Dual Booting LL 2.0 with other Ubuntu (14.04) based distros

[m654321]

Like a few of you, I have tried to dual boot LL 2.0 with other closely related distros, i.e. based on the Ubuntu 14.04 - when I choose LL 2.0 from the choice presented on the screen at boot-up, I get an error message that says "a filename was expected". In contrast, the previous LL 1.0.8 version does dual boot smoothly with other distros. Apparently, from reading elsewhere on this forum, it appears the problem has arisen from version 2 being adapted to dual boot more smoothly with Windows 7 or XP which has consequently made it incompatible with dual boots with other distros. Personally, I prefer running XP or Win 7 in a virtual machine, rather than dual booting because (1) it's quicker (I don't have to reboot in order to change the OS), and (2) I have been able to share files using a network link between the linux host and the MS Windows guest.

I am a newbie to Linux (post Win XP) though am becoming increasingly familiar with the use of basic command line in the terminal. I wondered if  someone could give myself and other newbies easy step-by-step instructions on how to modify the relevant root files or other files in LL 2.0 so that it is compatible with other Ubuntu 14.04 based distros in a dual boot situation.  Would it be possible to do this before you pull the plug on LL 1.0.8 support in the next few days?  I would be so grateful to anyone able to do this... 

Kind regards
Mike

[valtam]

Hi Mike, thanks for posting. The whole approach of Linux Lite is geared towards introducing Windows people to linux. With this in mind, everything we do, every decision we make is with the Windows user in mind. I don't know of many distros that focus completely on this group of users, some are purely for linux people whilst others attempt to please both sides. I am passionate about showing people there are alternatives to proprietary operating systems. We are not 'pulling the plug on LL 1.0.8 support' the upgrade procedure is clearly documented https://dfgkh547-jsdfv8.iyhkj.tk/forums/index...opic=645.0

Just wanted to explain things to give you and others a better insight into the Linux Lite project. Cheers

[gold_finger]

The dual-boot problem only occurs when another OS's grub is in charge of booting computer.  Easiest way to solve the problem is to make sure LL 2.0 is in charge of booting.  You can do that in one of two ways:

1.  Install LL 2.0 last and direct grub bootloader installation to the MBR of the drive (which is normally the default on any installation).

2.  If LL 2.0 is already on system and you don't want to bother re-installing it again, you can direct a re-installation of grub using a live DVD/USB.  To do that, first determine which partition on the drive is your LL root partition, then follow instructions on this page to re-install grub while booted with LL install DVD/USB:  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/...D_terminal.  If other OSs don't show on grub menu upon reboot, just boot into LL and run this in a terminal:

Code:

sudo update-grub

They'll all be on menu on subsequent boot-ups.


If you need help with any of this, post back with questions and details of your current situation:
-- What's already installed?
-- What is current partition layout?

• Post a screenshot from GParted and/or
  
• Output from these terminal commands:
  

Code:

sudo blkid
sudo parted -l

• If LL 2.0 is already installed, what partition is its root partition?  (If you know that.)
  

[m654321]

Many thanks Valtam and Gold Finger for both feedbacks - really helpful.

Valtam, I think your identification of Windows-users-in-transition as the target audience for LL (e.g. people like me!) is a an excellent aim.  My opinion is that those distros that try to satisfy both camps (i.e. both linux-competent & linux-newbie) risk being a bit too 'high-brow' for some of us beginners (me included), especially those without any programming background.  Thankyou also for the link for continued LL 1.0.8 support and the upgrade. Does the upgrade change the appearance or layout of 1.0.8 in any way?

Thankyou Gold Finger, for the instructions on how to dual boot LL 2.0 with another distro. Is it true that, in general, it's inadvisable to have a shared /home partition between the two distros (even if both based on the same release of Ubuntu e.g. 14.04), as the distros may interfere with each other via home with ugrades/updates etc? 

Kind regards
Mike

[valtam]

Does the upgrade change the appearance or layout of 1.0.8 in any way?

No

[gold_finger]

The /home directory(or partition) normally holds user program configuration files in addition to the user's data files.  It is possible that some of those config files may cause conflicts from one distro to the next, even if both distros have same base (Ubuntu for instance).  What I do to get around that potential problem is keep all data files on a separate partition that gets used by all distros and let each distro have their own /home.  By doing that, each distro's home only ends up containing the config files it needs along with links to the data on that separate partition.  It looks and acts like a normal setup, but the data is not physically on that /home.

Here is a tutorial describing how to do that:  https://dfgkh547-jsdfv8.iyhkj.tk/forums/index...opic=203.0.  When using a separate data partition like that, I don't bother making /home a separate partition -- I just let it reside on the same partition as root.  If you decide to still make /home as a separate partition, just keep in mind that it doesn't need to be very big because it's only holding config files.

