[SOLVED] Debian's GRUB doesn't get along with other distro's

[Isakku]

Some weeks ago I just installed Debian in my older Pentium D desktop PC. It's an old 2GB machine, I was running Linux mint , but I decided to wipe everything and install Arch linux.
So, I already had Arch running, but I also wanted to have Debian installed. After installing it, I could no longer boot my Arch linux because it crashed with a "kernel panic" message.
So, I thought whatever could be wrong wouldn't be wrong if I installed something else. So I installed Manjaro, and everything was fine for a few days. Except today. Today I updated Debian and while it works fine, the update also updated Debian's GRUB and ruined Manjaro. Now Manjaro doesn't boot giving a "kernel panic" message. How do I know Debian updated GRUB? Easy. I had set a GRUB custom theme from Manjaro with a different background and all, now the theme is Debian's GRUB theme!

Here I provide a screenshot with the exact kernel panic message:


https://photos.app.goo.gl/zDBNquDaH33xCBfp9

Really it broke my other distro twice now.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I had set a GRUB custom theme from Manjaro with a different background and all, now the theme is Debian's GRUB theme!

^ This would only happen if `grub-install` was run from Debian, no change in any file on the Debian system would cause GRUB to change if it had been installed from Manjaro and no update in Debian would cause GRUB to be installed to the hard drive (AFAIK), and even if there was there would be a dialogue asking you where to install the bootloader — did you see such a dialogue?

You can install and run the boot-info script if you want, that may clarify things.

https://packages.debian.org/stretch/boot-info-script

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/bootinfoscript/

[Isakku]

I had set a GRUB custom theme from Manjaro with a different background and all, now the theme is Debian's GRUB theme!

^ This would only happen if `grub-install` was run from Debian, no change in any file on the Debian system would cause GRUB to change if it had been installed from Manjaro and no update in Debian would cause GRUB to be installed to the hard drive (AFAIK), and even if there was there would be a dialogue asking you where to install the bootloader — did you see such a dialogue?

You can install and run the boot-info script if you want, that may clarify things.

https://packages.debian.org/stretch/boot-info-script

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/bootinfoscript/

Well, of course grub-install had to run when I installed Debian the first time.
Well, digging the web I found this

https://askubuntu.com/questions/705063/ ... l-the-oses

I would like to know how to prevent the installer from running grub-install (even the grub update command seems to do the same, since this happened after updating Debian)
If Debian didn't have another grub installed this would simply not happen.
Something simmilar happened to me when I tried installing Manjaro alongside Linux Mint in my Laptop.

https://forum.manjaro.org/t/some-crazy- ... etup/30552

Every time I installed or updated something system related in one of the distros, the distro's GRUB was also automatically updated and that caused strange inconsistencies. In the end I had to start from scratch and I ended up installing Mint KDE alongside Mint Cinnamon. Since those are basically the same distro with a different desktop environment, there was no GRUB conflict (seems it's exaclty the same GRUB unlike when you mix completely different distros such as Manjaro and Mint)
Being exactly the same GRUB perhaps made it simply overwrite when I installed it instead of making another instance in the boot partition (EFI laptop).
But my current problem happens in a non UEFI system. it's older and I thought all the mess was caused by the UEFI boot system complexity messing up when you had different GRUBs. Seems I was wrong because now I do have a similar problem (two GRUBs) in a non UEFI system. GRUB doesn't get overrided nor overwritten. Except that instead of being shown at boot (UEFI system showed the two GRUBs) now it lies somewhere, dormant, and when I update a distro and that update updates any GRUB config in a certain way, sometimes it breaks the other distro! I was able to run some changes (such as theming it) without breaking anything, maybe because I was making the changes in the GRUB that had become the "default" because it was installed later (I installed Manjaro some time after installing Debian) But the Debian update appears to have updated Debian's GRUB, and now it became the "default" GRUB, breaking Manjaro's booting! Manjaro is still listed, but it doesn't boot, booting it crashes with that Kernel panic message I posted before.

[bw123]

Are you sharing a /boot partition with several distros or something? On debian stretch grub-pc stores it's config in /boot/grub/grub.cfg and when you use grub-install it points to this. So if you have some other grub from another distro installed in the mbr, running update-grub on debian shouldn't change a thing, unless you are trying to share /boot, which is a bad idea for a lot of reasons.

I have two debian installs on this machine, but only one has grub installed to avoid confusion, you can just purge it if you don't want it. Be sure and install the ver from the distro you want first!! and you will have to make sure it either probes for debian or has a 40-custom file like debian does to add it to the boot menu.

I don't know anything about other distros, do you think it's possible to document what you're saying with something like bootinfoscript or something? Might help if it is a bug. I think the installer will let you skip grub in expert mode? or maybe you could point it to some nonsense device or /dev/null and when it fails tell installer to continue anyway.

[milomak]

i don't think any distro forces you to run grub during the installation process

[stevepusser]

The GRUB update in Stretch did ask a few questions it, including about whether and where the user wanted to install it--why is the OP skipping over what they did during the upgrade? Surely they told it to install GRUB and this is the root of their problem.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I would like to know how to prevent the installer from running grub-install

The trick is to leave all of the checkboxes for all of the partitions unchecked, then you will see the confirmation screen posted by @milomak.

