Retroactively Partition Recovery and Boot

jmarulli

For background, I bought a System76 laptop with Pop_OS! pre-installed on the main/boot drive. I wanted to try another Linux OS and settled on Solus. So I bought a second hard drive, configured it into my laptop, and installed Solus to try it out. On the second hard drive I only installed Solus on the entire partition, so the boot/recovery partitions don't exist on the second hard drive, which I know now as a mistake. Currently I am still booting from the original hard drive with the second hard drive with Solus chosen as the default boot.

My question is there any way for me to partition some of my 2 TB on the second drive to an EFI partition for boot and recovery partition?

If not, what are my options... can I copy this partition to something else like an external hard drive and then reformat the second hard drive with the proper partitions then copy back from the external?

I want to make the second hard drive my main drive to boot from, and am also worried to lose everything since I don't have a recovery partition.

brent

jmarulli On the second hard drive I only installed Solus on the entire partition, so the boot/recovery partitions don't exist on the second hard drive, which I know now as a mistake

how did you install solus with no boot parition? the installer let you? confusing.

jmarulli Currently I am still booting from the original hard drive with the second hard drive with Solus chosen as the default boot.

that means you did a good job installing if the Bios gives you both choices and sees both disks.

I don't understand the problem. You have two functioning operating systems (except one has no boot partition which seems impossible. You want the Solus disk to have room for 'rescue' and other stuff. It seems easy.
Nuke Solus and reinstall. But first, in Pop, in Gparted, format the Solus Disk, and create a 100GB partition (sounds like you can afford it with 2TB), then install Solus on that partition. That leaves 90% of the 2TB for you to do whatever you want with.
I re-read you several times but I think something important is being omitted.

murbert

jmarulli I think you have an EFI (boot) partition with data from 2 different OSes and I can only see that ending badly eventually. Do you have 2 of these partitions or 1? If 1 my solution will kill your current Solus install and possibly POP too. Remember to check the drives carefully, you don't want to install stuff in the wrong place
1 - Backup all your important data to an external drive
2 - Make sure you backed up your stuff
3 - Use the restore function in POP os to fix that os. I'm not sure if this will work but I think it will restore your boot partition to just POP. If that doesn't work, reinstall normally
4 - Boot into Solus live and run GParted or KDE Partition and create a 512 MB Fat32 partition on the drive you want it installed on. After applying this change you need to change the flags on the partition. In GParted right click the new partition and select manage flags, select boot. In KDE partition you need to right click/properties (it's in there somewhere)
5 - Install Solus on the drive with the boot partition you just made.

There are some who say remove the drive you're not working on instead of managing flags - I'm too lazy to open up computers so I do flags.

If you have 2 EFI partitions you might be able to clone the Solus one over to the Solus drive. I'm not sure how tho and I would probably just reinstall

jmarulli

Just bumping the post

murbert

brent You have two functioning operating systems (except one has no boot partition which seems impossible

When installing Solus in auto mode on a second drive it will use an existing EFI partition on the first drive. You won't get an option to put it on the second drive unless you first (in Disks or Gparted etc.) create a fat 32 EFI partition with the correct boot flags on the second drive.

brent

murbert OK----had no idea. I also have 2 operating systems/2 drives like OP but installed each independent (unplugged) of each other for clean bios dual boot, so never in all my time with Solus I noticed it take over an existing EFI...simply because I never had to...
...I understand OP's problem now thanks for clarifying.

edit:

murbert There are some who say remove the drive you're not working on instead of managing flags - I'm too lazy to open up computers so I do flags.

I'm in the camp that says 'remove' I think life will be easier for the end result. Doesn't change any of your steps at all since both drives need fixin.

jmarulli

murbert

Yes that is the case.
1st Hard Drive: Original EFI Partition/Recovery and Pop install
2nd Hard Drive: Solus install only

So is there no way for me to partition an EFI boot drive on the 2nd Hard Drive without overwriting my current Solus install? Really don't want to have to reinstall everything, etc. But if that's literally my only option I guess I'd have to consider it. In that case, would I be able to backup the entire install, and load that through some kind of Solus recovery?

To be clear nothing is currently broken, but I don't like the idea of the boot drive and recovery drive being on the 1st Hard Drive when I'm really using the Solus install on my second hard drive. . My biggest fear is I upgrade Solus one day and it breaks everything and I have no recovery point.

jmarulli

brent
Yeah murbert outlined it perfectly. I have the same boot being used between the two hard drives with no recovery for Solus. Just feels like I'll get killed by an upgrade someday and everything will be lost.

murbert

jmarulli Just feels like I'll get killed by an upgrade someday and everything will be lost.

Yup. Normally it's window$ that hijacks everything but I guess you never know.

jmarulli So is there no way for me to partition an EFI boot drive on the 2nd Hard Drive without overwriting my current Solus install?

There may be a way, I don't know what it is though, sorry

brent

jmarulli
yeah sorry I didnt get it! I've never had a shared boot for two drives so couldnt wrap my brain cells around what was going on.
In POP or Solus Live you can rescue all your files before reinstalling Solus. I would even unplug and do it separate so the Pop doesnt see it. It won't be a true dual boot because when its booting I spam F11 to being up boot menu if I want the other OS but hey it works.

I don't think in any universe you can create a boot for an existing solus ext4 file system but I could be wrong.

Your fears of an upgrade are valid. The only safe way for you to restore/update the Solus boot, IMHO only, is chroot into your drive with the Live USB and then update & repair boot. I've done it a couple times. Its a PITA and I always screw up the steps and have to do it 3 times but it works. https://getsol.us/articles/troubleshooting/boot-rescue/en/

edit: *****if you don't have 512MB boot partition already made that lives next to the Solus Filesystem on that drive then I don't think the chroot thing will work.

second edit: safest course is to reinstall. might take a couple hours to re-customize the way you like it but thats part of the distro biz.

WetGeek

jmarulli Just feels like I'll get killed by an upgrade someday and everything will be lost.

Good backups might be able to help. Even if you only keep the latest one on hand. Restic is in the repository, and it's easy to use.