oldefoxx
July 4th, 2015, 08:33 PM
I customarily put a Ubuntu install on my USB HDD as a fallback if I can't boot from my internal primary drive. This has never been a problem before.
But now all of a sudden, Grub2 has these complaints:
sudo grub-install /dev/sdb1
Installing for i386-pc platform.
grub-install: warning: File system `ext2' doesn't support embedding.
grub-install: error: embedding is not possible, but this is required for cross-disk install.
The USB HDD is formatted ext4, so it's in the same family, but what is this about a cross-disk install? True, I am doing this from /dsv/sda1, but I just want a basic boot capability on the USB HDD, not a case where it sees the root (/) as being on /sdev/sda1 when I boot from /dev/sdb1/ Can I still get this done with Grub2?
And on the topic of Grub2, reports on the internet (not just Ubuntu) have it that some Linux installs are failing to boot up on certain laptops, and someone has compiled two lists:
(1) a Blacklist of laptops it won't work on, and
(2) a Whitelist of laptops where it does work.
The installs all went great. But the machines either would not boot up, froze while booting up, or showed a blank screen after booting up.
My own new laptop worked fine initially when the internal drive was still dormatted with a FAT, ext2, and LVM partitons, but when I wiped all that off and when straight ext4, the reinstall failed to boot. That really got me into a question of "What's going on here?"
Anyway, I dealt with some boot issues on my old laptop while searching out leads on the internet, and it seems like Grub2 takes issue with a lot of things now that weren't issues before, but it's not always going a good job of it. I put together a text file of some of the central complaints and efforts to get around it. Two prominent ones stood out:
(1) Uncomment-out the "#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true" line in /etc/default/grub (make it "GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true"), or
(2) Revert back to Legacy Grub. Several postings tell you how. And apparently apt-get can set a flag to lock this in place so future updates will not change it back.
Some posting responses were from team members that were working on Grub2, and they welcomed suggestions. At the same time, I sense an undercurrent of an effort to make Grub2 and the Ubuntu installer more supportive of HDD restructuring coming out of Seattle, or more compatible with a Windows-dominated world.
I'm not interested in Windows myself, but obviously this is a telling point for some. I just want compatibility within a strictly Linux universe, and I think we are losing it. There were even complaints posted that Ubuntu was separating itself from the other Linux distros in the area of graphics support. Not sure what that is all about, but some were leaving Ubuntu in favor of Mint as a consequence.
Ubuntu is fine for what I do, and has a great support community here, something that other distros may not be able to claim. So I am not making any such move myself.
an
But about Grub2, that is a different matter. I used Boot-Repair-Disk, got the iso file downloaded and used Brassero to burn it to a CD, then booted from the CD. As part of the repair process, it told me that Grub2 had to go, or otherwise my new laptop would be unbootable. That pretty much confirmed what I had learned from other sources, so I followed it's instructions, and now my new laptop boots into Ubuntu just fine.
I guess a part of the problem with Ubuntu is its total reliance on Grub2 as the only default option during the install. That and the fact that if it has total domination of the HDD (choice number 1), It sticks to the FAT, ext2, LVM partitions format that Windows left behind. It does give you a choice there, but urges you to keep the existing format because it will make it easier to resize or shift partitions around in the future. Partition resizing and shifting are not big things in my book, but I went with the idea anyway, which is probably why my first install on the new laptop worked.
It's when I changed my mind and went straight ext4 that things went bad. Grub2 has to be able to support the past (legacy) approach as well as move with the times, and it is currently showing that it can't do that.
And one final question: I'm daling with multiple bootable partitions and a bootable USB HDD, and I designate which one I want grub installed on with a "sudo grub-install /dev/sdX# (where X is a letter for the drive and # is the partition number, like /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, /dev/sda3. /dev/sdb1, and so on). But I follow that with a "sudo update-grub" command. How do I know which of those bootable partitions is being updated? I can't specify one, as I can with grub-install. Shouldn't there be a "update-grub /dev/sdX#" way of doing things? And to go with that, how about just making any partition bootable, but only make one or two of them primary, one an alternative to the primary. Something like this:
sudo grub-install /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb1 PRI=/dev/sda1 SEC=/dev/sdb1
But now all of a sudden, Grub2 has these complaints:
sudo grub-install /dev/sdb1
Installing for i386-pc platform.
grub-install: warning: File system `ext2' doesn't support embedding.
grub-install: error: embedding is not possible, but this is required for cross-disk install.
