On Mon, Sep 18, 2023 at 2:58 PM John Jason Jordan <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 12:26:22 -0500 > Bill Barry <[email protected]> dijo: > > >> I've been reading up on how to get this to work and I haven't found > >> the answer yet. Both drives have a separate partitions for / and > >> /home, and each of them has a /boot/grub/grub.cfg file in the / > >> partition. At the top of the menu entries, the one in the Debian > >> drive has Debian and Debian-Alternative followed by 80 (believe it > >> or not) menu entries for Xubuntu. On the Xubuntu drive the file has > >> menu entries only for Xubuntu, although only about 20 of them. > >> Methinks some serious tidying up is overdue, but that can wait. > >> Maybe a command to update grub is the right way to do it. > > >I had a similar problem after I did an update yesterday. Only one of > >my systems was bootable. It turned out there was a line in the file > >/etc/default/grub like this > >GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false > >which was commented out with a # in front of it. > >Uncommenting it then running update-grub fixed the problem. > > I had already done that in both the grub.cfg files, but no luck. > However, I finally kludged together something that got me booted into > the Debian OS, and as you can see, I can reboot into Xubuntu. > > I had noticed that the grub.cfg file in the Debian installation had two > menu entries at the top, which were missing in the Xubuntu file. I had > been spending all my efforts trying to get the BIOS to find the Debian > grub.cfg file, but I finally decided 'fine, if all it can find is the > Xubuntu file, the all I need to do is add the Debian menu entries to > the top of the Xubuntu file.' It took some finagling because of dealing > with two files owned by root, but eventually I got the whole two menu > entries from the Debian file pasted into the top of the Xubuntu menu > entries. As I rebooted I was telling myself 'there is no way this is > going to work, surely the computer won't boot to anything.' I had made > a copy of the Xubuntu file, and I had visions of having to find a > Knoppix disk or something to use so I could put the copy back, but > guess what! It booted straight into Debian 12! > > Just before it booted I saw what looked like a Grub menu flash by in > the upper left corner of my screen. It was gone way too fast to read, > but it looked like there were eight lines in tiny text, text that > happens on a 4K screen before it gets to a GUI. From past experience > each distro in the menu probably had a main line, then a recovery line, > followed by a couple lines for memtest. After I shut down Debian to > come back here I remembered that hitting Esc after the BIOS gets you > the Grub menu, so that's what I did to get back here. > > I never did get the BIOS to boot to the Grub folder in the new Debian > drive. But at least it's working, and all I need to do is figure out > how to get the Grub menu into a readable font, and make it come up > always, without having to remember to hit Esc. > > Being a Linux user for years has accustomed me to using fudges and > pokes to get things to work. Today was proof of that. :)
In my Debian installation grub.cfg is a file you should not edit. You should edit /etc/default/grub and then run update-grub. That then edits grub.cfg for you. Bill
