means "MBR of the very first drive" and you need to double check drive order and which drive is considered the first. I always prefer to uncheck everything and explicitly select disk where I want bootloader to be installed (on the same screen).

"uncheck everything"? "First"? Are you saying that I should 'delete' from that list?

Oh, and of course instead of using generic MBR + bootloader in partition you may just as well install bootloader into MBR directly. As long as no Windows is involved it is simpler and more robust.

Please elucidate.

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I thought grub2 was supposed to scan for these things?

Which things? It is hard to guess what you expect here.

I thought that grub2 used something like os-prober to find all the available operating system images ...

it does but it is disabled by default in 13.1, you need to go into yast bootloader settings and enable it explicitly.

Thank you. -- Not big on food that takes less than 15 seconds to cook and comes wrapped in paper brighter than the packaging for Barbie dolls. -- Found on GoodCompany.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

В Sat, 01 Feb 2014 09:23:38 -0500 Anton Aylward пишет:

On 02/01/2014 08:54 AM, Andrey Borzenkov wrote:

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>>I thought grub2 was supposed to scan for these things? >>

Which things? It is hard to guess what you expect here.

I thought that grub2 used something like os-prober to find all the available operating system images ...

it does but it is disabled by default in 13.1, you need to go into yast bootloader settings and enable it explicitly.

I've had that set all the way though this and it does not scan.

Even when the bootloader is mistakenly on the 'old' drive it does not scan for other OS on that drive.

I'm forced to conclude that this is not a 'dynamic' function, that it only does the scan at the time of the grub2/mbr installation and not at run-time.

No, it is not run-time, it is done every time grub2 configuration is re-created. But actually manually chainloading your old grub from grub2 is simple. Please run https://github.com/arvidjaar/bootinfoscript/raw/master/bootinfoscript and post results here. Also run os-prober (literal command) - does it print anything? After you run os-prober, take las half an hour of messages from /var/log/messages and post here as well. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

В Sat, 01 Feb 2014 10:25:12 -0500 Anton Aylward пишет:

On 02/01/2014 09:44 AM, Andrey Borzenkov wrote:

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Also run os-prober (literal command) - does it print anything? After you run os-prober, take las half an hour of messages from /var/log/messages and post here as well.

# uname -a Linux BigBoy 3.11.6-4-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Oct 30 18:04:56 UTC 2013 (e6d4a27) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux # os-prober #

That's not what I asked you.

That is 'os-prober' reruns nothing. Since the old drive is also mounted under /mnt I wonder about that.

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В Sat, 01 Feb 2014 10:38:18 -0500 Anton Aylward пишет:

On 02/01/2014 10:31 AM, Andrey Borzenkov wrote:

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В Sat, 01 Feb 2014 10:25:12 -0500 Anton Aylward пишет:

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On 02/01/2014 09:44 AM, Andrey Borzenkov wrote:

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Also run os-prober (literal command) - does it print anything? After you run os-prober, take las half an hour of messages from /var/log/messages and post here as well.

# uname -a Linux BigBoy 3.11.6-4-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Oct 30 18:04:56 UTC 2013 (e6d4a27) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux # os-prober #

That's not what I asked you.

I'm reluctant to post about 2,000 lines of of os-prober unsuccessfully checking all the 20+ 'partitions' in my LVM for a variety of combinations of things that it doesn't find.

If you want me to post results here, or to a dropbox, please be more specific.

I do not care where as long as they are available.

What am I supposed to be looking for?

Probably nothing. It is much easier to look at the program log than ask thousand questions without getting clear answer. In any case - you can always boot your previous OS from grub2 command line. On grub2 menu press 'c', then use linux16 (hdX,Y)/vmlinuz-xxx kernel options you normally use initrd16 (hdX,Y)/initrd-xxx boot You can write down kernel options from menu.lst of "lost" system that you can access. To find out drive number you can simply look at directory content ls (hd0,1) ls (hd1,1) ... replace partition number with *your* /boot partition number. (If you had provided bootinfoscript results all this information would be easily available). grub2 counts partitions like Linux starting from 1, not from 0 as grub legacy. So partition numbers are the same as in Linux. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 02/01/2014 08:54 AM, Andrey Borzenkov wrote:

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That's what I thought the install process on the new drive was doing. It appears it didn't.

