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

[gold_finger]

m654321,

Thanks for the detailed response.  This should be an easy fix!  However, now that I see how thorough you are, I'm worried that you may not have made some minor error before and the problem is more difficult than I first thought.  We'll soon find out.  Follow steps below and everything should end up working.  If it doesn't then we've got a more difficult problem than I thought.

*  Boot computer with live Linux Lite DVD (not Zorin DVD)

*  When up and running, open a terminal

*  Mount the LL2 root partition on the HDD to the live environment

Code:

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt

*  Install grub to the MBR of sda drive

Code:

sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sda

*  Unmount the LL2 root partition

Code:

sudo umount /dev/sda2

*  Close terminal, shutdown live DVD and remove from tray.

*  Boot computer normally again and you should have LL2 grub menu show up with LL2 being first (default) choice and Zorin further down list.  (LL2 is now in charge of booting the computer.)  It's possible that it may either boot straight into LL2 without giving boot menu, or show boot menu without Zorin on it.  If either of those two things happens, then let computer boot into LL2, open a terminal and run command to update grub.  That should add Zorin to menu and cause grub menu to show on next reboot.

Code:

sudo update-grub

Let us know if this worked.

[m654321]

Great news !! It w-o-r-k-s ....

....just to be certain of this (after entering in the terminal what you suggested in the above post, I logged off & rebooted into both LL & zorin at least a couple of times.  I discovered that I didn't even need to remount LL.  I think it didn't work before as the command "sudo umount /dev/sda2" was missing.

Gold_finger, I assume you are one of the development team at LL - is that correct?  I really appreciate how helpful you have been.  To express my gratitude I've just made a donation to the LL cause... keep up the excellent work!

Kind regards
Mike

[gold_finger]

m654321,

Glad to here all worked out well.

Gold_finger, I assume you are one of the development team at LL - is that correct?  I really appreciate how helpful you have been.  To express my gratitude I've just made a donation to the LL cause... keep up the excellent work!

Yes, but only in a minor way.  Valtam is the mastermind behind LL development.  So far, I've only contributed content to the Help Manual, but am not involved in coding of system.  (Am trying to learn some programming and maybe I'll get to the point where I can contribute in that way also in the future.)  On behalf of LL, thank you very much for the donation -- it's much appreciated.

[m654321]

Gold_Finger, you said re. shared data partition...

Here is a tutorial describing how to do that:  https://www.freecinema2022.gq/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.

The above was to do with creating a separate /mnt/DATA partition to share between zorin & LL. I did this - it worked well using the symlink method.  However I have two internal hard drives on my laptop and would like to organize partitions in such a way as to increase efficiency in the way the two operating systems work.  The core of each OS will go on sda, while the /mnt/DATA and separate home partitions (i.e. zorin6/home and ll2/home) will go on sdb.

My question is this -  ...when I create the links from zorin & LL to /mnt/DATA, I assume should use the UUIDs of the separate home partitions on sdb, rather than the UUIDs of the core of the operating systems on sda? Also if I run a virtual machine (e.g. using Oracle Virtualbox to run Windows XP), will this automatically be installed on /mnt/DATA, or will it appear in zorin/home or ll/home?

PS. Yes, I found the config files on the separate home partitions for both zorin and LL only took up between 60 and 70 MB of disk space.

[gold_finger]

Also if I run a virtual machine (e.g. using Oracle Virtualbox to run Windows XP), will this automatically be installed on /mnt/DATA, or will it appear in zorin/home or ll/home?

I'm going to answer this first.

Virtual Box creates two things in your home folder -- configuration related files and a place where it stores your VMs (Virtual Machines).

• Config file = /home/username/.config/VirtualBox
  
• VM files = /home/username/VirtualBox VMs  (or something to that effect)
  

If you want the VMs to be saved on your DATA partition (good idea), you will need to create a folder on the DATA partition for them first ("VBox_VMs" for example).  Then copy everything in /home/username/Virtualbox VMs over to /mnt/DATA/VBox_VMs.  ("VBox_VMs" is just my example -- you can be name it whatever you want.  Would be best to not have spaces in the name.)  Once you've copied that over, open VirtualBox and change the default location that it looks to for those VMs.