[m654321]

[quote author=gold_finger link=topic=685.msg3622#msg3622 date=1406956488]
The dual-boot problem only occurs when another OS's grub is in charge of booting computer.  Easiest way to solve the problem is to make sure LL 2.0 is in charge of booting.  You can do that in one of two ways:

1.  Install LL 2.0 last and direct grub bootloader installation to the MBR of the drive (which is normally the default on any installation).

2.  If LL 2.0 is already on system and you don't want to bother re-installing it again, you can direct a re-installation of grub using a live DVD/USB.  To do that, first determine which partition on the drive is your LL root partition, then follow instructions on this page to re-install grub while booted with LL install DVD/USB:  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/...D_terminal.  If other OSs don't show on grub menu upon reboot, just boot into LL and run this in a terminal:

I tried the above, and used the instructions in the link, but sadly I couldn't get this to work.  In my dual boot system (LL 2.0 with zorin 9, both are ubuntu 14.04), only zorin showed up on grub screen.  So I mounted LL 2.0 using the Terminal within the live DVD of zorin 9 (and a subsequent attempt with LL live DVD), deleted/removed Grub from LL's sda (i.e. using sudo apt-get remove grub; sudo apt-get purge grub; sudo apt-get autoremove), and then reinstalled it according to your instructions.  This had the effect of grub now showing both distros listed, but when I choose LL it went to the LL's start up screen but hung indefinitely at this screen. A forced restart by pressing the Ctrl-Alt-Del keys produced the same again.  LL 1.0.8 dual boots very smoothly with zorin 9 - no issues whatsoever. By the way I ensured that LL 2 had the bootloader - on my laptop the first distro that is set up carries the flag boot, not the second as you mentioned in point (1) above. If I load LL 2 last, zorin 9 has the boot flag instead.  I tried redirecting the bootloader to LL using Gparted when I set up LL 2 last (instead of first), using the Gparted option to do this, but this didn't work either.

Shall I still send you a screenshot from Gparted or an output from the terminal (i.e. from sudo blkid). It would be great to dual boot LL 2.0 with another distro, instead of using LL 1.0.8 with another distro, as the more up to date LL version is significantly better.  Anyway, hopefully this one can be cracked... thanks for your continued support on this one.

Kind regards
Mike

[m654321]

See quote in post above - I tried the above, and used the instructions in the link, but sadly I couldn't get this to work.  In my dual boot system (LL 2.0 with zorin 9, both are ubuntu 14.04), only zorin showed up on grub screen.  So I mounted LL 2.0 using the Terminal within the live DVD of zorin 9 (and a subsequent attempt with LL live DVD), deleted/removed Grub from LL's sda (i.e. using sudo apt-get remove grub; sudo apt-get purge grub; sudo apt-get autoremove), and then reinstalled it according to your instructions.  This had the effect of grub now showing both distros listed, but when I choose LL it went to the LL's start up screen but hung indefinitely at this screen. A forced restart by pressing the Ctrl-Alt-Del keys produced the same again.  LL 1.0.8 dual boots very smoothly with zorin 9 - no issues whatsoever. By the way I ensured that LL 2 had the bootloader - on my laptop the first distro that is set up carries the flag boot, not the second as you mentioned in point (1) above. If I load LL 2 last, zorin 9 has the boot flag instead.  I tried redirecting the bootloader to LL using Gparted when I set up LL 2 last (instead of first), using the Gparted option to do this, but this didn't work either.

Shall I still send you a screenshot from Gparted or an output from the terminal (i.e. from sudo blkid). It would be great to dual boot LL 2.0 with another distro, instead of using LL 1.0.8 with another distro, as the more up to date LL version is significantly better.  Anyway, hopefully this one can be cracked... thanks for your continued support on this one.

Kind regards
Mike

[gold_finger]

Shall I still send you a screenshot from Gparted or an output from the terminal (i.e. from sudo blkid).

Yes, go ahead and post a screenshot from GParted showing the partitions on the drive.  (This post describes how to post a screenshot and terminal output if you need that info.)

Sounds like you can not boot into LL 2.0 at this point and the drive currently has only Zorin and LL on it.  Is that correct?  If not, tell us how many OSs are on the drive, which ones they are, and which ones you are able to boot into currently?

If you can boot into LL 2.0, then go ahead and do that.  If not, boot into Zorin and run the commands below.  (Let us know which distro you ran the commands from.)

Code:

lsblk
sudo blkid -c /dev/null
sudo parted -l
sudo os-prober

Just in case we can't tell from screenshot and command output, if you are currently sharing one /home partition between both OSs, let us know that.

I am pretty sure we can get this to work and that you probably just made a slight error in your prior attempt.  Also, just so you know, the boot flag shown in GParted is not something to worry about.  It's my understanding that, unless you have a very ancient BIOS,  Linux just ignores the boot flag.  (I could be wrong, but fairly certain I read that somewhere before.)

