[SOLVED] Cloned SSD to NVME - Now UUID Problem

[CharlieDaves]

Hello Kubuntu people,
I needed to clone my SSD to an NVME, as I needed to free up the SATA Port on my Motherboard.
Now I used Rescuezilla, and after the "clone" process, I attempted to change the UUID via gparted. The "EFI/Boot" Partition did so no problem.
I was Unable to (failed some error over permissions I think) changed the UUID on / (root) or /home ... Partitions.
I Attempted to re-boot off of the NVME only, but after some fails to boot or taking 10minutes to boot, I finally figured out that it had an error of "/home drive not mounted" during the boot process

Problem. Even attempting via Rescuezilla, or usb boot Kubuntu OS, I am still unable to change the UUID

Tried
-->Change UUID = Failed
Just Clone & boot =
--> NVME by itself = Failed
--> NVME + SSD = Will boot, but both share the same UUID and I cannot change either
USB Boot =
--> Rescuezilla unable to change UUID.
--> Rescuezilla & KubuntuOS. Unable to figure out why the NVME clone wont boot /Home (mounted wrong??)

--> Followed this guide but failed. Might try it again under a KubuntuOS.USB boot. See what happens

What have I, or Doing wrong ??

[oshunluvr]

Just say "failed" isn't helpful. Instead, post what actual commands you used and what the actual error messages you received were.

[CharlieDaves]

oshunluvr You are correct. i should have saved the prtScn. Oh I tried. Oh how I tried.
I think I've identified the problem .... BTRFS

My /home is on a separate btrfs partition, not ext4 as I normally use.
I have attempted to create another ext4 partition and copy /home files over. Then change in fstab. But. defaults,subvol=@home is written, and a InternetSearch reveals this is used by BTRFS...

Q- What is a normal /home ext FSTAB <options>, please ?

Also. Can I copy /home data on an active/running PC ?
I wiped the NVME clone, and created a new (use whole disk) boot, then attempted to create a new partition for /home. It "failed" again to even boot. Just a black screen, ESC didn't reveal anything. It's difficult to provide an explanation on what is happening when all I get is a black screen.

Q- If I create a new /home partition, is the first folder /home then /users ?
OR
Is the partition mounted as /home and I have /users folders on the partition ?

My other Linux PC I have a 1TB SSD all for home.

[jlittle]

Q- What is a normal /home ext FSTAB <options>, please ?

Just "defaults" will do.

[jlittle]

Generally speaking, IMO cloning is a bad idea, and IMO humans using UUIDs is a bad idea. Mixing cloning with UUIDs often leads to problems.

If one uses btrfs, one should set up subvolumes. So if you've got a btrfs just for /home, I'd create a subvolume, say @home, on it, and the entry in fstab would have the option subvol=@home.

But, using a separate filesystem for /home gives up a btrfs advantage, that one doesn't have to worry about partitioning and juggling space any more. I lean towards putting the Linux root and /home on the fastest available device, in one btrfs but different subvolumes, and linking other storage, say a big hard drive for videos, from your home directory.

If you are mucking about with fstab entries, I advocate using labels. The example on the fstab man page:

LABEL=t-home2 /home ext4 defaults,auto_da_alloc 0 2

I also suggest using /boot/grub/custom.cfg, with something like

​menuentry 'Kubuntu from custom' {
search --no-floppy --label --set=root yourlabel

linux /boot/vmlinuz root=LABEL=yourlabel ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img
}
​

(If using btrfs, booting from a subvolume called @root, change /boot to /@root/boot in both places, and add the phrase rootflags=subvol=@root to the linux line.) With this file it's easy to fix it up after booting a live USB, or pressing "e" in grub.

[CharlieDaves]

Thanks all.
I think the problem was the <option> in fstab. btrfs had something called @home listed, where-as on my other computer it was 'defaults' or something.
after all the 'trying to find problem' I somehow ended up with a corrupted version of the original ssd /home and /root. I had to re-install.