sharing /boot among multible Linux distros

[Javier Perez]

Hi
I need some advice here.
I am running a triple-boot system (Windows 2K, Fedora 19, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS).
It has three HDDs, one for each OS. (Windows, Fedora, Ubuntu).
I am planning to upgrade this system for Christmas. Windows will go away
and I will only run it virtualized. I have more than a year since I boot it
last.

I am planning to put a a small (100GB to 200 GB) SDD to host the OS of
Ubuntu and Fedora and have a big HDD for the /home,  /var partition and
swap partitions.

In theory, Ubuntu and Fedora will have their own partitions inside the SDD.
My question is, can I share the /boot partition between Fedora and Ubuntu?
both are using Grub2. Right now I have two /boot partitions (one on each
HDD) and it is a pain. For some reason, Ubuntu does not find out Fedora
unless I mount the disk each time I update ubuntu kernel. If I update
Fedora kernel I have to go to Ubuntu to redo the boot config files. (Yes,
the master boot goes to Ubuntu for some reason  I do not remember any
more). I want to keep just one /boot partition of maybe 800 MB to make
everyone feel confy.

Also, although it is off topic, is there any good tutorial to virtualize
the Win2K partition as is? I'd really hate having to reinstall all my
programs and stuff even if I am not using them much anymore.
It will be kind of more trouble having to search for old drivers and
stuff.I have the original CDs for all the programs, but many of the updates
will be missing/disappeared. Also I will have to locate again FOSS software
compatible with win2k

-- 
------------------------------
 /\_/\
 |O O|  pepebuho(a)gmail.com
 ~~~~     Javier Perez
 ~~~~          While the night runs
 ~~~~          toward the day...
  m m       Pepebuho watches
                from his high perch.

[Daniel J Walsh]

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On 12/09/2013 11:17 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
>  | From: Daniel J Walsh <dwalsh(a)redhat.com&gt;
>  
>  | On 12/08/2013 01:11 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
>  
>  | > <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=882568> Fedora could not
>  mount | > the Ubuntu partition for examination because it wasn't SELinux
>  labelled. | > Of course requiring a Ubuntu partition to be labelled for
>  Fedora isn't | > reasonable.
>  
>  | Do you have the SELinux AVC messages that was blocking this?
>  
>  I don't have anything left but the bug report.
>  
>  I did include the output of "ausearch -m avc -ts recent" in that report.
>   
Ok I missed the bug report.  Anyways it appears it has been fixed since F18.
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[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Daniel J Walsh <dwalsh(a)redhat.com&gt;

| On 12/08/2013 01:11 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:

| > <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=882568> Fedora could not mount
| > the Ubuntu partition for examination because it wasn't SELinux labelled.
| > Of course requiring a Ubuntu partition to be labelled for Fedora isn't
| > reasonable.

| Do you have the SELinux AVC messages that was blocking this?

I don't have anything left but the bug report.

I did include the output of "ausearch -m avc -ts recent" in that
report.

[GW-C] Re: sharing /boot among multible Linux distros

[Daniel J Walsh]

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On 12/08/2013 01:11 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
>  | From: Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us&gt;
>  
>  | On 11/26/2013 02:00 PM, Javier Perez wrote: | > For some reason, Ubuntu
>  does not find out Fedora unless I mount the disk | > each time I update
>  ubuntu kernel. | | How do you expect Ubuntu to find a kernel on an
>  unmounted partition?
>  
>  It is supposed to find it.  There is a bug in Ubuntu 12.04:
>  
>  <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/os-prober/+bug/1038093>
>  
>  This was reported more than a year ago.
>  
>  That bugs.Launchpad notes an upstream fix a year ago, so the bug was marked
>  as "Fix Released" almost a year ago.
>  
>  But no update to 12.04 has been issued.
>  
>  This is an example of why I am less comfortable with Ubuntu.
>  
>  
>  I had similar problems with Fedora that were resolved more quickly:
>  
>  <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=882568> Fedora could not mount
>  the Ubuntu partition for examination because it wasn't SELinux labelled.
>  Of course requiring a Ubuntu partition to be labelled for Fedora isn't
>  reasonable.
>   
Do you have the SELinux AVC messages that was blocking this?
>  <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=995777> Not a
> Fedora bug.
>  Fedora could not mount the Ubuntu partition because Ubuntu didn't cleanly
>  unmount it.  An fsck was required.
