Multi-Multi Booting from the Ground Up

Here is my SSD with LM19 and KDE neon peacefully coexisting!
SSD.png
 


Yer gonna hhaaattteee me ;)

It's going to cause problems, likely, because there are two swaps and two ESPs both on the same physical drive.

At the very least, you will likely face confusion with adding additional Distros to the SSD, if that is your wish.

On one physical drive, in your case, /dev/sdb - whether you have only one Distro or 100 Distros (and you could easily have 10 on a 256GB SSD, with your setup of DATA in a dedicated partition on another physical drive, in your case /dev/sda), you should have only one (1) ESP and only one (1) Swap - they are shared.

Here's my current SOTN (State of The Nation) on my Dell Inspiron, with physical drives mimicking yours (except my HDD is 2 TB). Obvious difference is that Win 10 shipped on mine, Dell did the partitioning on the SSD, not the way I would have done it.


407kiev.png


SCREENSHOT 1 - WIZARD'S SOLID STATE DRIVE - GPARTED

Notes here -

  • One ESP here, at /dev/sdc1 (I would have put it at the end).
  • ESP is shared by Windows 10 and 4 Linux Distros (at 7, 8, 9, and 10) with another to follow at partition 12 "DistroReady"
  • No Swap
  • 1 GiB at /dev/sdc11 is simply of my doing for sharing Data between Win 10 and any Linux




uY8brFh.png


SCREENSHOT 2 - WIZARD'S HARD DISK DRIVE - GPARTED

Notes here -

  • No ESP here, no Swap, hence no flags at right
  • Timeshift partition at /dev/sda1 I set up when first populating the unit, and before I hooked in the WD external. It may stay for when I go travelling or else I'll take the My Book with me.
  • Same goes for /dev/sda2, a Data partition.
  • 5 Linux here, partitions 3 through 7
  • These are all sharing the same ESP as the Solid State Drive, which is on /dev/sdc1, so there are Windows OS and 9 Linux Distros sharing the same ESP, to date
I'll finish here for the moment, and start up a fresh Post, as there is activity here.

Cheers

Wizard
 
Last edited:
NO STOP JEFFREY UNTIL I FINISH THE ABOVE POST
 
Jeffrey, when you get a chance, can you give me the output, from each of the HDD and the SSD, of the following command

Code:
cat /etc/fstab

Cheers

Wiz

Edited added BTW

BTW I should clarify that - one from each Linux Distro that you have installed
 
cat /etc/fstab

From KDE Neon
Code:
jlap4@jlap4-X705UDR:~$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sdb5 during installation
UUID=8c74b568-e82c-4fc3-a751-3c507300324d /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=1701-0DA1  /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0077      0       1
# swap was on /dev/sdb3 during installation
UUID=1052f091-bb81-4e03-9e3b-2ed44ff42a0f none            swap    sw              0       0
# swap was on /dev/sdb6 during installation
UUID=8768d2f0-c8df-41e0-b61e-6702df572ef3 none            swap    sw              0       0
 
From LM19 Cinnamon
Code:
jlap4@jlap4-X705UDR:~$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sdb2 during installation
UUID=cf096c91-f5a3-48f9-8001-5152d4a38893 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=1701-0DA1  /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0077      0       1
# swap was on /dev/sdb3 during installation
UUID=1052f091-bb81-4e03-9e3b-2ed44ff42a0f none            swap    sw              0       0
 
From Ubuntu MATE

Code:
jlap4@jlap4-X705UDR:~$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=36c483d6-1f9b-4211-8ff5-932ba96a4315 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=1701-0DA1  /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0077      0       1
/swapfile                                 none            swap    sw              0       0
 
OK, last one's best one for playing spot the difference.

Stay tuned, I will be typing :)

Wiz
BTW Ta for the input ;)
 
Fast-tracking a little, on spot the difference - Beaver MATE has this as its bottom line

/swapfile none swap sw 0 0

The others don't.

This means that when installing Ubuntu, either you have actively chosen not to use/install Swap, or else Ubuntu has been miffed and made a reference to swap, even though there is "none", for Justin - just in case you change your mind. Lol.

This reference can cause the odd hiccup, and can impact on startup/shutdown time of the Distro.

Correct me if I am wrong with any of this, my back's broad, and I make booboos.

#28, in conjunction with #27, indicates LM 19 Cinnamon was installed first, followed later by KDE Neon.

KDE Neon has a different Installer setup, which is KDE - based, and you will have noted some differences in how it graphically represents your partition setup, and how Ubiquity does it for Ubuntu and Linux Mint Cinnamon, true?

If I just quote the 2 lines

Code:
# swap was on /dev/sdb3 during installation
UUID=1052f091-bb81-4e03-9e3b-2ed44ff42a0f none            swap    sw              0       0

... you can't tell whether it is from LM 19 Cinnamon's fstab, or KDE Neon's fstab ... that is the way it should be, if you use Swap. They share it.

But with the KDE Neon install, we got an additional Swap generated at /dev/sdb6, an additional Swap NOT needed, and either from a choice by yourself, or a glitch with KDE Neon's installer. An additional, outrageously large 16 GB, and in perspective - I can put whole Distros in 16 GB.

If you think your LM 19 Cinnamon is in a healthy state, I would be inclined to Go to my Timeshift on it, delete any snapshots that are there, close it down and wait a minute, then launch Timeshift and take a full snapshot of your Tara Cinnamon.

Then we can proceed to clean up (leaving the KDE Neon and Ubuntu in place if you wish), before you install your 4th Distro, which I take it from elsewhere is Xubuntu, is that so?

Cheers

Wiz
 
Sorry for the delay, I was called to see a patient. The error is on my end - when I installed MATE I didn't put in a swap partition but when I installed KDE and LM I did.
 
Both LM and Neon appear to be functioning well. I have noted, though on all 3 distros that shutdown takes much longer than I would expect. I will shutdown and do what you suggested in LM and with Timeshift and we can go from there. I apologize in advance if I am a bit slow to respond it is because I am called away to see a patient.
 
One more question - would simply deleting Ubuntu MATE fix the issue?

Nope - the additional Swap got added with KDE Neon and is causing the shutdown delays affecting all 3.

I have to go for a little while, but will be back.

Patients come first, and then ... patience !

Remember about spending perhaps one month with a Distro?

Cheers

Wiz
 
In your opinion, is laptop 1 fixable or should I put my missiles at ready and nuke it?
 
OK.... previous Timeshift's deleted and current one saved.

OK, on Mint you can run at Terminal "blkid", at Ubuntu and Manjaro it must be "sudo blkid", easiest is probably to preface it with sudo until you learn the differences between syntaxes.

So, from Tara Cinnamon, give us the output of

Code:
sudo blkid

This will identify for us where we need to take action. We can put the data together and formulate a plan of attack. Sound good?

We will be looking at editing a file with no extension, but it is a text file, called /etc/fstab, and we will be introducing you to a CLI command nano, which is a Text Editor based on its Parent, Pico.

The /etc/fstab we will likely be editing first will be that of KDE Neon.

Gotta go

Wiz
 


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