I currently have Win 10, Manjaro XFCE, EOS-i3 (my fave) and have just installed Archlabs on my ASUS laptop after some shenanigans and steep learning curves because my efi partition was full (I ended up having to physically copy its contents to another partition, delete it and then make a bigger one and then copy back the contents since gparted couldnt fill the enlarged partition with its contents)
I could boot to archlabs but then had to do the following to get Manjaro to boot (Iâm used to having to do this, but not exactly sure why):
boot up and press âcâ at the menu to get to the grub prompt (grub>).
I suggest this for multi boot, with any combo of Linux, Linux and Windows, etc,. I tri booted Linux, Windows, and OS X years ago on my old iMac with rEFIt, which was the precursor to rEFInd.
Thanks @PackRat
Yes I did, found nothing that helped me tho - although I could well have missed something
and I searched elsewhere, most problems were problems with Win booting tho
Its really that I dont understand the efi I think
Could it be something to do with where efi is mounted?
I noticed for Manjaro it was /boot/efi and for Archlabs it is /boot
Note: I know my swap is way too generous, but I sliced this SSD over a year ago after I first installed it, and have been too lazy since to shave it
The EFI partition is key, this partition setup I have abused since I installed the SSD with all kinds of distros that I can boot into at any given drunken moment, but that is where despite nuking GRUB, rEFInd, anything, that partition right there is what matters. To multi boot means you have to multi-slice/partition your drive IMO in order to do anything with it. I can install any distro and Windows with it. But you have to make sure that boot partition is flagged for EFI.
Now if you already can boot into either Borkjaro (I hate Manjaro so bear with me) or Arch, but your grub doesnât boot into your other distro, just install rEFInd via the pacman or AUR, then:
refind-install
refind-mkdefault (which is does at the first command, but itâs a good practice to make sure via the second).
Then get into your BIOS and set your boot order to have rEFInd to boot first.
Easy as peasy, then once you get that down, you can customize the rEFInd window or whatever:
Thanks,
My Efi partition is flagged boot and my setup looks much like yours but with more partitions
Its what all the different files in this partition do and why I have what seems to be repeats of grub directory (/boot/efi/grub and /boot/grub) that I dont understand
For example when I âwriteâ the Manjaro grub to sda what files does this mean, and where?
etc etc
is one of the grub folders what gives me the Manjaro Grub menu and the other that gives me the Archlabs Grub Menu? (these are the two I have, depending on if I select Manjaro or Archlabs as 1st boot in BIOS (not sure if its called BIOS anymore but its the blue screen via F2 on ASUS)
Thanks!
Ah, now I have been promoted to Basic I can edit and wont be making multiple posts as above (as I had to as I was rebooting into each OS between posts and couldnt edit - sorry!)
EDIT:
by opening the two grub.cfg files I can see that:
The grub folder at /boot/grub is the Manjaro one
The grub folder at /boot/efi/grub is the Archlabs one
Make a custom grub entry in Archlabsâ grub to chainload the Manjaro grub
(Inspired by this post on the Mint forums)
1/ In Archlabs:
sudo nano /etc/grub.d/40_custom
insert the last two lines:
#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
menuentry "Manjaro GRUB chainloader" {
chainloader /efi/Manjaro/grubx64.efi
2/ update grub:
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
(or install and simply use update-grub wrapper thingy)
3/ Set laptop to boot 1st to Archlabs via firmware UEFI settings
4/ Use the Archlabs GRUB menu for Archlabs, EOS and Windows
[EDIT: in fact to get EOS to boot from the Archlabs GRUB menu I had to edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg to add the missing /boot/initramfs-linux-lts.img to the initrd line under the EndeavourOS Linux menuentry - I have no idea why (I did try to update-grub in EOS and then in Archlabs, but it didnt add that bit) and this edit was undone on grub-update, so is a very flakey solution )]
5/ Or use the âMangaro GRUB chainloaderâ entry to go to the Manjaro GRUB menu if I want to boot to Manjaro,
But, I dont think I will be doing 5/ very often as I MUCH prefer Archlabs [Openbox] & EOS [i3]
[EDIT #4: I edited the Manjaro GRUB to set Default to 0 (1st, entry, Manjaro) and set the delay to 0 sexonds so that I dont even see the Manjaro GRUB menu before it boots into Manjaro]
Now to find out how to remove grub menu entries that wont work to tidy up âŚ
[EDIT#3: I just cut the relevant Manjaro menuentries out of /boot/grub/grub.cfg to carry on my flakey solution :)]
EDIT #2: NB I installed Archlabs and EOS on another laptop with no Manjaro and there were no such problems
On the old ASUS S200E I installed EOS first then AL (it already had Win10 on it, and that is still there, although gathering dust )
Except that the GRUB in use is the EOS one as I did update-grub on EOS afterwards - no idea why
I just tried update-grub on AL but got the following error:
/usr/bin/grub-mkconfig: line 261: /boot/grub/grub.cfg.new: No such file or directory
On the even older ASUS EeePC I have AL on its own
EDIT: Are all these problems to do with mounting efi at /boot or /boot/efi depending on OS?
)]
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