Mints reach parts others can't reach - oops!
Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 11:08 am
More accurately Ubiquity does! "Ubiquity is a synonym for omnipresence, the property of being present everywhere" (Wikipedia).
Over the past few years I have looked at various versions of Mint from Elyssa onwards in Gnome/Xfce forms. All have worked well at the livecd stage - my favourite being Helena Gnome. However, installation and grub have too frequently given me nightmares. Up to a week ago, I was content with Helena on 2 machines, Gloria on 2 and Elyssa on another. My aim had been to get Helena onto all but after a couple of catastrophes gave up on that objective.
Now I plucked up courage to try again to risk the protracted excruciating procedure to install Mint 13 Xfce (because of the lts). All went well on first 2 machines (the Helena ones which has been retained).
I should perhaps explain that all machines are multi-boot with two versions of Win (98/XP or Vista/XP) and at least 4 linux partitions plus various htfs data partitions. Access at level one is via Boot Magic or bcd respectively then grub in each linux partition. This arrangement is fine for all other distros but too often confuses the Mint installer.
Now to machine 3. After the usual protracted scans ( probing where no one has probed before ), Maya installed. Rebooted and it loaded fine. But then I discovered that four of the other linux partitions had become unbootable - their grubs had disappeared! Less disastrous than the aforementioned catastrophes but nevertheless "inconvenient". Yet, being partisan, Gloria was still accessible, so decided to install Helena there which apparently was not a problem - until I rebooted and it was still Gloria!
I tried installing other distros to other partitions but no joy - they were still inaccessible. Ok, let's try pre-formatting a partition to ext2 (rather ext3/4 or leaving as is). Install distro1 to sda11 and bingo - accessible. Try same "trick" with distro2 to sda12 and it works. Try next partition and install Helena - but no not accessible, no grub!
Mmmm...
What is Ubiquity doing to my systems? Is it trying to live up to its name and be god-like, creating an image in its own likeness? It has absolutely no right to make any "adjustments" to my system that it has not been given explicit permission to do. Surely all it needs to do is look at the partition table and not modify partition boundaries (for instance) to suit its own view of the universe?
I suppose the bottom line right now is how can grub(2?) be (re)installed to partitions that have been "modified" by Ubiquity? I've done some research but none of it looks pretty.
Over the past few years I have looked at various versions of Mint from Elyssa onwards in Gnome/Xfce forms. All have worked well at the livecd stage - my favourite being Helena Gnome. However, installation and grub have too frequently given me nightmares. Up to a week ago, I was content with Helena on 2 machines, Gloria on 2 and Elyssa on another. My aim had been to get Helena onto all but after a couple of catastrophes gave up on that objective.
Now I plucked up courage to try again to risk the protracted excruciating procedure to install Mint 13 Xfce (because of the lts). All went well on first 2 machines (the Helena ones which has been retained).
I should perhaps explain that all machines are multi-boot with two versions of Win (98/XP or Vista/XP) and at least 4 linux partitions plus various htfs data partitions. Access at level one is via Boot Magic or bcd respectively then grub in each linux partition. This arrangement is fine for all other distros but too often confuses the Mint installer.
Now to machine 3. After the usual protracted scans ( probing where no one has probed before ), Maya installed. Rebooted and it loaded fine. But then I discovered that four of the other linux partitions had become unbootable - their grubs had disappeared! Less disastrous than the aforementioned catastrophes but nevertheless "inconvenient". Yet, being partisan, Gloria was still accessible, so decided to install Helena there which apparently was not a problem - until I rebooted and it was still Gloria!
I tried installing other distros to other partitions but no joy - they were still inaccessible. Ok, let's try pre-formatting a partition to ext2 (rather ext3/4 or leaving as is). Install distro1 to sda11 and bingo - accessible. Try same "trick" with distro2 to sda12 and it works. Try next partition and install Helena - but no not accessible, no grub!
Mmmm...
What is Ubiquity doing to my systems? Is it trying to live up to its name and be god-like, creating an image in its own likeness? It has absolutely no right to make any "adjustments" to my system that it has not been given explicit permission to do. Surely all it needs to do is look at the partition table and not modify partition boundaries (for instance) to suit its own view of the universe?
I suppose the bottom line right now is how can grub(2?) be (re)installed to partitions that have been "modified" by Ubiquity? I've done some research but none of it looks pretty.