MX23 SysVinit KDE crashed after installing (dbl boot) another distro

[Erica]

Aaannnnndd I crashed it !
haha, typical me.
I was running a working-ish MX23 SysVinit KDE, with all mod listed in this post and others,
I went on to install Parrot in a separate everything (separate /, obviously, separate /VAR, separate /USR, separate /TMP, and *I think* separate swap (at install, one can't mount swap, so it's up to the install OS to decide wich one to use, or both, or none -zswap0-

After installing Parrot, reboot, Parrot spashscreen, and every single option leads to Parrot, even the MX23 entry
I've tried a few tweaks, boot-repair and such, leading to neither Parrot nor MX to boot.
crying ....
I decided to reinstall, but then my partition table appeared corrupted !
So ... one week to manipulate raw data, dd'ing it to external drive (NTFS, it's my Win10 sauvagarde)
Re-do the partitioning, and started installing Fedora FSL (38)

That's where I'm at, now, with a Fedora FSL (38, soon EoL) working, currently full-upgrade to Fedora FSL 39,
And then I will resume trying to salvage MX23 (as I don't want to have to reinstall everything from scratch) but if it still doesn't work, then .... reinstalling MX23 again.

Since Boot-Repair doesn't work (MX23 still doesn't appear in Grub) what should I try, what should I test ?
Where I am, I considere MX23 gone, so any test suggestion will be welcome and applied, no fear to lose MX

Thank You !

[Erica]

Since I can't access MX, I can't post the usual system config :(

I'm still on a Thinkpad T440p, 4910MQ; 16Gb RAM;

[davidy]

Virtualbox? I installed and ran it to run different iso's but the guest additions iso was not at the time a synaptic recommend like it apparently is now, complete with sysvinit scripts I believe. Other than that there are various boot mgr applications that help with dual booting multiple os's. None of which I have tried. I bought 2 minipc's specifically so that I would not have any dual booting issues as my printer just works in windows.
As much as I'd love to have a 16 core+ monster pc to run proxmox the thought of all the fans, and money, and maintenance in the end puts me off.
Was looking at an unraid video (onetime fee of $249 for lifetime updates) and that really does want a monster pc to work good. I can buy multiple minipc's and still not have enough for the monster.

[Erica]

TY you for sharing :)

But that doesn't addresse the problem at hand, how do I fix the boot so my MX comes back to life
In the /boot:

Code: Select all

root@fedora:/boot# ls -l
total 388764
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root    255900 Mar 29  2023 config-6.2.9-300.fc38.x86_64
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root    272228 May 16 22:00 config-6.8.10-200.fc39.x86_64
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root    272192 May  1 22:00 config-6.8.9-100.fc38.x86_64
drwx------. 7 root root      4096 Dec 31  1969 efi
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root      4096 May 25 14:47 extlinux
drwx------. 3 root root      4096 May 25 15:37 grub2
-rw-------. 1 root root 112003902 May 24 14:05 initramfs-0-rescue-02e2df67e7f14e5fb4ec4dce4f463ce8.img
-rw-------. 1 root root  40603596 May 24 14:06 initramfs-6.2.9-300.fc38.x86_64.img
-rw-------. 1 root root  79191822 May 25 15:09 initramfs-6.8.10-200.fc39.x86_64.img
-rw-------. 1 root root  79238011 May 24 20:18 initramfs-6.8.9-100.fc38.x86_64.img
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root      4096 May 24 14:04 loader
drwx------. 2 root root     16384 May 24 13:58 lost+found
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root        45 May 24 14:04 symvers-6.2.9-300.fc38.x86_64.gz -> /lib/modules/6.2.9-300.fc38.x86_64/symvers.gz
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root        46 May 25 15:09 symvers-6.8.10-200.fc39.x86_64.xz -> /lib/modules/6.8.10-200.fc39.x86_64/symvers.xz
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root        45 May 24 20:18 symvers-6.8.9-100.fc38.x86_64.xz -> /lib/modules/6.8.9-100.fc38.x86_64/symvers.xz
-rw-------. 1 root root   8429627 Mar 29  2023 System.map-6.2.9-300.fc38.x86_64
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   9022287 May 16 22:00 System.map-6.8.10-200.fc39.x86_64
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   9021531 May  1 22:00 System.map-6.8.9-100.fc38.x86_64
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  14215976 May 24 14:04 vmlinuz-0-rescue-02e2df67e0f14e0fb4ec4dce0f403ce0
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  14215976 Mar 29  2023 vmlinuz-6.2.9-300.fc38.x86_64
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  15650632 May 16 22:00 vmlinuz-6.8.10-200.fc39.x86_64
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  15646536 May  1 22:00 vmlinuz-6.8.9-100.fc38.x86_64

In the /boot/efi:

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root@fedora:/boot/efi# ls -l
oot@fedora:/boot/efi# ls -l
total 24
drwx------. 7 root root 4096 Jul 18  2023  EFI
-rwx------. 1 root root   34 Jul 19  2023  mach_kernel
drwx------. 3 root root 4096 Apr 20 13:17  Recovery
-rwx------. 1 root root    0 Apr 20 13:51  Recovery.txt
drwx------. 3 root root 4096 Jul 19  2023  System
drwx------. 2 root root 4096 May  3 14:33 'System Volume Information'
drwx------. 3 root root 4096 Apr 20 13:45  windows

et dans /boot/efi/EFI

Code: Select all

Total 20
drwx------. 2 root root 4096 Jul 18  2023 Boot
drwx------. 2 root root 4096 May 25 14:59 fedora
drwx------. 4 root root 4096 Mar  8 15:15 Microsoft
**drwx------. 2 root root 4096 Apr 19 14:10 MX**
drwx------. 2 root root 4096 May 18 15:41 Parrot.old

[Erica]

Just went on reinstalling them all (Both MX23 and Fedora FSL) , installing MX23 last hopping to have them first on the Grub menu (no luck)
As MX23 wasn't o top of the Grub menu which stayed Fedora, I tweaked it .. resulting on losing Fedora entry
Then I installed most of the KeyRing option from the MX package Install (IDK which one is actually needed, so I installed most of them) so as to be able to insyall ProtonVPN and Brave without (most) error
And now I'm back to "running" MX23 for the past 5 days, and afraid to make any change :-p not even apt upgrade even less apt full-upgrade

[CharlesV]

Many times I have been frustrated by the multi-boot. I have come to the conclusion that for me, it is FAR easier to run multiple disks, moving between them using my bios to pick which one I want.

And... my first choice ... are VM's. I can use VM's using VirtualBox to get what I want and it fulfills my needs very easily.

Having said all that :-) ... There is in MX Package Installer a grub customizer which I looked at and was very impressed with, with many options for editing (And saving a backup!) of your grub config.

Also, there are quite a few more tools in there for grub rescue and modification. You might want to check some of these out.

Also... if you have another computer that you can play with.. it might be good to use that to work through some scenarios of loading multiple boots and working through all of that - not on your primary rig. (I have six test machines that I use for various testing and 'working thing out' on .. and these are invaluable to me for learning, testing and support. )