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On 2018.07.21 13:46, Mick wrote: |
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> Hi All, |
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> |
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> A slightly off-topic question arising from a different distro, which |
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> may |
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> replicate itself on Gentoo. |
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> |
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> I installed Mint-Linux, in a VM. The host PC MoBo has a legacy BIOS |
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> system. |
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> I used a GPT scheme to create partitions on the virtual disk. The |
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> first 1M on |
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> the virtual disk was left empty by gdisk. I thought GRUB can use |
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> this for its |
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> core image. Note, I did not create a partition in this 1MB empty |
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> space at the |
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> start of the disk. |
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> |
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> While running the Mint Installer I got a warning from its partition |
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> manager |
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> telling me I had not specified a BIOS_grub partition and the |
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> installation may |
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> fail. I ignored the warning and continued with the installation, |
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> which |
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> completed successfully. |
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> |
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> A few weeks later I ran an update which among other packages updated |
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> grub2- |
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> common. An ncurses menu popped up warning me: |
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> |
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> "The GRUB boot loaders was previously installed to a disk that is no |
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> longer |
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> present, or whose unique identifier has changed for some reason". |
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> |
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> It offered to install in /dev/vda, /dev/vda1, or /dev/vda2. I |
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> selected /dev/ |
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> vda which represents the virtual disk. It failed to install in |
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> /dev/vda |
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> because the device did not contain a BIOS_grub partition. |
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> |
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> I tried 'grub-install --force' and --boot-directory options, but in |
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> all cases |
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> it failed to install. At the end I had to create a new 1M partition |
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> with |
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> gdisk and set its type to ef02 (BIOS boot partition), before grub |
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> would |
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> install its core image successfully. |
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> |
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> |
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> QUESTIONS: |
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> |
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> Why/how the initial installation succeeded without an ef02 partition, |
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> but a |
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> grub package update would not proceed without it? Where did the Mint |
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> installer store the grub core image to be able to continue with the |
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> installation? |
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> |
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Are you sure this wasn't fallout from the recent grub problems in the |
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Mint ISO? (https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3620) I thought I got the |
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link to that on this list, but I can't find the relevant message, so |
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I'm not sure where I saw it. However, it seems like the issue was that |
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installing Mint messed up Grub and left the PC unbootable. |
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|
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Jack |
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