>   
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[Chris Murphy]

>  On Nov 29, 2013, at 12:59 PM, Javier Perez <pepebuho(a)gmail.com&gt;
> wrote:
>  
>  
>  
> > On Nov 28, 2013 1:09 PM, "Chris Murphy" <lists(a)colorremedies.com&gt;
> wrote:
> > 
> >> On Nov 28, 2013, at 5:31 AM, Juan Orti Alcaine <juan.orti(a)miceliux.com&gt;
> wrote:
> >> 
> >> > Give a look to this proposal:
> >> >
> >> > http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/BootLoaderSpec/
> > 
> > Yeah I mentioned it about 23 emails back in this thread. The most useful aspect of
> that doc is the admission that there's a problem. As for the suggested solutions, we
> end up with more problems some of which were discussed by the creator of gdisk, and the
> current maintainer of rEFInd, Rod Smith.
> > 
> > See comment 14 onward.
> > https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=159172&p=1
>  
>  Shouldn't this kind of propios al be written as a RFC # thingie? Like The TCP pigeon
> network… 
Its presence on freedesktop.org is effectively an RFC. I think more seriousness about
having a linux boot experience that isn't utterly craptastic requires the various
distro installer and bootloader teams get together in person at something like Linux
Plumbers Conference, and hash out the issues and agree to something. Short of that,
it's hand waiving.


Chris Murphy

[Javier Perez]

Shouldn't this kind of propios al be written as a RFC # thingie? Like The
TCP pigeon network...
On Nov 28, 2013 1:09 PM, "Chris Murphy" <lists(a)colorremedies.com&gt; wrote:

>  On Nov 28, 2013, at 5:31 AM, Juan Orti Alcaine <juan.orti(a)miceliux.com&gt;
>  wrote:
>
>  > Give a look to this proposal:
>  >
>  > http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/BootLoaderSpec/
>
>  Yeah I mentioned it about 23 emails back in this thread. The most useful
>  aspect of that doc is the admission that there's a problem. As for the
>  suggested solutions, we end up with more problems some of which were
>  discussed by the creator of gdisk, and the current maintainer of rEFInd,
>  Rod Smith.
>
>  See comment 14 onward.
>  https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=159172&p=1
>
>
>  Chris Murphy
>  --
>  users mailing list
>  users(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>  Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
>  Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
>  Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
>

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 11/27/2013 04:24 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
>  On Nov 26, 2013, at 7:39 PM, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203(a)freenet.de&gt; wrote:
>
> > On 11/26/2013 11:56 PM, poma wrote:
> >> On 26.11.2013 23:18, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> >>
> >>> That's because your setup is wrong. If I were you, I would install a
> >>> bootloader into the boot sector of each of your /boot partitions and
> >>> chainload them from your MBR.
> >>
> >> Are you kidding?
> >
> > I guess, he isn't. It's what I recommend, too. It's the only way to make
> sure the different OSes/distros bootloaders do not interfere with each other.
>
>  Well it's not a good recommendation to do what is explicitly not recommended by GRUB
> devs. 
Correct, they are warning about it, but this doesn't mean their 
recommendation is any good. To me, this is just one of those many grub2 
usability regression.

>  grub-install spits out a warning if you try to do this, by the way.
> It requires the user pass --force for it to work. And --force also isn't supported by
> anaconda for 4-5 Fedora releases now. 
Right. Why do you think people like me have
been complaining about 
anaconda? Its usability has regressed. This is issue is one detail 
contributing to it.

>  It can't be used if /boot is on XFS or LVM or md RAID, all of
> which lack boot loader padding areas, so fewer configurations are supported. 
Well, I
am using one dedicated boot partition for each Linux distro and 
a common /boot and so far haven't had any problems.

>  The earlier suggestion to have the primary grub.cfg include an entry
> using configfile to point to each distribution's grub.cfg is the better way to handle
> this. 
 From my experience, this a way which is guaranteed to kill your system 
in longer terms, because different distros' grub configs are too different.

>  Each distribution updates only their own grub.cfg. And as far as
> I'm aware, no distribution ever re-runs grub-install, 
Distro upgrades and
rescuing installations may do so.

Ralf

[Juan Orti Alcaine]

Give a look to this proposal:

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/BootLoaderSpec/


-- 
Juan Orti
GPG Key: DEEBD08B - http://jorti.fedorapeople.org/pubkey.asc
Blog: https://apuntesderoot.wordpress.com/

[Chris Murphy]

On Nov 27, 2013, at 1:58 AM, Michael Schwendt <mschwendt(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

> > It can't be used if /boot is on XFS or LVM or md RAID, all of
> which lack boot loader padding areas, so fewer configurations are supported. 
