[Solved] Multiple Linux OS on one internal SSD

[JohnJ]

I do, Brian but have had a near faultless success rate with it.

I'll upload it with this post as an attachment, maybe others can let me know if they can't see the image in #14 ? TIA and thanks Brian.

Can see it no probs

 

[Brickwizard]

OK all had a dig and found.....
Imgur blocking its service in the UK is another consequence of the implementation of the Online Safety Act. The law itself has drawn criticism for violating users' privacy and not serving its intended purpose of protecting children. Unfortunately, with Imgur not willing to comply with UK rules, it was forced to stop providing its services there altogether.

 

[Brickwizard]

I have found a way round it but it is painful, If I use the Tor browser [I don't very often because its slower than FF,] I have to do the "I am human" from Cloudflair three times before I get to Linux org then I have to log in each time, also I get too many inappropriate and weird adverts [this mornings included Indian girlies, German underwear, vitamin pills, and saddles plus a Chinese one I dint understand]

 

[CaffeineAddict]

If I use the Tor browser

There is better solution for circumvention, psiphon:

GitHub - Psiphon-Labs/psiphon-tunnel-core: Psiphon is an Internet censorship circumvention system.

Psiphon is an Internet censorship circumvention system. - Psiphon-Labs/psiphon-tunnel-core

github.com

Sadly there is no deb package for it and there's also no UI like there is for Windows client, it needs to be built manually.

It works by creating a proxy service that routes all traffic trough proxy, if that's problem you can run it in VM, it's faster than tor.
I've been using it on Windows to visit a site that was banned here.

It's well known but like any proxy service there are privacy concerns.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

Now I do actually get a grub menu but only Zorin is listed.

OK, back to your topic, if you do sudo nano /etc/default/grub there is this line:

# If your computer has multiple operating systems installed, then you
# probably want to run os-prober. However, if your computer is a host
# for guest OSes installed via LVM or raw disk devices, running
# os-prober can cause damage to those guest OSes as it mounts
# filesystems to look for things.
#GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

But I suspect the default value is true already, however random search results suggest it may be disabled, so I'd uncomment this line and set to true to be sure.
Then run:

sudo update-grub

And reboot.

If it's still not working the comment in file above says to run os-prober, therefore run:

sudo os-prober

If you don't have it, install with sudo apt install os-prober

 

[JohnJ]

OK, back to your topic, if you do sudo nano /etc/default/grub there is this line:

# If your computer has multiple operating systems installed, then you
# probably want to run os-prober. However, if your computer is a host
# for guest OSes installed via LVM or raw disk devices, running
# os-prober can cause damage to those guest OSes as it mounts
# filesystems to look for things.
#GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

But I suspect the default value is true already, however random search results suggest it may be disabled, so I'd uncomment this line and set to true to be sure.
Then run:

sudo update-grub

And reboot.

If it's still not working the comment in file above says to run os-prober, therefore run:

sudo os-prober

If you don't have it, install with sudo apt install os-prober

Have decided to use the Nuclear Option. As I mentioned to Chris in my last post, I have well and truly stuffed it up with my fiddling and rather than continue to fix my errors I'll start again. It's no big deal. Before I mucked around with it I did actually have a Grub menu for the two OS but it was locked up so I began my stuffing up adventures. I bought an elcheapo wired mouse and keyboard and this is what locked Grub up. After trying various fixes, I had a brainwave to use another USB powered keyboard and mouse and suddenly everything worked. In the meantime with all my fiddling the Grub menu disappeared then reappeared with only Ubuntu showing. So now, no more stuffing around. I am going nuclear and will let Ubuntu and Zorin sort out the Grub menu, as they successfully did prior to my fiddling. Cheers John

 

[JohnJ]

Update! Update!
Gentlemen. As mentioned previously I went for the Nuclear Option and started from scratch. End result? I have Zorin and Ubuntu operating perfectly from my one SSD. Grub also now works.

In a nutshell, what I learnt installing multiple Linux OS (further explanations available if anyone is interested):

1. Do not use cable connected Mouse or keyboard. This one caught me out and resulted in days of fruitless and basically clueless searching for answers. Use wireless.
2. Do not have multiple monitors connected. Just use one to start with. There are a couple of important reasons for doing this.
3.Start with a ext4 formatted SSD. Don't split into partitions. Let Linux OS do this as you add OS. Can always resize and fiddle later.
4.When installing 2nd, 3rd, etc OS use the option that says something like 'Install A OS next to B OS'.
5. During the install always choose the Safe video driver option. Wording might vary but for the initial install use the Safest video driver option. Can always change this later when everything is updated and running properly.
6. If grub doesn't appear after 2nd install then use nano or something similar to modify /etc/default/grub and change Timeout Hidden from 0 to more than 0 and Timeout style from Hidden to Menu. Update after changes.
7. If only one OS is visible in Grub fix this via os-prober as you suggested.

It was actually all pretty straightforward really after I binned the wired Mouse and keyboard.

Thanks again gentlemen for your patience and good suggestions. With pleasure I now declare this Post [Solved]
Cheers
John

 

[Brickwizard]

Excelent
John, to mark solved, go to initial post and click edit, in the drop down box next to the title select solved

thanks

 

[JohnJ]

I am on a private forum [all ex-members of a defunct holiday forum] some of the members used to use imgur, but although all in the UK we started having the same problem, we use to have a one click link on the post template so had it removed

Excelent
John, to mark solved, go to initial post and click edit, in the drop down box next to the title select solved

thanks

Done

 

[wizardfromoz]

Wonderful news, John, I'm so happy for you.