The USB HDD is formatted ext4, so it's in the same family, but what is this about a cross-disk install? True, I am doing this from /dsv/sda1, but I just want a basic boot capability on the USB HDD, not a case where it sees the root (/) as being on /sdev/sda1 when I boot from /dev/sdb1/ Can I still get this done with Grub2?
And on the topic of Grub2, reports on the internet (not just Ubuntu) have it that some Linux installs are failing to boot up on certain laptops, and someone has compiled two lists:
(1) a Blacklist of laptops it won't work on, and
(2) a Whitelist of laptops where it does work.
The installs all went great. But the machines either would not boot up, froze while booting up, or showed a blank screen after booting up.
My own new laptop worked fine initially when the internal drive was still dormatted with a FAT, ext2, and LVM partitons, but when I wiped all that off and when straight ext4, the reinstall failed to boot. That really got me into a question of "What's going on here?"
Anyway, I dealt with some boot issues on my old laptop while searching out leads on the internet, and it seems like Grub2 takes issue with a lot of things now that weren't issues before, but it's not always going a good job of it. I put together a text file of some of the central complaints and efforts to get around it. Two prominent ones stood out:
(1) Uncomment-out the "#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true" line in /etc/default/grub (make it "GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true"), or
(2) Revert back to Legacy Grub. Several postings tell you how. And apparently apt-get can set a flag to lock this in place so future updates will not change it back.
Some posting responses were from team members that were working on Grub2, and they welcomed suggestions. At the same time, I sense an undercurrent of an effort to make Grub2 and the Ubuntu installer more supportive of HDD restructuring coming out of Seattle, or more compatible with a Windows-dominated world.
I'm not interested in Windows myself, but obviously this is a telling point for some. I just want compatibility within a strictly Linux universe, and I think we are losing it. There were even complaints posted that Ubuntu was separating itself from the other Linux distros in the area of graphics support. Not sure what that is all about, but some were leaving Ubuntu in favor of Mint as a consequence.
Ubuntu is fine for what I do, and has a great support community here, something that other distros may not be able to claim. So I am not making any such move myself.
an
But about Grub2, that is a different matter. I used Boot-Repair-Disk, got the iso file downloaded and used Brassero to burn it to a CD, then booted from the CD. As part of the repair process, it told me that Grub2 had to go, or otherwise my new laptop would be unbootable. That pretty much confirmed what I had learned from other sources, so I followed it's instructions, and now my new laptop boots into Ubuntu just fine.
I guess a part of the problem with Ubuntu is its total reliance on Grub2 as the only default option during the install. That and the fact that if it has total domination of the HDD (choice number 1), It sticks to the FAT, ext2, LVM partitions format that Windows left behind. It does give you a choice there, but urges you to keep the existing format because it will make it easier to resize or shift partitions around in the future. Partition resizing and shifting are not big things in my book, but I went with the idea anyway, which is probably why my first install on the new laptop worked.
It's when I changed my mind and went straight ext4 that things went bad. Grub2 has to be able to support the past (legacy) approach as well as move with the times, and it is currently showing that it can't do that.
And one final question: I'm daling with multiple bootable partitions and a bootable USB HDD, and I designate which one I want grub installed on with a "sudo grub-install /dev/sdX# (where X is a letter for the drive and # is the partition number, like /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, /dev/sda3. /dev/sdb1, and so on). But I follow that with a "sudo update-grub" command. How do I know which of those bootable partitions is being updated? I can't specify one, as I can with grub-install. Shouldn't there be a "update-grub /dev/sdX#" way of doing things? And to go with that, how about just making any partition bootable, but only make one or two of them primary, one an alternative to the primary. Something like this:
sudo grub-install /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb1 PRI=/dev/sda1 SEC=/dev/sdb1