> > 
>  
>  Okay. I don't want to put separate /boot partitions on XFS, LVM or RAID.
>  Certainly not with a multi-boot desktop system (which uses LVM, though). 
If you use grub2 correctly, all of these use cases are easily supported. If you go off the
rails, then your layouts are necessarily limited.

In any case, installing a bootloader to a partition not how UEFI works. So I don't see
the point in defending methods that aren't best practices, and instead cling to legacy
notions that either aren't recommended or simply don't work, just because the
firmware is BIOS. We'd be much better off with a cooperative approach with BIOS
multibooting rather than the messy, overly complicated state that presently exists.

> > You're better off using extlinux if you want something that
> supports
> > installation to a partition.
>  
>  It's good to have a fallback, at least. Grubby includes support for extlinux,
>  too. 
Right well grubby is another crusty bit of legacy I'd like to see us drop that has
various other problems with at least one modern file system.


Chris Murphy

[Tom H]

On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 3:36 AM, Javier Perez <pepebuho(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  For some reason, Fedora seems to find the kernels of the Ubuntu partitions
>  each time I update the Fedora Kernel. I do not have them explicitly mounted
>  as far as I remember. I'd have to check next time I boot in Fedora. Probably
>  they are on /media 
It's os-prober that finds them, mounted or unmounted, and they're
added to grub.cfg via the 30_os-prober script.

[Tom H]

On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 3:43 AM, Javier Perez <pepebuho(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 5:38 PM, Chris Murphy
> <lists(a)colorremedies.com&gt;
>  wrote:
> > On Nov 26, 2013, at 3:00 PM, Javier Perez <pepebuho(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> >
> > In theory, Ubuntu and Fedora will have their own partitions inside the
> > SDD.
> >
> > My question is, can I share the /boot partition between Fedora and Ubuntu?
> > both are using Grub2.
> >
> > Let me backup a step. The hardware is UEFI or BIOS based?
> >
>  Unknown at this moment. I have yet to pick a MB. So far I have decided to
>  base the system on a Socket 1150 / I5-4670 CPU, I am still deciding about
>  the mobo. 
I suspect that Chris is asking because it's simpler to set up
dual-boot when you use UEFI because there's no fighting over what's in
the MBR.

With UEFI, you have separate "/boot"s for Fedora and Ubuntu and mount
the EFI system partition on "/boot/efi", containing the different grub
executables.

The "which-grub-controls-boot-problem" migrates to which grub, Fedora
or Ubuntu, comes ahead in the boot order, but it's more benign
problem.

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 26 Nov 2013 20:24:32 -0700, Chris Murphy wrote:

>  Well it's not a good recommendation to do what is explicitly not
> recommended by GRUB devs. grub-install spits out a warning if you try to do this, by the
> way. It requires the user pass --force for it to work.
>  
No problem. So far I can live with it using blocklists.

# grep chain /etc/grub.d/40_custom 
    chainloader (hd0,6)+1
#    chainloader (hd0,5)+1
#    chainloader (hd0,4)+1
    chainloader (hd0,1)+1
    chainloader (hd0,2)+1

>  And --force also isn't supported by anaconda for 4-5 Fedora
> releases now. 
I'm not sure it ever really "supported" it. It had become a requirement
for various configurations with the introduction of GRUB2 (Fedora 16/17?),
since there has been quite a bit about that in bugzilla. OS Prober makes
it easy to adjust the boot loaders after a new installation without using
any rescue mode.

>  It can't be used if /boot is on XFS or LVM or md RAID, all of
> which lack boot loader padding areas, so fewer configurations are supported. 
>  
Okay. I don't want to put separate /boot partitions on XFS, LVM or RAID.
Certainly not with a multi-boot desktop system (which uses LVM, though).

>  You're better off using extlinux if you want something that
> supports
>  installation to a partition. 
It's good to have a fallback, at least. Grubby includes support for extlinux,
too.

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 26 Nov 2013 15:02:33 -0800, Joe Zeff wrote:

>  On 11/26/2013 02:00 PM, Javier Perez wrote:
>  > For some reason, Ubuntu does not find out Fedora unless I mount the disk
>  > each time I update ubuntu kernel.
>  
>  How do you expect Ubuntu to find a kernel on an unmounted partition? 
You may be surprised, but when using os-prober, it will examine the system
and search for installations regardless of whether they are stored on a
mounted fs. It does that here by default, and even finds them on LVs.