Have to adjourn for my evening meal DownUnder, but will catch you up soon.

Chris

 

[JohnJ]

Wonderful news, John, I'm so happy for you.

Have to adjourn for my evening meal DownUnder, but will catch you up soon.

Chris

Thanks Chris. Cheers

 

[KGIII]

If I may, I'd like to point out some oddities in your experience when compared to my experiences.

I am not discounting (or dismissing) your experience. Rather, I'm hoping to give you some food for thought. Some mental bubblegum, if you will.

Do not use cable connected Mouse or keyboard. This one caught me out and resulted in days of fruitless and basically clueless searching for answers. Use wireless.

I do not normally use wireless input devices on any of my computers.

Do not have multiple monitors connected. Just use one to start with. There are a couple of important reasons for doing this.

This has never been an issue. In fact, I can configure the live instance to use multiple monitors.

Start with a ext4 formatted SSD. Don't split into partitions. Let Linux OS do this as you add OS. Can always resize and fiddle later.

While this can be confusing, we've used various installers that require you to do manual partitioning since day one. The advent of a GUI installer that does things like partition the drive for you is the more modern way.

The remainder of your points are reasonably good ideas. I've never worried about the safe graphics mode, but that could be something you needed to do to get a successful install.

Finally, congrats on getting Linux up and running! Now that you know how to install Linux, you might want to learn how to create backups. With good backups, you can be more comfortable exploring and trying new things. If you're into tweaking and trying a bunch of new things, you're eventually going to break something. That's okay. We've all been there. That's why we're so gung-ho about backups. (Remember, an untested backup is not a backup at all.)

 

[JohnJ]

If I may, I'd like to point out some oddities in your experience when compared to my experiences.

I am not discounting (or dismissing) your experience. Rather, I'm hoping to give you some food for thought. Some mental bubblegum, if you will.



I do not normally use wireless input devices on any of my computers.



This has never been an issue. In fact, I can configure the live instance to use multiple monitors.



While this can be confusing, we've used various installers that require you to do manual partitioning since day one. The advent of a GUI installer that does things like partition the drive for you is the more modern way.

The remainder of your points are reasonably good ideas. I've never worried about the safe graphics mode, but that could be something you needed to do to get a successful install.

Finally, congrats on getting Linux up and running! Now that you know how to install Linux, you might want to learn how to create backups. With good backups, you can be more comfortable exploring and trying new things. If you're into tweaking and trying a bunch of new things, you're eventually going to break something. That's okay. We've all been there. That's why we're so gung-ho about backups. (Remember, an untested backup is not a backup at all.)

Yes, It's interesting isn't it and I am sure that different computers and setups behave very differently. It's great to talk a little further about this as I am learning a lot.

The wired keyboard and mouse definitely locked up my grub menu. When I went wireless this stopped. This could have been because of the location of my wired USB connection location/s. I have found in the past different locations and which onboard USB connection was next to what USB connection made a difference.

As for multiple computers, here I found on my system that doing installs then getting these up and running it was much faster with just the one monitor. This of course could be just my setup and my video card but I see from quite a few online posts that many are lamenting that their installs and then actually operating completed installs (particularly Ubuntu) resulted in very long load times - sometimes up to 4 minutes load times. I too found this to be a problem so in desperation I disconnected one monitor and the problem went away. Once I fully completed the installs and updated all the video drivers and then reconnected the 2nd monitor load times were very quick. So, dunno why, but it worked for me.

Yes, I started off manually partitioning my SSD to have space for different for each OS. I am not sure if this actually made my installs more problematic or not. Due to all the problems I initially had with Grub I ended up just letting the installs figure out how to fit onto my SSD next to each other. So following your points, I am going to keep stuffing different Linux OS into my SSD so will try the manual partitioning approach. I have cloned my SSD so I am able to test to my hearts content.

Yep, I am a big fan of lots of backups. I use Foxclone and Rescuezilla extensively for image backups of each install but I am not sure about backing up an entire SSD with multiple Linux OS. I am using the Clone approach for this but would be interested if you think there is a different way.
Cheers
John

 

[JohnJ]

A bit more on this exciting Cloning vs Imaging stuff. I can do both, no probs but what I am interested in is can Foxclone or Rescuezilla Image the whole drive including the Grub layout? Note I say Imaging not Cloning. Up to now I have been Imaging a distro on a partition but as I now have more than one distro I would like to Image (not Clone) the whole lot - meaning all the distros AND the Grub setup.

I would like to do this because I want to save all this onto another SSD in it’s own backup partition. If I go down the Clone path it will just copy a complete SSD to another SSD.

Here's my pretend scenario where this would be useful.

I have multiple distros on one of my internal SSd’s but after fiddling with one of them I have broken one of the distros. Grub still works OK and the other distros work OK but the one that I fiddled with won’t load or do anything so I go to my combo Image and Grub backup on the backup partition of another SSD and I then pluck out (this is the technical term) and restore only the good Image of the now offending distro. Grub and the other distros are left alone, only the offending distro is restored.

Cheers John