[m654321]

A big thank you for your continued support gold_finger.
Re: zorin/LL dual boot: sda1 = zorin 9; sda2 = LL 2.0. 
Below is the output copied/pasted from terminal, which I did from zorin (though LL now shows listed in grub screen, clicking on it produces an error message about a filename being expected)

zorin9@zorin9-X71Q:~$ lsblk
NAME  MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda          8:0  0  74.5G  0 disk
├─sda1  8:1    0  37.3G  0 part /
└─sda2  8:2    0  37.3G  0 part
sdb      8:16  0 931.5G  0 disk
├─sdb1  8:17  0    1K  0 part
├─sdb2  8:18  0  9.5G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sdb5  8:21  0  922G  0 part /mnt/DATA
sr0    11:0    1  1024M  0 rom 

zorin9@zorin9-X71Q:~$ sudo blkid -c /dev/null
[sudo] password for zorin9:
/dev/sda1: UUID="ddb72935-02d6-49ea-973b-053d68e104bb" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda2: UUID="fcde3e47-a512-482f-9ac7-00506968b433" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sdb2: UUID="5147c0ce-be05-47ab-be26-c623dff3d701" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sdb5: UUID="fc6ae4e0-1269-4163-a832-72df39c54914" TYPE="ext4"

zorin9@zorin9-X71Q:~$ sudo os-prober
  No volume groups found
/dev/sda2:Linux Lite 2.0 (14.04):Ubuntu:linux
zorin9@zorin9-X71Q:~$

Below is a blow-by-blow account of the dual distro set up...

Setting up a dual boot system for two distros (Linux Lite OS 2.0 with Zorin OS 9, both 64-bit)
On the first hard drive Zorin was installed, followed by LL.  On a second internal hard drive, a separate DATA partition was created to share files between the two distros, together with a separate swap file partition.
1. Set-up DVD for Zorin placed in DVD reader
2. “Install Zorin” option chosen
3. “download updates while installing” chosen
4. “something else” chosen
5. “new partition table” for sda (80 GB) and sdb (1 TB) chosen
6. The partition table ... the 80GB drive was partitioned into two parts.  The first, sda1, for installing Zorin was made a primary partition, while sda2 (for LL) was left as free space.

Device       Type Mount point Format         Size              Used            System
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1        ext4   /                    Yes                  39998 MB    unknown
free space                                                                40026 MB
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdb5        ext4    /mnt/DATA  Yes                  989999 MB    15745 MB
/dev/sdb2        swap                                                10203 MB            0 MB

7. Zorin files then copied from DVD and installed - username chosen = zorin9. Set up for zorin then completed.
8. Set-up DVD for LL placed in DVD reader
9. “execute LL”  chosen
10. “download updates while installing” chosen
11. “something else” chosen
12. Click on free space under /dev/sda
13. Click “+” and choose new partition for the free space, now made into sda2
14. Appearance of new partition table...
/mnt/DATA was retyped for sdb5 but format option NOT chosen.
Primary partition was chosen for sda2 with mount point at “/” chosen

Device Type Mount point Format         Size              Used            System
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1            ext4                                         39998 MB    10746 MB  Zorin OS 9 (9)
/dev/sda2            ext4      /                Yes                  40026 MB    unknown
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdb5            ext4    /mnt/DATA  Yes                989999 MB    15745 MB
/dev/sdb2          swap                                                10203 MB            0 MB

15. On the partition table window, the device shown for boot loader installation is given as:
/dev/sda      ATA FUJITSU MHW2080B (80 GB) 
However the option for boot loader installation on /dev/sda2 (which is the LL 2.0 partition) is the one chosen.


16. page shows that the default option this will be installed on.
However the option to change this to /dev/sda2 is chosen
17. LL  files then copied from DVD and installed - username chosen = ll2 (lower case LL!). Set up for LL then completed
18. Computer rebooted: Zorin appears on the grubscreen, but not LL.
19. Click on option for Zorin and the OS loads.
Appearance of partition table from Zorin using Gparted...
Device Type     Mount point Size              Used            Unused    Flags
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1        ext4     /                  37.25 GB      10.01 GB      27.24 GB  boot
/dev/sda2        ext4                          37.28 GB        3.65 GB      33.63 GB
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdb1        extended                  922.01 GB    -                      -
/dev/sdb5        ext4    /mnt/DATA    922.01 GB      14.66 GB    907.34 GB
/dev/sdb2        linux swap                    9.50 GB        4.00 KB        9.50 GB

20. After installing updates for Zorin a message regarding Debconf on zorin9-X71Q presents the following...
Configuring grub-pc
What do you want to do about modified configuration file grub?
Install the package maintainer’s version?
Keep the local version currently installed?
Show the difference between the two versions?
Show a side-by-side difference between the versions?
Show a 3-way difference between available versions?
Do a 3-way merge between available versions (experimental)?
Start a new shell to examine the situation?

I choose the first option in this list.

On rebooting LL and zorin appear as choices in grub screen but when LL chosen, a black screen is presented with an underlined message shown as “error: filename expected. Press any key to continue. . .”  though Zorin continues to reboot normally.

Please let me know if you need any other information.
Many thanks indeed for you time on this.
Kind regards
Mike