I have a nicely set up dual boot on nvme: manually installed each partition for LMDE, including efi partition and swap. Then created a partition into which I cloned existing installation of Ubuntu on a usb. That was months ago and it worked fine. What surprised me was that Ubuntu seemed to take over, like a dominance, the booting process. If I didn't initiate booting into LMDE manually by pressing down arrow at the booting stage, it would automatically go to Ubuntu, which put itself to the top.
Yesterday I had a play session (half of the day, to be honest). I made a clone of the entire nvme as above, on a usb. I firstly removed two partitions: where I had music data and the Ubuntu partition. Then I shrank Swap partition (I originally made it too big). Then extended the LMDE partition and shifted it in gparted to the left, to be nice and organised after I shrank the swap partition, so I will have more space for a different partition with a different distro later on. I got a warning that it might fail to boot. It was a play usb, not a system I want to keep stable, so I didn't mind that much.
Later on I booted from the USB and it did boot, but I am not sure whether it was acutally so. lsblk showed the root partition / in the usb, but I am not sure it was really it, as the clone was in the same computer where the identical content was on the nvme and they were identical systems.
Later in the evening the usb didn't want to boot in a different laptop, where it didn't have the same nvme as the previous one above. I tried various steps with assistance of the chat bot, had the Grub>: screen, manually mounting partitions and setting boot, redoing intramfs (twice), but on reboot it always failed, going to an emergency mode, saying the boot was locked. I also reinstalled grub twice with no success. For a moment I had a mint logo on the screen but then it went to the Grub screen if I remember it right. At one time it even showed me Debian for a while in the top left corner also at the Grub screen. I don't have Debian installation on its own, but I understand LMDE is Debian based (as is Ubuntu).
Does someone know whether the booting problem was because I removed Ubuntu like a barbar without fixing the bootloader first, or because I shifted the LMDE partition like that? Or both?
So I can avoid these mistakes later. I made another clone of the nvme on that usb, ready to start all over.
1. I would like to resize the swap partition (now 40GB) and use the freed space for other purpose. But just shrinking it it creates unallocated space between swap and main LMDE installation, wasting the capacity of the system.
2. I want to get rid of the Ubuntu and install something else, but I need to make sure it doesn't leave its print in the bootloader.
When happy with the system I will clone it into my third machine for use in the future.
In the worst case scenario I could manually install LMDE once again, with smaller swap partition, but that as the last resort, getting fed up with repeated configurations of the new system. That's why I am not a proper distro hopper.
Yesterday I had a play session (half of the day, to be honest). I made a clone of the entire nvme as above, on a usb. I firstly removed two partitions: where I had music data and the Ubuntu partition. Then I shrank Swap partition (I originally made it too big). Then extended the LMDE partition and shifted it in gparted to the left, to be nice and organised after I shrank the swap partition, so I will have more space for a different partition with a different distro later on. I got a warning that it might fail to boot. It was a play usb, not a system I want to keep stable, so I didn't mind that much.
Later on I booted from the USB and it did boot, but I am not sure whether it was acutally so. lsblk showed the root partition / in the usb, but I am not sure it was really it, as the clone was in the same computer where the identical content was on the nvme and they were identical systems.
Later in the evening the usb didn't want to boot in a different laptop, where it didn't have the same nvme as the previous one above. I tried various steps with assistance of the chat bot, had the Grub>: screen, manually mounting partitions and setting boot, redoing intramfs (twice), but on reboot it always failed, going to an emergency mode, saying the boot was locked. I also reinstalled grub twice with no success. For a moment I had a mint logo on the screen but then it went to the Grub screen if I remember it right. At one time it even showed me Debian for a while in the top left corner also at the Grub screen. I don't have Debian installation on its own, but I understand LMDE is Debian based (as is Ubuntu).
Does someone know whether the booting problem was because I removed Ubuntu like a barbar without fixing the bootloader first, or because I shifted the LMDE partition like that? Or both?
So I can avoid these mistakes later. I made another clone of the nvme on that usb, ready to start all over.
1. I would like to resize the swap partition (now 40GB) and use the freed space for other purpose. But just shrinking it it creates unallocated space between swap and main LMDE installation, wasting the capacity of the system.
2. I want to get rid of the Ubuntu and install something else, but I need to make sure it doesn't leave its print in the bootloader.
When happy with the system I will clone it into my third machine for use in the future.
In the worst case scenario I could manually install LMDE once again, with smaller swap partition, but that as the last resort, getting fed up with repeated configurations of the new system. That's why I am not a proper distro hopper.