*  From main VBox window, click File -> Preferences
*  Under General -> Default Machine Folder fill-in the location where you want those VMs to be stored.  In your case, that will be something like /mnt/DATA/VBox_VMs.  (Mine reads differently because I use the bind method instead of symlinks.)


*  Click OK when done.
*  Shutdown VBox and restart it.

I can't remember if the machines you have automatically show as available right away or if you need to "add" them back to main interface window.  If you don't see them, click Machine -> Add.  That will open the new folder location that you set for it to look in and list your VMs.  Highlight the one you want and hit Open.

Once you confirm that everything works, go ahead and delete that original folder, /home/username/VirtualBox VMs.

If you want to create a symlink to that new folder location in /home/username follow same format as you did to create the other symlinks:

Code:

ln -s /mnt/DATA/VBox_VMs /home/username

If you want the VMs to be save in your /home partition, then you'll need to take that into account when choosing a size for the /home partitions.  It will need to be much bigger in order to accomodate the size of the virtual drives you'll be making.  However, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to put them in /home.  If you have them on the DATA partition, you can keep and re-use them when installing new OSs and you can also use the same VMs in both LL and Zorin rather than duplicating them in each OS's /home.

However I have two internal hard drives on my laptop and would like to organize partitions in such a way as to increase efficiency in the way the two operating systems work.  The core of each OS will go on sda, while the /mnt/DATA and separate home partitions (i.e. zorin6/home and ll2/home) will go on sdb.

My question is this -  ...when I create the links from zorin & LL to /mnt/DATA, I assume should use the UUIDs of the separate home partitions on sdb, rather than the UUIDs of the core of the operating systems on sda?

I'm assuming you are asking about how entries should look in /etc/fstab file.  Answer is "No".  The UUIDs of the home partitions are not involved in the symlinking process.

With regard to anything on the DATA partition that you are symlinking to, the line for mounting the DATA partition does not change no matter where you are symlinking to.  You still have just one line with the UUID of the DATA partition for auto-mounting it on boot (not counting a comment line you may want to describe the mounting line).  Basically, when you're done each OS will have lines for mounting:

• their root partition
  
• their home partition
  
• the swap partition
  
• the DATA partition
  

If you are planning to re-install both OSs so they each have a separate /home partition, the install process will automatically create fstab lines for the partitions you designate when installing.  When selecting partitions and setting mount points during the install process, if you also select the DATA partition and assign it the mount point "/mnt/DATA", that too will be automatically entered into the fstab file.  Just remember not to check the box to format that DATA partition if you've already got things on it.  (If you prefer, you can just set up the DATA partition after the installation and manually add the entry needed in fstab.)

If the DATA partition is brand new (not the same one you have already started using), you will need take ownership of the mount point after booting into each distro.

Code:

sudo chown -R your-username:your-username /mnt/DATA

If you are using same DATA partition that you've already setup, you shouldn't need to do that unless you have changed your username to a different one than what you have now.  That's because in Linux the permissions are set on the filesystem itself and stay with it until you change it again.  You could move that drive to a different computer and as long both computers have you setup with the same username and UID#, you will be able to access and use the files on that DATA partition immediately without needing to use a root password.

If you are planning to add a new /home partition after-the-fact to each installation -- that is a different situation and can be a bit complicated.  I've not done that myself, so here are a couple of links that get into those details:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partit...ome/Moving
http://www.howtogeek.com/116742/

(Not sure if old symlinks will still work or not.  You might need to redo them.) 

[m654321]

Gold_finger, many thanks for the above, which I will try in the next few days while I still have some vacation left...!
A more basic problem with my laptop has presented itself in the last couple of days. I'm unsure whether it's a hardware issue and whether it can be resolved using the terminal.