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 11/27/2013 12:02 AM, Joe Zeff wrote:
>  On 11/26/2013 02:00 PM, Javier Perez wrote:
> > For some reason, Ubuntu does not find out Fedora unless I mount the disk
> > each time I update ubuntu kernel.
>
>  How do you expect Ubuntu to find a kernel on an unmounted partition? 
Well, "expect" is the wording.


Fact is, these days many distros indeed find other Linux distro 
installations on partitions they do not use themselves and offer them 
through their bootloaders or even try to mount them somewhere into their 
file systems.

Ralf

[Chris Murphy]

On Nov 26, 2013, at 8:40 PM, Javier Perez <pepebuho(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  . It's better to use extlinux for this use case though.
>  
>  I will look into it. Although what I found out at first did not look that much promising.
> Will this mean that I have to replace grub by extlinux? 
When I say "this use case" I'm not recommending it for you necessarily.
I'm saying for those who insist on having bootloaders installed to partitions/volumes
rather than using GRUB the way it's intended to work, should use extlinux which is
designed expressly to work by being installed to each partition's VBR.

I would just use the Fedora installation of GRUB, let it step on Ubuntu's installation
of GRUB (which still keeps the Ubuntu grub.cfg intact), and then edit Fedora's
/etc/grub.d/40_custom file to add  an Ubuntu configuration entry that uses configfile
pointing to Ubuntu's grub.cfg. That way anytime you run grub2-mkconfig on Fedora, the
resulting grub.cfg always has an entry that points to Ubuntu (as well as Fedora entries).
And Ubuntu kernel updates will be reflected in its grub.cfg.

Chris Murphy

[Chris Murphy]

On Nov 26, 2013, at 8:43 PM, Javier Perez <pepebuho(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  
>  
>  
>  On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 5:38 PM, Chris Murphy <lists(a)colorremedies.com&gt; wrote:
>  
>  
>  On Nov 26, 2013, at 3:00 PM, Javier Perez <pepebuho(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> > 
> > In theory, Ubuntu and Fedora will have their own partitions inside the SDD. 
> > My question is, can I share the /boot partition between Fedora and Ubuntu? both are
> using Grub2.
>  
>  
>  Let me backup a step. The hardware is UEFI or BIOS based?
>  
>  Unknown at this moment. I have yet to pick a MB. So far I have decided to base the system
> on a Socket 1150 / I5-4670 CPU, I am still deciding about the mobo.  
OK well all of this is different if  you go UEFI. Pretty much nothing I've said
applies to UEFI and that includes there being no such thing as installing boot loaders to
partitions. There are no MBRs or VBRs. Instead there's a UEFI boot manager, and almost
invariably you'll have to get familiar with that in order to choose which OS you want
to boot, because a unified grub menu that shows all linux distros just isn't working
reliably for everyone yet. You could even choose to not deal with GRUB2 on UEFI for that
matter, you could use gummiboot or rEFInd, both of which are smarter about multibooting
linux distros. However, no autogeneration of configuration file, so you have to learn some
scripting. Nothing approaching what's required to know about GRUB however which is god
awful complicated for just being a bootloader.



Chris

[Javier Perez]

After skimming through the manual think I like the "configfile" method. I
will have to read some more.

Thanks!!!



On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 10:24 PM, Chris Murphy <lists(a)colorremedies.com&gt;wrote:

>  On Nov 26, 2013, at 7:39 PM, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203(a)freenet.de&gt; wrote:
>
>  > On 11/26/2013 11:56 PM, poma wrote:
>  >> On 26.11.2013 23:18, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>  >>
>  >>> That's because your setup is wrong. If I were you, I would install a
>  >>> bootloader into the boot sector of each of your /boot partitions and
>  >>> chainload them from your MBR.
>  >>
>  >> Are you kidding?
>  >
>  > I guess, he isn't. It's what I recommend, too. It's the only way to
> make
>  sure the different OSes/distros bootloaders do not interfere with each
>  other.
>
>  Well it's not a good recommendation to do what is explicitly not
>  recommended by GRUB devs. grub-install spits out a warning if you try to do
>  this, by the way. It requires the user pass --force for it to work. And
>  --force also isn't supported by anaconda for 4-5 Fedora releases now.  It
>  can't be used if /boot is on XFS or LVM or md RAID, all of which lack boot
>  loader padding areas, so fewer configurations are supported. You're better
>  off using extlinux if you want something that supports installation to a
>  partition.
