senders.io - Blog

Manjaro Follow-up - Breaking things!

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.

Recap

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've been pretty happy. But then I - started breaking things.

Break stuff

I broke my Manjaro by updating my Debian (apparently). To be honest - this is the one part I don't fully understand why it happened. - From what I could find online I didn'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've used my - server which runs Debian/Stable). But considering I hadn't had any - need to boot back into Debian I decided to just get rid of it!

GParted, Grub, Gotchas!

I went in knowing I'd have to fix my Grub since I'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:

Create a GParted Live USB
Launch GParted reconfigure my partitions
Open the terminal in the live USB and reinstall Grub

The 3rd point being a bit of a "rest of the owl" I - wasn't sure what to expect. GParted thankfully warns you - "you're probably going to break stuff see our FAQ" which - had a section on reinstalling grub. Reading that the 3rd part became: -

mount the linux OS
bind the live dirs that are needed: /dir /sys - /proc
chroot into the mounted folder
run grub-install <device>

But what I failed to realize (stupidly in hindsight) was the - "device" is the Master Boot Record (MBR) device. So in my case - Windows or /dev/sdb. I had assumed it was the - device of the linux install so I tried that and got notified my EFI boot - directory didn't look like an EFI partition... and from here it was - rabbit holes. -

Where is my EFI partition?

I have a fairly old Windows 7 install that has been upgraded to - Windows 10 during this whole journey. I'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 /boot/efi 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:

Creating a 200MB Fat32 Boot partition
Mounting that as my efi-directory
Reinstalling grub (again on my Linux device)
Eventually getting it to boot straight into Manjaro
Modifying my /etc/fstab to mount my - boot/efi to the new partition (oops)
Repeating the above steps 5 times hoping something would be - different
Eventually finding in a forum that grub should be on the - MBR...

The Fix and Final Steps

The fix was to basically follow the steps above but use the MBR:

Boot GParted Live USB
Properly configure any partitions (this case delete the - "EFI" partition)
Mount the linux device
Bind the necessary live dirs to the linux mount
Run grub-install to the MBR device
Reboot

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? -

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'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).

Conclusion

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.