For some reason. that I'm unable to fathom, the internal drives sda and sdb are not working together in a coordinated way. I'll just clarify this. Earlier this month, to maximise efficiency of operation, I put the core part of the distro OS on sda, and the /home, /mnt/DATA, and swap on sdb.  It worked very well and I noticed, as you'd expect, a much crisper snappier response from the computer with open/closing files etc.  However, this doesn't happen any longer. The entirety of the OS has to be installed on either sda or sda - no sharing of parts of the OS between sda & sdb works any more as I just get a blank (black) screen on boot up (i.e. no grub screen appears) and it just stays like that with the cursor blinking indefinitely. Curiously, the laptop will run two distros separately, that is one installed entirely on sda, the other on sdb and will show both of these listed on the grub screen at boot up.

The only thing that has changed with my set-up was that I bought a USB games steering wheel for my young son so that he could play supertuxkart. A few days later (after he began playing with this) the laptop cut out one day and powered off. The 3A fuse in the plug had blown and was replaced. I also noticed flicker with the graphics after this at the beginning of a game but it disappeared once the game was underway.  At the time, with the steering wheel set-up, I was only using an OS installed entirely on sda.  However since then I have lost coordinated operation between sda and sdb as described in the first para above.  I don't know whether the two are linked and whether I can retrieve normal sda/sdb shared OS operation as before through the use of the terminal.

I'd be grateful for any views or ideas you might have on this. I'm hoping it is not time to fork out for a new laptop...

Kind regards
Mike

[gold_finger]

Sounds like something got changed by accident on the system.  If both HDDs work without problem when installing one OS in entirety to each, then would guess that nothing wrong with them.  Sounds like you have re-installed that way for now -- correct?  Before you changed to one OS per HDD, did you have problem booting into both OSs from grub menu or just into LL?

I can't think of any reason why booting and performance would get messed up simply by attaching a game wheel.

Do you remember if you performed any updates recently in LL 2.0?  If so, there may have been an update that asked you whether to replace a couple of config files with new versions or keep existing ones.  The right answer to that is to keep the existing configs.  Maybe you replaced them and that somehow caused the problem.  Here's a long post describing what I'm talking about:  https://www.freecinema2022.gq/forums/index...opic=632.0.

Have you tried re-installing with partitions spread over both drives again?

I'm really not sure what the problem is.  My setup is similar to yours except I don't use a /home partition.  I have root partitions and a data partition on one drive; swap and a couple of other partitions on another drive.  Below I've attached output showing my drives with mount points and also a copy of my fstab file.

Code:

bill@Gold:~$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 298.1G  0 disk
├─sda1   8:1    0    25G  0 part
├─sda2   8:2    0     1K  0 part
├─sda3   8:3    0 223.1G  0 part /mnt/DATA
└─sda5   8:5    0    25G  0 part /
sdb      8:16   0 596.2G  0 disk
├─sdb1   8:17   0     9G  0 part [SWAP]
├─sdb2   8:18   0   230G  0 part
├─sdb3   8:19   0     1K  0 part
├─sdb5   8:21   0    40G  0 part /mnt/ISOs
├─sdb6   8:22   0    40G  0 part
└─sdb7   8:23   0   200G  0 part /mnt/VBoxHDs
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom 
bill@Gold:~$ 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/sda5 during installation
UUID=a9222190-0805-47ef-a2e2-e98b19d84b54 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sdb1 during installation
UUID=c4933327-f314-42ee-8b4a-ec3e48a0ded5 none            swap    sw              0       0
# Mount DATA partition
UUID=ceee2524-7df2-4d21-a1f7-9e7e55c722cc    /mnt/DATA    ext4    defaults    0    2
# Mount ISOs partition
UUID=15443ba5-bdd0-4f0d-ae19-420022a7aab7    /mnt/ISOs    ext4    defaults    0    0
# Mount VBoxHDs partition
UUID=3e68db3c-2acd-4718-812e-93e10bf63cf5    /mnt/VBoxHDs    ext4    defaults    0    0

If you haven't tried re-doing the installs across both HDDs and have the time to do it, try again and make sure your fstab file ends up similar to mine (different UUIDs ofcourse).