>
>  The earlier suggestion to have the primary grub.cfg include an entry using
>  configfile to point to each distribution's grub.cfg is the better way to
>  handle this. Each distribution updates only their own grub.cfg. And as far
>  as I'm aware, no distribution ever re-runs grub-install, so the existing
>  bootloader is only going to be "interfered" with by users reinstalling the
>  bootloader or installing a new OS.
>
>
>  Chris Murphy
>  --
>  users mailing list
>  users(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>  Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
>  Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
>  Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
>  


-- 
------------------------------
 /\_/\
 |O O|  pepebuho(a)gmail.com
 ~~~~     Javier Perez
 ~~~~          While the night runs
 ~~~~          toward the day...
  m m       Pepebuho watches
                from his high perch.

[Javier Perez]

. It's better to use extlinux for this use case though.

I will look into it. Although what I found out at first did not look that
much promising. Will this mean that I have to replace grub by extlinux?

[Javier Perez]

For some reason, Fedora seems to find the kernels of the Ubuntu partitions
each time I update the Fedora Kernel. I do not have them explicitly mounted
as far as I remember. I'd have to check next time I boot in Fedora.
Probably they are on /media


On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 6:02 PM, Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us&gt; wrote:

>  On 11/26/2013 02:00 PM, Javier Perez wrote:
>
> > For some reason, Ubuntu does not find out Fedora unless I mount the disk
> > each time I update ubuntu kernel.
> >
>
>  How do you expect Ubuntu to find a kernel on an unmounted partition?
>
>  --
>  users mailing list
>  users(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>  Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
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>  Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
>  


-- 
------------------------------
 /\_/\
 |O O|  pepebuho(a)gmail.com
 ~~~~     Javier Perez
 ~~~~          While the night runs
 ~~~~          toward the day...
  m m       Pepebuho watches
                from his high perch.

[Chris Murphy]

On Nov 26, 2013, at 7:39 PM, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203(a)freenet.de&gt; wrote:

>  On 11/26/2013 11:56 PM, poma wrote:
> > On 26.11.2013 23:18, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> > 
> >> That's because your setup is wrong. If I were you, I would install a
> >> bootloader into the boot sector of each of your /boot partitions and
> >> chainload them from your MBR.
> > 
> > Are you kidding?
>  
>  I guess, he isn't. It's what I recommend, too. It's the only way to make sure
> the different OSes/distros bootloaders do not interfere with each other. 
Well it's not a good recommendation to do what is explicitly not recommended by GRUB
devs. grub-install spits out a warning if you try to do this, by the way. It requires the
user pass --force for it to work. And --force also isn't supported by anaconda for 4-5
Fedora releases now.  It can't be used if /boot is on XFS or LVM or md RAID, all of
which lack boot loader padding areas, so fewer configurations are supported. You're
better off using extlinux if you want something that supports installation to a
partition.

The earlier suggestion to have the primary grub.cfg include an entry using configfile to
point to each distribution's grub.cfg is the better way to handle this. Each
distribution updates only their own grub.cfg. And as far as I'm aware, no distribution
ever re-runs grub-install, so the existing bootloader is only going to be
"interfered" with by users reinstalling the bootloader or installing a new OS.


Chris Murphy

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 11/26/2013 11:56 PM, poma wrote:
>  On 26.11.2013 23:18, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>
> > That's because your setup is wrong. If I were you, I would install a
> > bootloader into the boot sector of each of your /boot partitions and
> > chainload them from your MBR.
>
>  Are you kidding? 
I guess, he isn't. It's what I recommend, too. It's the only way to make 
sure the different OSes/distros bootloaders do not interfere with each 
other.

Ralf

[SternData]

On 11/26/2013 04:00 PM, Javier Perez wrote:
>  Hi
>  I need some advice here.
>  I am running a triple-boot system (Windows 2K, Fedora 19, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS).
>  It has three HDDs, one for each OS. (Windows, Fedora, Ubuntu).
>  I am planning to upgrade this system for Christmas. Windows will go away
>  and I will only run it virtualized. I have more than a year since I boot
>  it last. 
// snip //.
>  
>  Also, although it is off topic, is there any good tutorial to virtualize
>  the Win2K partition as is? I'd really hate having to reinstall all my
>  programs and stuff even if I am not using them much anymore.
>  It will be kind of more trouble having to search for old drivers and
>  stuff.I have the original CDs for all the programs, but many of the
>  updates will be missing/disappeared. Also I will have to locate again
>  FOSS software compatible with win2k
>   
Importing Windows into VirtualBox:

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows

[Chris Murphy]

On Nov 26, 2013, at 4:02 PM, Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us&gt; wrote:

>  On 11/26/2013 02:00 PM, Javier Perez wrote:
> > For some reason, Ubuntu does not find out Fedora unless I mount the disk
> > each time I update ubuntu kernel.
