Grub mystery

[claydoh]

you need to recover grub, or rather, create the boot entry in your system's bios efi setup, which you can't do from different running OS.

The grub menu must passes things to the efi boot manager for booting the other Neon. You still need the correct info to be created in an /EFI folder for that other Neon, no matter what you do with grub. uuids don't matter if they are not set up in an /EFI folder.

If we can see the partition layout, we should be able to recreate the needed config for it.,

What is needed is the output of:

$ dh -f

and

$ efibootmgr

[Don B. Cilly]

O. My. Dog.
It is a mystery.
I changed the disk's UUID. With gparted, easy peasy. Look:

/dev/sda2: LABEL="NEON" UUID="879b2424-5b36-49b4-a53b-f51dbde63b30" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="000aef22-02"
...
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="SSD_Neon" UUID="3331581b-e3a3-4976-86a3-bbfc025262be" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="6e09a355-01"

I updated grub:

Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-21-generic
Found Ubuntu 14.04.6 LTS (14.04) on /dev/sda1
Found KDE neon Unstable Edition (18.04) on /dev/sdb1
...
Adding boot menu entry for EFI firmware configuration
done

So, I tell it to boot KDE neon Unstable Edition (18.04) on /dev/sdb1.
It boots the one on sda2.
So, hmmm...,I have grub set to boot the last booted entry. Maybe it got "confused" in some other way. So I reboot with the default Neon. Re-update grub. Re-reboot and tell it please, the sdb1 Neon. It boots the sda2 one.
Annoying annoying.
I'll keep trying :·/

[Don B. Cilly]

Yes.
Clonezilla duplicated the UUID. Not the PARTUUID, though...

/dev/sda1: LABEL="K14" UUID="4d8f0727-3f74-46ca-9b8f-bb6aa04ac6f8" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="000aef22-01"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="NEON" UUID="[B]879b2424-5b36-49b4-a53b-f51dbde63b30[/B]" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="000aef22-02"
/dev/sda3: UUID="d697a1d9-5452-4aba-bb15-0c3103238c71" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="000aef22-03"
/dev/sda4: UUID="8EF0-A702" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="000aef22-04"
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="SSD_Neon" UUID="[B]879b2424-5b36-49b4-a53b-f51dbde63b30[/B]" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="6e09a355-01"
/dev/sdb2: LABEL="SSD2" UUID="5c3af4ec-b016-4eea-accd-23d517b87248" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="6e09a355-02"
/dev/sdb4: UUID="754B-22C4" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="6e09a355-04"
/dev/sdb5: UUID="bbb7dbfc-e767-43c9-8b99-614bbaab2cc5" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="6e09a355-05"
/dev/sdc1: LABEL="K18" UUID="3733e2b4-b159-434d-a4d2-ab4cb0cfa031" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="85e3aaee-01"
/dev/sdc2: LABEL="joey" UUID="13a64598-bbd5-489d-a193-4ebc1cad8072" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="85e3aaee-02"
/dev/sdc3: UUID="239B-2FC4" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="85e3aaee-03"
/dev/sdc4: LABEL="joey-gnome" UUID="66336795-cced-40b0-93aa-0845872860fc" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="85e3aaee-04"
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs"
...
/dev/loop8: TYPE="squashfs"

I only cloned the partition, /dev/sda2 onto /dev/sdb1.
I bothered installing ;·) (from USB) because I tried also cloning the EFI partirion and it didn't (seem to) work, so I thought, hey.

So, can I change the UUID by booting into one of the other distros (or the live) - or, since that disk is not mounted, from this one anyway?
Any command-line magic? Oh, OK, I'll look it up.
Alternatively I can re-clone, it doesn't take that long - "only" some 40G used - but how to avoid the... no, OK, I'll look that up too.
Thanks for the help, you found the culprit, I'll let you know.

BTW, that "joey-gnome" on sdc4 is an old Ubuntu 10.04 I still keep because... oh, I don't know why

[claydoh]

Did you clone the entire drive, or just the partition?

And to be clear, you cloned from the install on the sda drive to the sdb drive, correct?

If you were going to clone sda to sdb, why bother installing to sdb? You are completely overwriting that fresh install when you clone a full disk image to it, so the install is sort of useless and wasted effort here.

Anyway, let's see what your specific partition list is

df -h

My guess is that you cloned the entire disk, which includes the /EFI partition, to the other drive, so you know have two /EFI (which is OK), one on each drive.
The /EFI partition is what your systems uefi firmware needs in order to boot an OS, on top of having the boot item registered with it in nvram.
Both of these, being clones of each other, have the exact same boot info, which is for the first Neon, and there is no boot info for the new one. As uefi actually is the part doing the multiboot, it does not matter where you install grub. You can fix it I think by using an advanced features in the boot-repair program run from a live disk (not found in the usual Ubuntu repos, iirc) or some chroot and command line fu.

Not 100% sure in your case at the moment what will be the correct steps to take in your case.







Now, you can use clones of individual partitions as well as whole disk backups, so you could clone just a /home partition. If you install using a custom setup to create a separate /home (as many of us do), then cloning just that bit won't mess around with your efi stuff, and is NOT redundant or useless on a fresh OS install. You get all your data, but no added software or root-level tweaks. Of course you can also clone/restore "/" if you choose, and keep your existing /EFI, if it is working properly.

[Snowhog]

Yes, it does. Clonzilla makes a 'bare metal' backup. So in this use case, both drives are reported with the same UUID. It would be interesting to see what sudo blkid reports.

[oshunluvr]

Does clonezilla also copy the UUID? Duplicate UUIDs would cause shenanigans like this.

[Don B. Cilly]

[EDIT] Problem (brilliantly) solved. I'll add some tags:
[#]clonezilla[/#], [#]UUID[/#], [#]efi[/#], [#]cloned[/#], [#]partition[/#], [#]boot[/#]
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I have Neon installed on /dev/sda2.
I got a few disk errors about a week ago (none since I fixed them) so, I got a new SSD and installed Neon on that. sdb1.
I then clonezilled the present - updated, customised, and fine-tuned - partition onto the new installation.

I updated grub, and went to boot. Grub found another Neon (when updating), on /dev/sdb1 and all, but.
No mention of the second Neon in the grub menu.
Hmm.
So I grub-installed to sdb, and re-updated. The menu now includes a second Neon.

So, finally... I tell it to boot that, it boots the sda one.
I can tell because my conky monitor says so, and the sdb partition is not mounted. Just the sda one.
So... can't believe it. Reboot, triple check that I am booting from sdb1.
It boots, I'm on sda2, sdb1 not mounted.

Has anyone seen this before?