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+ <title>senders.io - Blog</title>
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+ <a class='title' href='/'>senders.io</a>
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+ <a href="/resume">Resume</a> <a href="/blog">Blog</a> <a href=
+ "https://github.com/s3nd3r5">Github</a>
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+ <div id='body'>
+ <article>
+ <h2>Manjaro Follow-up - Breaking things!</h2>
+ <p>I wanted to write a quick follow-up covering how I managed to break,
+ and then recover, everything when I went to remove my old debian
+ partition.</p>
+ <h3>Recap</h3>
+ <p>To recap: I installed Manjaro alongside a Debian/sid and Windows 10
+ install. Each of those OSs were on their own SSDs. I went from a 128SSD
+ with Windows installed, to adding a 256 installing Debian. Years later I
+ split the Debian SSD into two parts - installing Manjaro on my new slice.
+ Since my last update I have been playing around with Manjaro and having
+ made my i3 keybindings for Kwin I&#39;ve been pretty happy. But then I
+ started breaking things.</p>
+ <h3>Break stuff</h3>
+ <p>I broke my Manjaro by updating my Debian (apparently). To be honest
+ this is the one part I don&#39;t fully understand <i>why</i> it happened.
+ From what I could find online I didn&#39;t setup my system to handle two
+ separate Linux OS installs. But I was no longer able to boot directly
+ into Manjaro without using the initramfs failover boot option. I only
+ updated my Debian install because I was debugging something on my work
+ install, which both run Debian/sid. (Otherwise I would&#39;ve used my
+ server which runs Debian/Stable). But considering I hadn&#39;t had any
+ need to boot back into Debian I decided to just get rid of it!</p>
+ <h3>GParted, Grub, Gotchas!</h3>
+ <p>I went in knowing I&#39;d have to fix my Grub since I&#39;d be
+ removing Debian, which was the OS that I configured when I first
+ dualbooted the machine, so I assumed they were linked somehow and I would
+ need to reinstall it. The process I followed was:</p>
+ <ul>
+ <li>Create a GParted Live USB</li>
+ <li>Launch GParted reconfigure my partitions</li>
+ <li>Open the terminal in the live USB and reinstall Grub</li>
+ </ul>The 3rd point being a bit of a &quot;rest of the owl&quot; I
+ wasn&#39;t sure what to expect. GParted thankfully warns you
+ &quot;you&#39;re probably going to break stuff see our FAQ&quot; which
+ had a section on reinstalling grub. Reading that the 3rd part became:
+ <ul>
+ <li>mount the linux OS</li>
+ <li>bind the live dirs that are needed: <code class='inline'>/dir /sys
+ /proc</code></li>
+ <li>chroot into the mounted folder</li>
+ <li>run <code class='inline'>grub-install &lt;device&gt;</code></li>
+ </ul>But what I failed to realize (stupidly in hindsight) was the
+ &quot;device&quot; is the Master Boot Record (MBR) device. So in my case
+ Windows or <code class="inline">/dev/sdb</code>. I had assumed it was the
+ device of the linux install so I tried that and got notified my EFI boot
+ directory didn&#39;t look like an EFI partition... and from here it was
+ rabbit holes.
+ <h3>Where is my EFI partition?</h3>
+ <p>I have a fairly old Windows 7 install that has been upgraded to
+ Windows 10 during this whole journey. I&#39;ve been meaning to reinstall
+ it (on a larger drive). But rather than having a few partitions on my
+ drive (typically having a boot partition) I just have the one (and a
+ recovery partition). Its marked as boot, and even mounted to <code class=
+ 'inline'>/boot/efi</code> I found when I was able to boot into Manjaro
+ again. But it made no sense to me. If I needed an EFI partition, why was
+ my efi pointed to the root of my Windows C drive? The rabbit hole
+ consisted of:</p>
+ <ul>
+ <li>Creating a 200MB Fat32 Boot partition</li>
+ <li>Mounting that as my efi-directory</li>
+ <li>Reinstalling grub (again on my Linux device)</li>
+ <li>Eventually getting it to boot straight into Manjaro</li>
+ <li>Modifying my <code class='inline'>/etc/fstab</code> to mount my
+ boot/efi to the new partition (oops)</li>
+ <li>Repeating the above steps 5 times hoping something would be
+ different</li>
+ <li>Eventually finding in a forum that grub should be on the
+ MBR...</li>
+ </ul>
+ <h3>The Fix and Final Steps</h3>
+ <p>The fix was to basically follow the steps above but use the MBR:</p>
+ <ul>
+ <li>Boot GParted Live USB</li>
+ <li>Properly configure any partitions (this case delete the
+ &quot;EFI&quot; partition)</li>
+ <li>Mount the linux device</li>
+ <li>Bind the necessary live dirs to the linux mount</li>
+ <li>Run grub-install to the MBR device</li>
+ <li>Reboot</li>
+ </ul>It was that misunderstanding about the MBR that sent me on a path,
+ but now I at least feel semi-confident in changing around my OSs knowing
+ how to fix Grub. But what bout the Fstab?
+ <p>Like all true movie monsters, my stupidity came back for the final
+ scare. I booted into Manjaro, from Grub! to have it crash on me. It
+ couldn&#39;t mount one of the devices! The deleted partition! I was in
+ the recover shell and was able to modify the Fstab to point back to the
+ correct boot/efi device. (Thankfully I was familiar with Fstab to begin
+ with). But editing two files in a super-low-res terminal is not my idea
+ of fun (okay, maybe it is).</p>
+ <h3>Conclusion</h3>
+ <p>One of my new years resolutions was to learn more about my system. So
+ lighting a fire I had to put out was a great way to get some more
+ knowledge on maintence for grub/dualbooting.</p>
+ </article>
+ <div id='footer'>
+ <i>January 5, 2021</i>
+ </div>
+ </div>
+</body>
+</html>