>  
>  How do you expect Ubuntu to find a kernel on an unmounted partition? 
Neither Windows nor OS X have such a requirement, and yet they co-exist and can boot their
siblings of various versions just fine.

Now, ostensibly os-prober can read content without them being mounted, so it can find
/etc/fstab, and various other things it's looking for, to figure out what systems are
installed and how to put them together so it can create a grub.cfg entry for them. Because
of the litany of completely non-standard layouts possible by linux alone, this can be a
problem, not least of which is if root is encrypted.


Chris Murphy

[Joe Zeff]

On 11/26/2013 02:00 PM, Javier Perez wrote:
>  For some reason, Ubuntu does not find out Fedora unless I mount the
> disk
>  each time I update ubuntu kernel. 
How do you expect Ubuntu to find a kernel on an unmounted partition?

[poma]

On 26.11.2013 23:18, Michael Schwendt wrote:

>  That's because your setup is wrong. If I were you, I would
> install a
>  bootloader into the boot sector of each of your /boot partitions and
>  chainload them from your MBR. 
Are you kidding?


poma

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 26 Nov 2013 17:00:35 -0500, Javier Perez wrote:

>  In theory, Ubuntu and Fedora will have their own partitions inside
> the SDD.
>  My question is, can I share the /boot partition between Fedora and Ubuntu?
>  both are using Grub2. Right now I have two /boot partitions (one on each
>  HDD) and it is a pain.  
That's because your setup is wrong. If I were you, I would install a
bootloader into the boot sector of each of your /boot partitions and
chainload them from your MBR. [Alternatively, since both are GRUB2, you
can let the primary grub.conf menu load a grub.conf from a secondary OS.]

>  For some reason, Ubuntu does not find out Fedora
>  unless I mount the disk each time I update ubuntu kernel. If I update
>  Fedora kernel I have to go to Ubuntu to redo the boot config files. (Yes,
>  the master boot goes to Ubuntu for some reason  I do not remember any
>  more). 
Again, that's because of the setup that's inconvenient.

>  I want to keep just one /boot partition of maybe 800 MB to make
>  everyone feel confy. 
That nothing I would recommend. ;-)

[Chris Murphy]

On Nov 28, 2013, at 5:31 AM, Juan Orti Alcaine <juan.orti(a)miceliux.com&gt; wrote:

>  Give a look to this proposal:
>  
>  http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/BootLoaderSpec/ 
Yeah I mentioned it about 23 emails back in this thread. The most useful aspect of that
doc is the admission that there's a problem. As for the suggested solutions, we end up
with more problems some of which were discussed by the creator of gdisk, and the current
maintainer of rEFInd, Rod Smith.

See comment 14 onward.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=159172&p=1


Chris Murphy

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 11/27/2013 09:56 AM, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>  On Tue, 26 Nov 2013 15:02:33 -0800, Joe Zeff wrote:
>
> > On 11/26/2013 02:00 PM, Javier Perez wrote:
> >> For some reason, Ubuntu does not find out Fedora unless I mount the disk
> >> each time I update ubuntu kernel.
> >
> > How do you expect Ubuntu to find a kernel on an unmounted partition?
>
>  You may be surprised, but when using os-prober, it will examine the system
>  and search for installations regardless of whether they are stored on a
>  mounted fs. It does that here by default, and even finds them on LVs. 
As this "feature" is quite annoying when using cascaded bootloaders, it 
has become part of my routine customizations to put

GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true

into /etc/default/grub on all new installations to disable it.

Ralf

[Javier Perez]

On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 5:38 PM, Chris Murphy <lists(a)colorremedies.com&gt;wrote:

>  On Nov 26, 2013, at 3:00 PM, Javier Perez <pepebuho(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>
>
>  In theory, Ubuntu and Fedora will have their own partitions inside the
>  SDD.
>  My question is, can I share the /boot partition between Fedora and Ubuntu?
>  both are using Grub2.
>
>
>
>  Let me backup a step. The hardware is UEFI or BIOS based?
>
>  Unknown at this moment. I have yet to pick a MB. So far I have decided to 
base the
system on a Socket 1150 / I5-4670 CPU, I am still deciding about
the mobo.

