timeshift retrograde issue on dual boot system (grub)

[oldgranola]

Hello,
Had to downgrade from LMcinnamon 19.2 back to 19.1 due to cinnamon crashes (I found an rsync image after all) using timeshift from a 19.2 live USB in fallback mode (cinnamon crashes with that also -boo). However then I couldn't boot. The grub menu still showed the various 19.2 options without 19.1 as before downgrade and none of those would work of course. I believe this is owing to having a multi-boot system with Manjaro KDE being the last to be quite recently added which therefore likely owns the boot sector. I had to boot into Manjaro (very nice OS) and updated grub from there which then allowed me to see and boot LM19.1 (with all 19.2 gone)

1. Is there a way to configure timeshift while restoring so that doesn't happen?

2. So how do I re-own the boot sector so I can update grub from LM19.1? I've done it before elsewhere but I forget

Thanks!
Disk info follows, current LM19.1 is on sda5

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l
Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1       2048   1050623   1048576   512M EFI System
/dev/sda2    1050624 257880063 256829440 122.5G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3  970078208 976771071   6692864   3.2G Linux swap
/dev/sda4  504641536 504643583      2048     1M BIOS boot
/dev/sda5  504643584 970078207 465434624   222G Linux filesystem
fun@fun2:~$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   512M  0 part 
├─sda2   8:2    0 122.5G  0 part 
├─sda3   8:3    0   3.2G  0 part 
├─sda4   8:4    0     1M  0 part 
└─sda5   8:5    0   222G  0 part /
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom  

[blueocean]

It is your dual boot. Timeshift works well for a single Linux system or a dual Win/Linux setup. You might run this boot repair:
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=303545

[pbear]

The grub menu still showed the various 19.2 options without 19.1 as before downgrade and none of those would work of course. I believe this is owing to having a multi-boot system with Manjaro KDE being the last to be quite recently added which therefore likely owns the boot sector. I had to boot into Manjaro (very nice OS) and updated grub from there which then allowed me to see and boot LM19.1 (with all 19.2 gone)

1. Is there a way to configure timeshift while restoring so that doesn't happen?

2. So how do I re-own the boot sector so I can update grub from LM19.1? I've done it before elsewhere but I forget

My understanding is that Manjaro can't be booted from Mint's Grub, so Manjaro has to be primary. Explanation here. The way you restore a Timeshift snapshot of Mint without disturbing that is to unselect reinstallation of Grub, which is one of the options on the restore dialogue.

[blueocean]

pbear wrote
"The way you restore a Timeshift snapshot of Mint without disturbing that is to unselect reinstallation of Grub, which is one of the options on the restore dialogue."
That's good to know. I hadn't seen that option with the rsync restore. I'm most familiar with Btrfs and there is no such option.