If by chance you currently still have this setup

Code:

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 

and can not boot into your installed LL, boot up with your live LL DVD.  Then open a terminal and post back output of following commands:

Code:

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
cat /mnt/etc/issue
cat /mnt/etc/lsb-release
cat /mnt/etc/fstab
sudo umount /mnt

Maybe those will give a clue as to what's going wrong.

[m654321]

Many thanks for your reply above - I will give this a go...

[m654321]

Gold_finger, the good news is that sda & sdb are now working cooperatively, with the OS files spread out between the two physical drives. With your help, I appear to have solved the problem I mentioned about failure to boot-up, following the LL's OS files being shared between the two hard drives.

The problem I had appears to be due to be me incorrectly using 'Y' in response to being asked to upgrade to the maintainer's newer version, instead of using the correct default option of 'N'. It now explains a lot of the instability I have experienced generally, since I  came over to linux in  April 2014.

I recommend that, within the installation guide, or even as a banner on LL's website home page, the use of default option of  'N' should be very clearly highlighted. I wonder how many newbies to linux have been tripped up with this inadvertent error?  In the link you sent me about this issue, I thought very much the same way as the person in that forum posting who had this very same problem - I assumed (wrongly) that the maintainer's version was Valtam's Linux Lite - the idea of a throwback to Ubuntu never occurred to me.

I have a question on the size for separate  /home/username  partitions for  LL & the other distro in a dual-boot set-up. Since all my usual folders will be in the separate DATA partition, I will, as you pointed out, only need small /home/username partitions. I noticed the files in the separate home appeared to take up around 60-70 MB, following a fresh install, so I set the size for each of the separate home partitions at 250 MB.  This appeared too small, as subsequently some items were missing on panel bar following boot-up.  Another time I used 1.8 GB, and this seemed to be okay. Maybe I should go for 5GB for as a safe bet, as I assumeg the amount of space taken up by config files in /home will increase over time. I have 1TB for sdb, so space is not an issue here.  What do you think?

Also when I create the separate home partitions, should they be named  /home/username  or  /home/username/    (slash also after 'username')
I know you don't use separate  /home  partitions, but I have found that the response of LL appears to be noticeably crisper/snappier with them, so would quite like to continue with this as long as it continues to work (!).

[gold_finger]

Glad you got it sorted out.

The problem I had appears to be due to be me incorrectly using 'Y' in response to being asked to upgrade to the maintainer's newer version, instead of using the correct default option of 'N'....

I recommend that, within the installation guide, or even as a banner on LL's website home page, the use of default option of  'N' should be very clearly highlighted.

Will look into possible better emphasis in Help Manual.

I have a question on the size for separate  /home/username  partitions for  LL & the other distro in a dual-boot set-up.

Also when I create the separate home partitions, should they be named  /home/username  or  /home/username/    (slash also after 'username')

Size?  2-5GB should be fine, but may vary depending on your exact setup and how you do things.  If you kept the "Desktop" folder in /home/username and you tend to temporarily save/put things on the desktop, keep that in mind as possible guide for the size of /home.  Eg. If you try to download a large 4GB ISO file to the Desktop (instead of Downloads folder on the Data partition), but only made /home 2GB -- the download will fail due to lack of space.

Naming?  You should not be creating the partition as "/home/username" -- partition should just have mount point of "/home".  (Trailing "/" makes no difference -- "/home" and "/home/" mean same thing.)  The system will put all users' home directories under /home automatically, giving you /home/username.  Eg.  If computer is used by two people -- "me" and "you" -- then directories "/home/me" and "/home/you" will be created in "/home" for each user.  (NOTE:  You may want to increase size of /home partition if you will have more than one user on the computer.)