Re: Debian 10 Installation &Multi-Boot
On Mon 07 Oct 2019 at 14:20:17 (+1030), Paul Dabrowski wrote:
> Folks,
> I have been using Debian 9 in a multi-boot setup for quite some time with a
> great deal of satisfaction. The basic set up was:
> Windows 7 (for the infrequent use by other family members)
> Debian 9 (living on /dev/sda5; used very often by me for work)
> Siduction (living on /dev/sda8; mainly for goofing off and experimentation)
> Note: /home is on a separate partition for some of the obvious reasons.
>
> I was able to multi-boot between these very nicely with a minimum of fuss.
Is this all BIOS booting, or is EFI involved? (I don't know about the
latter, and am not sure if you can distinguish then from the grub.cfg
contents.)
> Recently I figured that I should move across to Debian 10 and take
> advantage of updates and other progress-like stuff. I decided to install
> Debian 10 onto /dev/sda8 (stomp over Siduction) and transition to it
> gradually from Debian 9 - in my mind a fairly reasonable plan.
>
> The installation went fairly steadily, as I would have expected based on
> past experience. The installer reached the point where the other operating
> system were detected (a good sign to me); interestingly the displayed
> information said that grub would set up one other OS along with the current
> installed system Debian 10. I went ahead and completed the installation and
> got Debian 10 to boot successfully.
>
> However (don't you hate the word?), when trying out the other multi-boot
> options I found that the pre-existing Debian 9 would not boot - the Windows
> 7 booted OK. The choice for selecting and booting from Debian 9 was being
> presented but when selected there is just a blank screen and a flashing
> cursor.
Have you checked that your 9 installation is intact—presumably you
mount it from 10 so you can peruse your previous configuration files.
> I'm guessing that Grub might have chosen to ignore Debian 9 (a generous
> excuse) or something else has gone astray. I have attached the grub.cfg
> files from the Debian 9 and Debian 10 installations; I don't have the
> background (or time and willingness to become a grub expert) to examine
> these for meaningful differences. I'm hoping that they may be more
> enlightening to you folk.
As you pointed out, the 9 entry is presented to you, so it hasn't been
ignored. But I notice that you boot very "quietly", so I assume you
waited long enough after selecting 9 for any disk checking or whatever
to complete.
I edit the line in /etc/default/grub to read
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="systemd.show_status=true quiet"
so that I see more of the action when booting. If you do this, it will
probably only affect the lines for your 10 system in /boot/grub/grub.cfg,
so one way to effect this when you boot 9 is to select the 9 system in
Grub's menu and press e, move to the linux line and add the option at
the end of the line, so that it ends in:
quiet systemd.show_status=true
and then press F10 to boot.
> What I would appreciate very much:
> 1. Some simple and straightforward instruction on how to enable the grub
> booting mechanism to allow me to boot Debian 9. If it was doable before, it
> should be doable now.
> 2. Not to expend an excessive amount of time going to and fro trying out
> poorly conceived suggestions.
> 3. I would hope that this might inform you of a possible malfunction in the
> structure of the Debian installer and that it can be remedied successfully
> - as said before, this wasn't an issue in the past.
>
> This was something of an unexpected and 'bummer' outcome; I have enjoyed
> using Debian in the past and look forward to using it in the future. So far
> my enthusiasm for Debian/Linux is not dented.
Comparing your two grub files and my own doesn't reveal anything to
me, though I've never used Grub's themes myself. (Your 9 kernel looks
somewhat old, but perhaps you haven't been able to run 9 for a month.)
Depending on your specific graphics cards, you can get differences
between older and newer distributions. But I've typically seen boot
messages before things mess up. Some people have reported that adding
nomodeset to the kernel line (in the same way as above) can help, so
it might be worth trying that. Any changes you make in the menu in
this way will only affect the one boot, so it's safe to try things out.
Cheers,
David.
Reply to: