reinstalling porteus HDD on asus FX502VM-AS73

Post#1 by **francois** » 29 Dec 2020, 18:24

A little shamed by this fact: the grub2 option for windows 10 vanished. I was about to reinstall linux on my /mnt/sdb3 partition, that is a debian xfce to get grub2 multiboot. All my partitions are devoted to the windows 10 installation except /mnt/sdb3 on which I set my linux systems. I work daily almost exclusively with porteus 4.0. I used to multiboot on porteus with a manjaro installation. It seems to be corrupted, though I can thru chroot procedure update-grub. I want to replace manjaro with debian.

The laptop is an ASUS fx502vm-as73
https://specspro.net/laptops/12237-asus ... ountry=ca/

partition scheme:

Code: Select all

root@porteus:~# blkid
/dev/sda1: LABEL="SYSTEM" UUID="A4F6-D1B1" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI system partition" PARTUUID="83b4f962-c103-497f-b414-6a49554177db"
/dev/sda3: LABEL="OS" UUID="ECAAFDD5AAFD9C70" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="25be6657-862e-4860-8b86-8a4c81e3f022"
/dev/sda4: LABEL="RECOVERY" UUID="EE608DF9608DC933" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="1fd515dc-dbac-4007-a5bf-3bbfb033d902"
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="DATA" UUID="C21AB9C71AB9B8AD" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="673d26a5-eb26-48e8-9a4a-103bd2f32dbe"
/dev/sdb2: UUID="3FCB-AF3F" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="034bb238-10c1-45eb-9f26-9a4b607fb3c8"
/dev/sdb3: UUID="5ef211e4-004a-4a22-9cc2-f39edcd73f7b" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="05e8ea3b-8601-401b-be83-59a448b3e34f"
/dev/loop0: UUID="2018-04-29-08-09-00-07" LABEL="Porteus" TYPE="iso9660"
/dev/loop1: TYPE="squashfs"
...

...
/dev/loop100: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/sda2: PARTLABEL="Microsoft reserved partition" PARTUUID="08f90186-2cdd-4b20-86dc-05fd3d4e7e40"
/dev/sdc1: UUID="56f5a254-6920-4f3b-9190-9bc72bf84cad" TYPE="ext2" PARTUUID="c4d17355-01"
root@porteus:~#

I have backed up my porteus hdd installation and all my precious data.The EFI partition on this computer is on sda1. I want to install grub, porteus and debian-xfce on sdb3.

If I boot debian-live from sdb3 from iso with copy2ram, can I install the new system on sdb3 where the iso of debian-live was installed?

Post#2 by **burdi01** » 30 Dec 2020, 10:24

IIUC you can still boot via Grub but you no longer have an entry for Windows.
If so then boot Windows via Grub:

Code: Select all

...
regexp --set=hdX '^(.*),' $root
...
menuentry 'Chainloader' {
   set root=($hdX,1)
   chainloader +1
 # ntldr /bootmgr
 # chainloader /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
}

If the "chainloader +1" does not work try the "ntldr /bootmgr" and if that does not work too try the 2nd chainloader.

For a correct understanding: The hdX above is the device, not the partition!
The problem with hd0, hd1, hd2 and so on in Grub is that there is no direct relation with sda, sdb, sdc and so on. In other words sda is not always hd0 and sdb is not always hd1.
The regexp above shows a way to isolate the hdX from the $root variable as set at boot or as the result of a search like "search --file --set=root /foo/bar.xyz".

Post#3 by **francois** » 30 Dec 2020, 14:31

@burdi:
So in your scheme
/dev/sda3: LABEL="OS" UUID="ECAAFDD5AAFD9C70" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition"
would be hdx.
And this would provide a grub2 bootable installation on sdb3.

But where should I host my the iso of the live system? On sda3 which is ntfs? Or maybe I am too much breaking my head to start from iso from hdd and should just put the iso on usb key. Thus forget about copy2ram.

Post#4 by **Ed_P** » 30 Dec 2020, 15:16

I boot ISOs and I host my ISOs, Porteus and others, on NTFS file system drives. I also host some on FAT32 USB drives.

Post#5 by **francois** » 30 Dec 2020, 23:45

So once the iso is booted from my /mnt/sda3 even though I started my system thru grub2 on /mnt/sdb3, I might reformat /mnt/sdb3 and reinstall grub2 from this mounted live iso. I would like tome to answer this one. He has been using the set iso mode for years.

Post#6 by **Ed_P** » 31 Dec 2020, 01:37

I would like tome to answer this one. He has been using the set iso mode for years.

So have I but you're welcome to wait.

Post#7 by **francois** » 31 Dec 2020, 04:01

Finally, I have intalled the live disk on usb with dd and reinstalled porteus and nemesis on sdb3. Tome seems to make a coming back. That is good news.