It does what it is told. If you go to bootloader installation details, you will see various checkmarks (MBR, /boot, root etc). Yast will install bootloader boot code in every checked location. The one thing that may be confusing - MBR means "MBR of the very first drive" and you need to double check drive order and which drive is considered the first. I always prefer to uncheck everything and explicitly select disk where I want bootloader to be installed (on the same screen).

I went back to this and checked and re-checked. I even removed the 'old' drive from the list so that the new drive was not only 'first' but was the ONLY one listed. I also made sure that the new drive was the one on the main screen. I'm not sure about your 'uncheck everything'. If you do that where does the bootloader go? -- Expecting life to treat your fairly because you are a good person is like expecting an angry bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian. -- Shari R Barr -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 02/01/2014 03:14 AM, jdd wrote:

Le 01/02/2014 01:06, Anton Aylward a écrit :

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I was hoping to use the BIOS device boot selection to choose whch disk ... You know the rest.

not necessary, you should boot without changing anything

Why do you say that? Are you thinking that booting should see that there are /boot on each drive so the grub2 should see that and offer both in the menu? That's the impression I was under when I started but it isn't working like that. -- "Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems. Normal people don't understand this concept; they believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet." -- S. Adams -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 El 2014-02-01 a las 14:40 +0100, jdd escribió:

it's rarely a good idea to ask to have grub on the mbr, because in fact there is only one mbr, the one on the first disk... I'm not sure of the result for the second disk.

No, every disk has one MBR. Even usb sticks. Whether installing grub in any of them works (boots)... that's different. - -- Cheers Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" (Minas Tirith)) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iF4EAREIAAYFAlLy1HkACgkQja8UbcUWM1zuOQD9HVbcooR2zw93+VJ0BxMy2Cwe egZNzMaXKVR/Bl4lhuIA/3u6qQotywv2zX2Isgj/Q8qK0rdUxd1NtZaNI9g/csZT =mV1z -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 2014-02-06 01:28, Greg Freemyer wrote:

On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Carlos E. R. <> wrote:

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No, every disk has one MBR. Even usb sticks. Whether installing grub in any of them works (boots)... that's different.

99% true, but linux supports drives with no partition table. ie. mkfs /dev/sdb should work as far as I know. I admit to not having tried in 10+ years. I like having a partition table.

Oh, yes, you are right. I do not use it because desktop automounts are not happy about it. I think I have seen some usb sticks made that way :-? Ah, and of course, disks can be GPT, but in that case they contain a "protective MBR". Always, I think. - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" (Minas Tirith)) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iF4EAREIAAYFAlLy2iIACgkQja8UbcUWM1y66QD/VgEoFw3QyrcMMwu6Gp/Ine+D b32gwBHPfo7NeBssS8YA+gJEv1dC4xupL+wToWZShoS1J+8z+Cl0ua3mh+uKoBJV =yrnb -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 2014-02-06 08:28, jdd wrote:

Le 06/02/2014 01:16, Carlos E. R. a écrit :

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No, every disk has one MBR. Even usb sticks. Whether installing grub in any of them works (boots)... that's different.

not exactly. As it's name implies, there can be only one *master* boot record. I guess the multiple disk systems was not imagined when the mbr was created :-)

The "master" word in there doesn't mean that. Every partition on the disk has just one boot sector. Mandatory. If you have 20 partitions on disk (primary and logical) you get 20 boot sectors. But there is one master boot record, outside all partitions, on the first sector of the disk. On the initial BIOS definition, the bios would load and run the code on that first sector of the dis, the MBR. Then the MBR loads and runs the boot sector on some other partition, the (primary) one marked as bootable). It is called "master" because of that. And every disk has one. (unless there is no partition table, of course, but that's a deviation from the standard :-) ) Of course, the code in the MBR may not exist. On some computers, you can choose from BIOS which disk to boot. In that case, you choose which MBR to load. - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" (Minas Tirith)) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iF4EAREIAAYFAlLzfDcACgkQja8UbcUWM1xcPwD/b73kPE4al0aAYNiP7YB3Na7x OaUdR6eqapD6D+isM+AA/jzgNWo4FpM8ubqrxqvG3AYTQzR/lkUIqyf0SAAQf1RF =g1yF -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org