It is a little confusing, I agree, but simple enough once you know about it.

In respect of auto-updated GRUB configurations, I prefer to run a custom grub.cfg and install GRUB from the "live" environment[1] without having the GRUB package installed at all, this prevents the configuration from being updated after kernel upgrades and suchlike.

[Isakku]

Well, first of all thanks a lot to all of you guys for your interest and your replies.

Are you sharing a /boot partition with several distros or something?

Huh? Hmm no, that can't be... unless... maybe I selected the whole disk instead of a partition when I was asked where I wanted /boot to be? Maybe I made that mistake? Perhaps. Maybe the whole disk was the default place for /boot in both Manjaro and Debian installers, and I had simply left it where it was. Maybe I'm wrong. I thought each distro's partition was it's own /boot.

i don't think any distro forces you to run grub during the installation process

THIS is what I was looking for! I wasn't sure if Debian installer actually had such an option or not. I was messing with Mint 19's installer and I couldn't get anything like that. So, currently Linux Mint does force you to install it's own GRUB. I'm making a thread at their forums.
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic. ... 6&t=283455

The trick is to leave all of the checkboxes for all of the partitions unchecked, then you will see the confirmation screen posted by @milomak.

So, that's the trick... I see, I will try it later.

The GRUB update in Stretch did ask a few questions it, including about whether and where the user wanted to install it--why is the OP skipping over what they did during the upgrade? Surely they told it to install GRUB and this is the root of their problem.

Of course I had to install GRUB when I installed Debian the first time on this machine, it was the only way it could boot. (how could I boot it otheriwse? Debian was alone the only O.S. at a certain point in that machine. About upgrading, I don't know. All I know is that I saw that there was an update for Debian, so I booted my machine, saw the notification in the panel, opened the Discover software and clicked "update". Internet is quite slow in my country. it took it's time to update. When it finished I rebooted, Debian appeared to be fine, but it was strange to see that the custom GRUB theme I had installed from Manjaro was gone and Debian's GRUB theme was back, so I rebooted from Debian and tried to boot into Manjaro just to get a Kernel Panic and nothing else. Later I found out that the Manjaro's recovery mode is still capable of booting Manjaro in that machine. Maybe if I update Manjaro's Grub the way I usually do when I change a theme

Code: Select all

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg


But I will still need to remove one of the GRUBs if I don't want to reinstall everything from scratch.

I have two debian installs on this machine, but only one has grub installed to avoid confusion, you can just purge it if you don't want it. Be sure and install the ver from the distro you want first!! and you will have to make sure it either probes for debian or has a 40-custom file like debian does to add it to the boot menu.

If this is possible it would be great. How do I purge one of the GRUBs leaving the other one intact?

Ok. I have installed Boot-info-script via synaptics package manager. But... how do you turn this on?

Code: Select all

# sudo boot-info-script


or

Code: Select all

# sudo boot_info_script


both say
command not found!
hmm... maybe

Code: Select all

# sudo apt-get install boot-info-script


Ah... nope. It says the latest version is already installed... what is going on here?

[NorthEast]

From the tarball info, it's: bootinfoscript

Run the script as sudoer:
sudo ./bootinfoscript <outputfile>

or if your operating system does not use sudo:

su -
./bootinfoscript <outputfile>

Perhaps check that spelling.

[Isakku]

From the tarball info, it's: bootinfoscript

Run the script as sudoer:
sudo ./bootinfoscript <outputfile>

or if your operating system does not use sudo:

su -
./bootinfoscript <outputfile>

Perhaps check that spelling.

Well, it's quite weird, I had even copied and pasted.
Tutorials put it as simply running

Code: Select all

sudo boot_info_script


https://www.hecticgeek.com/2012/07/trou ... fo_script/

but what you counsel me to do doesn't work either.

Code: Select all

 sudo ./bootinfoscript <outputfile>


gives a command not found response.
Quite strange.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Code: Select all

/usr/sbin/bootinfoscript

https://packages.debian.org/stretch/all ... t/filelist

[NorthEast]

but what you counsel me to do doesn't work either.

Code: Select all
sudo ./bootinfoscript <outputfile>
gives a command not found response.

Sorry for not being so clear ... I only meant to draw attention to the name of the program and its spelling: bootinfoscript.
Beyond that, I hoped you could find it with that corrected name on your filesystem ... Head_on_a_Stick nailed it though I think.

[p.H]

Here I provide a screenshot with the exact kernel panic message

The message indicates that the kernel cannot find the root device. This may mean that :
- the kernel does not use an initrd/initramfs and the root= parameter was not passed properly by GRUB to the kernel command line ; check in grub.cfg.
- the kernel is supposed to use an initrd/initramfs but none was specified in grub.cfg or GRUB failed to load it.

The latter is more likely to happen on modern systems which mostly use a modular kernel and an initramfs.
Either may be caused by failure of Debian grub-mkconfig/os-prober to properly parse the contents of Arch /boot and /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

Without seeing the contents of Arch's /boot and grub.cfg, I cannot be more precise.