[Chris Murphy]

On Nov 26, 2013, at 3:18 PM, Michael Schwendt <mschwendt(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  On Tue, 26 Nov 2013 17:00:35 -0500, Javier Perez wrote:
>  
> > In theory, Ubuntu and Fedora will have their own partitions inside the SDD.
> > My question is, can I share the /boot partition between Fedora and Ubuntu?
> > both are using Grub2. Right now I have two /boot partitions (one on each
> > HDD) and it is a pain. 
>  
>  That's because your setup is wrong. If I were you, I would install a
>  bootloader into the boot sector of each of your /boot partitions and
>  chainload them from your MBR. 
This isn't recommended by upstream, and isn't supported by anaconda. So it
requires a different installer touching the disk last, or manually issuing grub(2)-install
--force. It's better to use extlinux for this use case though.

>  [Alternatively, since both are GRUB2, you
>  can let the primary grub.conf menu load a grub.conf from a secondary OS.] 
That's a better option. But Fedora grub should probably be used, as it seems the
syntax of grub2 cfg files changes, and the newest version of grub installed as the
bootloader can read either configfile.


Chris Murphy

[Chris Murphy]

On Nov 26, 2013, at 3:00 PM, Javier Perez <pepebuho(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  
>  In theory, Ubuntu and Fedora will have their own partitions inside the SDD. 
>  My question is, can I share the /boot partition between Fedora and Ubuntu? both are using
> Grub2. 
Possibly because Ubuntu calls GRUB2 grub, while Fedora calls it grub2 - at least for now,
this may change at or after F21.

Since /boot/grub is for Ubuntu and /boot/grub2 is for Fedora, their respective
grub.cfg's are separate. The other thing is that the grub packages will also be
separately updated, but this tends to not affect grub as installed unless you rerun
grub-install (or grub2-install on Fedora).

A possible gotcha is that Ubuntu's grub2 tends to be an older version than Fedora. And
only one grub boot.img (previously called stage1) and core.img (previously called stage2)
can be installed to a drive at one time. So you'll have to pick which
distribution's grub is to be installed *to the disk*. It's ridiculously confusing,
but there are two meanings of "installing grub": distribution package
installation vs grub-install which installs the bootloader to the disk. Boot.img goes in
the MBR, and core.img goes in the MBR gap. *sigh*

Anyway, I think you can get away with it because things are rather differently named.
However, I'd make /boot bigger than the default of 500MB.

Let me backup a step. The hardware is UEFI or BIOS based?


>  Right now I have two /boot partitions (one on each HDD) and it is a
> pain. For some reason, Ubuntu does not find out Fedora unless I mount the disk each time I
> update ubuntu kernel. If I update Fedora kernel I have to go to Ubuntu to redo the boot
> config files. (Yes, the master boot goes to Ubuntu for some reason  I do not remember any
> more). I want to keep just one /boot partition of maybe 800 MB to make everyone feel
> confy. 
Yeah well you're learning, as have I, that linux distros aren't very friendly to
each other, and multiboot is a hostile experience due to the lack of any meaningful
cooperation among the distributions to do a better job. Hence the bootloader spec proposal
to try and bring some sanity to the process. The spec has some outstanding problems, any
of which are resolvable by distro stakeholders sitting down and having a conversation, but
that hasn't happened so far.
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/BootLoaderSpec/


>  Also, although it is off topic, is there any good tutorial to
> virtualize the Win2K partition as is?  
You might want to shrink the NTFS volume, and then the partition. Next you can dd it to a
file, and then in virt-manager or virsh, you specify the file as Raw. I haven't tried
using rsync -a or cp -a to copy it into a qcow2 file instead, but that'd be nice. For
one, qcow2 is sparse, so it'll be a smaller size file. Once you've tested it
works, you can snapshot it, and only use the snapshots going forward, in case you break
something you can just toss the snapshot and make a new one. Also, since the large backing
file doesn't change, it gets backed up once, rather than the whole file being backed
up every time it gets touched by booting Windows.

One negative is that Win 2K is old, and I don't think its virtio drivers are current
for the latest versions of qemu/kvm anymore, so you may have to suffer with something of a
performance hit presenting that backing file as an IDE drive.


Chris Murphy

[GW-C] Re: sharing /boot among multible Linux distros

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us&gt;

| On 11/26/2013 02:00 PM, Javier Perez wrote:
| > For some reason, Ubuntu does not find out Fedora unless I mount the disk
| > each time I update ubuntu kernel.
| 
| How do you expect Ubuntu to find a kernel on an unmounted partition?

