[sf-lug] Notes from the SF-LUG meeting of Monday November 25, 2016

[aaronco36]

Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com> wrote:

> Maestro is (or was) having a problem with Manjaro making 
> it impossible to get to the Linux Mint he had 
> previously installed.  Mint is still there
> but Manjaro has assumed control of the machine
> and nothing but the SuperGrubDisk2 could manage
> to boot it up.  But some of the tools that I
> have found useful seem to be missing from Manjaro
> and those on Mint seem to have no effect on the
> system or on Grub2's menu list.

> About 6:10 Aaron showed up with some problems as he is 
> ambitious about installing Slackware and a few other 
> distributions on his net-book sized laptop.  He wants 
> to experience the bleeding edge of software.  
> That can lead to problems, eh?

Several emendations on the above.

A. Maestro and I were _both_ avidly working on our GRUB 2x
issues with bootup. 
While Bobbie and myself were trying to assist maestro mostly 
with the _automatic_ installation and repair of the Grub2 
boot menu (with update-grub2, update-grub, SuperGrubDisk2) 
following Manjaro's "corruption" of Mint, I happened to put 
most of my major efforts on _manually_ trying fix GRUB 2x 
boot thru /boot/grub/grub.cfg entries.
On both our machines, my own emphases when viewing or 
directly editing /boot/grub/grub.cfg entries in such 
multiboot systems are 1) the specific double-digit__ 
sections that update-grub/update-grub2 generate from the 
/etc/grub.d/ entries, 2) the actual distro _description_ 
update-grub assigns in each 'menuentry' section, 3) the 
actual UUID (seen thru the 'blkid' command) that 
update-grub assigns to each sdX device-partition within 
each 'menuentry' section, and finally 4) the vmlinuz-* 
compressed _Linux kernel_ each 'menuentry' section 
actually loads.

B. I don't necessarily wish "to experience the bleeding 
edge of software" that "can lead to problems, eh?"
Better a desire to experience the more intermediate level, 
"back-from-the-bleeding-edge" of software through parent 
distros rather than derived distros.
Actually, 1st installed and then got rid of "Salix for the
lazy slacker" on that net-book size laptop. 
Afterwards, installed in order, Slackware 14.2 and then 
Debian Testing/"Stretch", replacing the default systemd init 
with sysvinit in the latter (didn't feel it necessary to go 
completely over to the "bleeding edge" Debian Unstable/"Sid".)
While the Bodhi 4.0 Linux I installed after Debian Stretch is 
certainly a distro derived from Ubuntu, I did want try out 
Bodhi 4.x's novel E17-derived Moksha desktop. 
IMHO, don't see a compelling need to use Bodhi 4.x and its 
Moksha desktop given the easy capability of using the 
lightweight window managers (Openbox, Fluxbox, jwm, IceWM...) 
on Slackware and Debian Stretch.

Think that am well-prepared at this time to soon install 
Manjaro's parent distro Arch Linux to supplement Slackware 
and Debian Stretch on this and other laptops. Have multiple 
backups of /boot/grub.grub.cfg as well as SuperGrubDisk2 on a 
boot USB thumbdrive just in case Arch Linux tries to mess up 
booting on Debian Stretch and/or Bodhi like Manjaro may have 
done unto Mint on maestro's laptop.

-A



_____________________________________________________________
Get your FREE, LinuxWaves.com Email Now! --> http://www.LinuxWaves.com 
Join Linux Discussions! --> http://Community.LinuxWaves.com