[solved] I want to install MX-18.3 to partition #19 on my HDD, but...

[JayM]

Can Thunar on the live USB see partitions 16 through 19?

[jbMacAZ]

Thunar sees all! Edit: except the swap partition

[jbMacAZ]

The only difference between the live USB and the installation is whether the system booted from a gpt HDD or an MBR USB stick. That shouldn't be relevant, but... This possibility was mentioned earlier (post #2)

[JayM]

The only difference between the live USB and the installation is whether the system booted from a gpt HDD or an MBR USB stick. That shouldn't be relevant, but... This possibility was mentioned earlier (post #2)

Do you mean MSDOS, as in the type of partition table? In Live USB Maker under the Advanced Options you can tell it to use a GPT partition table when it burns the ISO to the stick. Can you try that and see if your higher partitions are detected when you boot from it?

Also an installed MX boots using grub and the USB doesn't, so that's another possibility. Though I don't know why that should affect just the installer since Thunar on the USB is able to see all partitions. Hmm.

[jbMacAZ]

Unfortunately, the gpt partition table did not make the liveUSB minstall see the higher partitions.

[JayM]

Well, that eliminated that possibility. Thanks for trying it.

[fehlix]

No! minstall on the liveUSB can not see beyond partition 15. Minstall (same version) running on my actual installation on sda14 can.

I went further and made a snapshot of my install and then used it to make a liveUSB. When I run that liveUSB, it CAN'T see the partitions above #15 either. Something about the liveUSB makes the higher partitions invisible to minstall.

Just aut of curiosity, would you mind to install MX Linux on an USBstick using MX installer, so to say you install to the USB as you would do on internal drive. Do a full install, and let the Grub install onto the ESP of the USB stick. UEFI should see the ESP on the USB at boot and should find the /EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi on that stick automatically (at least in theory).

[jbMacAZ]

The good news is that the USB stick installation booted without any manipulation of the ESP .efi files. The bad news is that the installer ignored my choice of ESP partition and installed grub to the hard drive not the USB. Boot repair did not give me the option of installing grub to the USB. I also discovered when installing MX, it is very important to make sure that the MX root partition label is unique. Otherwise, the install fails.

My test procedure - installing MX 18.3-July to a USB:
Format the USB to FAT32
- Add a second small FAT32 partition with ESP and BOOT flags
Used Live USB Maker to burn 18.3-July.ISO to a second USB
- copied the grubx64.efi to mmx64.efi on the liveUSB ESP partition
booted the liveUSB (secure boot off)
minstall
- set root to sdc1 (FAT32 USB with 2 partitions)
- changed the default MX root label
- set EFI partition to sdc2
booted successfully to MX-18.3-July on the USB (unless you count grub in the wrong ESP partition)

FWIW, the new liveUSB of 18.3-July did show partitions above 15 in the installer. Perhaps something broke in remastering my original 18.3-Final liveUSB. Also, antiX19b2 minstall failed to format the necessary partitions on the USB and aborted with a grayed out screen and a watch icon mouse cursor, so a USB install is not currently possible with antiX19.

[fehlix]

FWIW, the new liveUSB of 18.3-July did show partitions above 15 in the installer.

Right, so the message is on hd-type install onto USB mx-install'er can read partitions above 15, but on the LiveUSB-type install
it cannot.

Perhaps something broke in remastering my original 18.3-Final liveUSB.

Rather suspect something else... not sure .. like some kernel modules not loaded with the Live initrd needed for those "extended above 15" gpt partitions ... that's a kind of missing module hunting for the live-initrd ...

[jbMacAZ]

One last observation on high partition numbers. If I fire up the liveUSB the partitions above 15 are not visible to minstall. If I then plug in another USB stick and restart the installer, then the other partitions ARE visible. When I eject that second USB and restart minstall, the partitions above 15 disappear from the installer but only the sdc partitions drop off lsblk.

Code: Select all

demo@mx1:~
$ lsblk
NAME    MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0     7:0    0   1.3G  1 loop /live/linux
sda       8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
├─sda1    8:1    0   500M  0 part 
├─sda2    8:2    0   128M  0 part 
├─sda3    8:3    0  98.5G  0 part 
├─sda4    8:4    0  30.3G  0 part 
├─sda5    8:5    0   450M  0 part 
├─sda6    8:6    0  11.6G  0 part 
├─sda7    8:7    0  44.2G  0 part 
├─sda8    8:8    0  16.6G  0 part [SWAP]
├─sda9    8:9    0  16.1G  0 part 
├─sda10   8:10   0  25.4G  0 part 
├─sda11   8:11   0 152.4G  0 part 
├─sda12   8:12   0  97.7G  0 part 
├─sda13   8:13   0  39.4G  0 part 
├─sda14   8:14   0  17.6G  0 part 
├─sda15   8:15   0  40.4G  0 part 
├─sda16 259:0    0 195.4G  0 part 
├─sda17 259:1    0  30.8G  0 part 
├─sda18 259:2    0  27.2G  0 part 
├─sda19 259:3    0  27.5G  0 part 
├─sda20 259:4    0  16.7G  0 part 
├─sda21 259:5    0  17.1G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda22 259:6    0  25.8G  0 part 
sdb       8:16   1  28.7G  0 disk 
├─sdb1    8:17   1  21.4G  0 part /live/boot-dev
└─sdb2    8:18   1    50M  0 part 
sdc       8:32   1  59.8G  0 disk 
├─sdc1    8:33   1  59.3G  0 part 
└─sdc2    8:34   1   489M  0 part 
sr0      11:0    1  1024M  0 rom