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<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'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't fully understand <i>why</i> 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!</p>
<h3>GParted, Grub, Gotchas!</h3>
<p>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:</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 "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:
<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 <device></code></li>
</ul>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 <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'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'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
"EFI" 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'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>
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<i>January 5, 2021</i>
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