It is supposed to find it.  There is a bug in Ubuntu 12.04:

  <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/os-prober/+bug/1038093>

This was reported more than a year ago.

That bugs.Launchpad notes an upstream fix a year ago, so the bug was
marked as "Fix Released" almost a year ago.

But no update to 12.04 has been issued.

This is an example of why I am less comfortable with Ubuntu.


I had similar problems with Fedora that were resolved more quickly:

<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=882568>
Fedora could not mount the Ubuntu partition for examination because it
wasn't SELinux labelled.  Of course requiring a Ubuntu partition to be
labelled for Fedora isn't reasonable.

<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=995777>
Not a Fedora bug.  Fedora could not mount the Ubuntu partition because
Ubuntu didn't cleanly unmount it.  An fsck was required.

[Chris Murphy]

On Nov 26, 2013, at 10:17 PM, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203(a)freenet.de&gt; wrote:

>  On 11/27/2013 04:24 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
> > 
> > On Nov 26, 2013, at 7:39 PM, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203(a)freenet.de&gt; wrote:
> > 
> >> On 11/26/2013 11:56 PM, poma wrote:
> >>> On 26.11.2013 23:18, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> >>> 
> >>>> That's because your setup is wrong. If I were you, I would install a
> >>>> bootloader into the boot sector of each of your /boot partitions and
> >>>> chainload them from your MBR.
> >>> 
> >>> Are you kidding?
> >> 
> >> I guess, he isn't. It's what I recommend, too. It's the only way to
> make sure the different OSes/distros bootloaders do not interfere with each other.
> > 
> > Well it's not a good recommendation to do what is explicitly not recommended by
> GRUB devs.
>  
>  Correct, they are warning about it, but this doesn't mean their recommendation is any
> good. 
OK but are you saying you're willing to take responsibility for other people's
systems whom you've recommended this method, over other methods, if they break? I
wouldn't do that.

>  To me, this is just one of those many grub2 usability regression.
Nothing stops you from using grub legacy, despite it not being maintained in ~6 years, or
using extlinux.


>  
> > grub-install spits out a warning if you try to do this, by the way. It requires the
> user pass --force for it to work. And --force also isn't supported by anaconda for 4-5
> Fedora releases now.
>  Right. Why do you think people like me have been complaining about anaconda? Its
> usability has regressed. 
It is not the responsibility of the anaconda team to support things that the developers of
other tools themselves don't recommend.

>  This is issue is one detail contributing to it.
>  
> > It can't be used if /boot is on XFS or LVM or md RAID, all of which lack boot
> loader padding areas, so fewer configurations are supported.
>  Well, I am using one dedicated boot partition for each Linux distro and a common /boot
> and so far haven't had any problems. 
Right, so if you don't like GRUB2 anyway, isn't recommended for your use case, and
you're using /boot on ext4, why not use extlinux which is designed for the use case
you want? Why persist using something and then complaining about it?


>  
> > The earlier suggestion to have the primary grub.cfg include an entry using configfile
> to point to each distribution's grub.cfg is the better way to handle this.
>  From my experience, this a way which is guaranteed to kill your system in longer terms,
> because different distros' grub configs are too different. 
If, like anything else, you keep grub2 up to date, including periodic replacement of its
core.img, configfile supports all grub2 configuration files, and legacyconfigfile even
supports grub "legacy" configuration files. The issue arrises when using old old
old versions of grub2. There are some distros that still use ancient grub 1.98 versions.
Those are fine for their grub.cfg to continue to be updated by the distro kernel updater,
but it's better for the newest grub to be the one actually installed as the bootloader
(the creator of boot.img and core.img).


>  
> > Each distribution updates only their own grub.cfg. And as far as I'm aware, no
> distribution ever re-runs grub-install,
>  Distro upgrades and rescuing installations may do so. 
Again, I'm not aware of any distro that runs grub-install after the initial
installation. It actually would be a good idea for this to happen periodically, though. As
merely updates to the grub2 package does not cause the modules themselves to be updated,
or core.img recreated from those updated modules.

Nevertheless, nothing from distro A should touch the grub.cfg for distro B. And if you use
/etc/grub.d/40_custom, which should not be stepped on in an update, then the user should
be assured their use of configfile or legacyconfigfile or multiboot can continue to point
to the grub.cfg of other distros.

But the idea of using one grub to chainload another grub in a VBR just to read a
configuration file is what's fragile and prone to breakage. All kinds of forums are
full of this sort of problem.


Chris Murphy