To work around this, you can manually add a menu entry in Debian's grub.cfg to chainload Arch's GRUB from Debian's GRUB.

If you don't want update-grub or grub-install to be run on kernel or GRUB package updates, remove the grub-pc package but leave the other grub-* packages.

The script installed by boot-info-script is bootinfoscript. It is in the system path, you do not have to prepend it with ./ or anything.

[Isakku]

Code: Select all

/usr/sbin/bootinfoscript

https://packages.debian.org/stretch/all ... t/filelist

Thank you. So, you have to search for the program at that location. Quite a strange, CLI programs usually install themselves and you are done, all you have to do is type man followed by the command.

Sorry for not being so clear ... ... Head_on_a_Stick nailed it though I think.

Yes, indeed.

So... this is what I ended up doing:

Code: Select all

cd /usr/sbin/
sudo ./bootinfoscript

Boot Info Script 0.61      [1 April 2012]

Identifying MBRs...
Computing Partition Table of /dev/sda...
Searching sda1 for information...
Searching sda2 for information...                                                                                                                                                             
Searching sda3 for information...                                                                                                                                                             
Searching sda5 for information...                                                                                                                                                             
Searching sda6 for information...                                                                                                                                                             
                                                                                                                                                                                               
Finished. The results are in the file "RESULTS.txt"                                                                                                                                           
located in "/root/".


so then I used the initramfs fallback mode to boot into Manjaro

and then I ran

Code: Select all

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
grub-mkconfig: Debe ejecutarse como root
# sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
[sudo] password for josue:
Generando un fichero de configuración de grub...
Encontrado tema: /boot/grub/themes/starfield/theme.txt
Encontrada imagen de linux: /boot/vmlinuz-4.14-x86_64
Encontrada imagen de memoria inicial: /boot/intel-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-4.14-x86_64.img
Found initrd fallback image: /boot/initramfs-4.14-x86_64-fallback.img
Encontrado Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) en /dev/sda5
Encontrado Arch Linux en /dev/sda6
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+/memtest.bin
hecho


And then rebooted...
Just to find that the problem is far from gone, not even mitigated.
But now it seems that grub-mkconfig won't make Manjaro's GRUB the default GRUB anymore!
I will have to do something else. I want to wipe Debian's GRUB and keep Manjaro's because it is in the 1st partition that's all.

I have tried to upload the results file as an attachment, but it was impossible (forums system says .txt extension is not accepted. tried to upload without extension and forum system says file is not accepted.) I ended up uploading it to 4shared.

https://www.4shared.com/office/znh07KdU ... SULTS.html

The message indicates that the kernel cannot find the root device. This may mean that :
- the kernel does not use an initrd/initramfs and the root= parameter was not passed properly by GRUB to the kernel command line ; check in grub.cfg.
- the kernel is supposed to use an initrd/initramfs but none was specified in grub.cfg or GRUB failed to load it.

The latter is more likely to happen on modern systems which mostly use a modular kernel and an initramfs.
Either may be caused by failure of Debian grub-mkconfig/os-prober to properly parse the contents of Arch /boot and /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

Without seeing the contents of Arch's /boot and grub.cfg, I cannot be more precise.

To work around this, you can manually add a menu entry in Debian's grub.cfg to chainload Arch's GRUB from Debian's GRUB.

If you don't want update-grub or grub-install to be run on kernel or GRUB package updates, remove the grub-pc package but leave the other grub-* packages.

The script installed by boot-info-script is bootinfoscript. It is in the system path, you do not have to prepend it with ./ or anything.

I must say that since I had wiped the whole machine, My Arch's installment was quite recent, so without doubtig I wiped it and reinstalled it without GRUB, because that's what a tutorial recommended. I relied on Debian's GRUB to boot it. Some time later I installed Manjaro, and it came with it's own GRUB, I used it to boot everything. Everything seemed fine, but it broke when I decided to update Debian (Manjaro Goes Kernel panic, Arch boots fine). Since I had had a previous experience where Mint and Manjaro's Grub didn't get along with each other, I suspected that could be the cause.

[p.H]

I have tried to upload the results file as an attachment, but it was impossible (forums system says .txt extension is not accepted. tried to upload without extension and forum system says file is not accepted.) I ended up uploading it to 4shared.

Couldn't you find an even worse location ? I was unable to download the file. Anything I did just displayed junk ads.
You don't have to upload the file as an attachment. You can post its contents in a code block.

So, you have to search for the program at that location.

No, you don't. /usr/sbin is in root's default $PATH.

CLI programs usually install themselves and you are done, all you have to do is type man followed by the command.

boot-info-script does just this. The trick is that the package name is boot-info-script and the command name is bootinfoscript.

Just to find that the problem is far from gone, not even mitigated.

Of course not. Why would it ? Regenerating Manjaro's grub.cfg has no direct effect on Debian's GRUB. If you want to wipe Debian's GRUB from the MBR and replace it with Manjaro's, you must use grub-install, not grub-mkconfig.