mjhjmtu

edit: I think I solved my own problem -- see bottom of question for details

I have a copy of all the files under / on an external usb-connected harddrive. To test whether this backup works, i'm trying to boot from it. However, this is proving a bit more difficult than I expected.

1. 
   

   In what I assume is the BIOS, I select my external HD as the boot device. However, whether I select this device or my usual drive as the boot device, I am shown the same GRUB menu. This happens whether I manually went and installed GRUB on my external HD or not. So my question is, is GRUB being loaded from my normal boot drive or from the external drive, and does it matter?

   
   
   
   • I found that when using GRUB command line without GRUB installed on my external drive, the external drive was shown as (hd2,gpt1), however after I installed GRUB on the external drive, it came up as (hd0,gpt2).
   
   


2. 
   

   Perhaps the difficulties I'm having are related to just my first question, but when I boot after specifying linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda2, I always get some failure relating to the drive specified as root not being found. This happens even when I specify root by device uuid. My question is, do I need to worry about

   
   
   

   • /etc/fstab? Is this something I need to change in order to make sure that root is found? And does it matter whether I change the /etc/fstab file on my internal drive or on the external one. (I did modify /etc/fstab on the external drive so that the drive with the UUID of the root partition should be mounted to /, but to no avail)

   
   

   • Perhaps because it is a usb connected external HD, do I need to do anything special? I noticed seeing the error usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -71 while booting normally, but since this has no apparent effect on the functionality of the drive, I ignored it. This error also appeared on two separate external HD docks, so I assume it is not a hardware issue.

   
   

Clarifications:

I created my external backup using Borg, which creates a copy of all the files. It doesn't copy the entire disk over like dd, so for example while installing grub I still need to manually create a partition with the bios_grub flag.

The exact command I use in grub while attempting to boot is

set root=(hd0,gpt2)
linux vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda2
initrd initramfs-linux.img
boot

I've managed to boot.

I had tried both linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda2 and linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sdc2 to no avail -- the first because the drive was showing up as (hd0,gpt2) in grub, and the second because the partition gets labeled as /dev/sdc2 when I boot normally. However, neither of these worked, and both dropped me into a strange command line. I discovered that the partition with the correct UUID was actually mounted to /dev/sdb2 for some reason! Using root=/dev/sdb2 I booted the system just fine. I think my previous attempts to boot by specifying UUID failed for one of various reasons (GRUB not being installed, typos in the UUID, etc).

This is pretty anticlimactic. I am still curious about the original questions I had -- namely, 1. how it is decided which GRUB is used when there are multiple drives with GRUB installed? 2. does /etc/fstab play a role in the booting process, or is it irrelevant? -- and I'll award the bounty for answers to those questions.

your problem is root=/dev/sda2 because that is doing a mount by device name which is not unique. If you have only one drive installed, then that will typically always show up as /dev/sda so no problem. But install a second disk or any other thing in addition that shows up as /dev/sd? then there is no guarantee of the order of anything and oftentimes what was sda is moved down to sdb... can become messy quick and fail.

Best to mount via by device-id or by-uuid which will be unique.

Under /dev/disk/ you will see folders like

• by-id/


• by-label/


• by-path/


• by-uuid/

And for example under by-id/ you will see links such as

here is my /etc/fstab that mounts by device-id to give you an idea, i removed extra lines to keep it on point. And I use EFI not GRUB, but the principle is the same just more elaborate with Grub the grand part in grand unified boot loader:

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-35000cca070168a20-part2 / ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-35000cca070168a20-part1 /boot/efi vfat umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-36003048018e26e011d81ba1714e4c99f-part1 /data xfs defaults 1 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-36003048018fa44011d57b61bbe1b8533-part1 /scratch xfs defaults 1 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-36003048018e266011d81ba7e1afeadf6-part1 /bkup xfs defaults 1 2

Note: this is what I see in SLES 11.4. And while I use EFI, you need to find the specific items within GRUB or GRUB2 and modify. As an example here is my /boot/efi/efi/SuSE/elilo.conf file, notice the root= part. What corresponds to this in your GRUB you want to modify to be either by device-id or by uuid. and don't forget to modify /etc/fstab to be by a unique method also either by-id or by-uuid.

# This file has been transformed by /sbin/elilo.
# Please do NOT edit here -- edit /etc/elilo.conf instead!
# Otherwise your changes will be lost e.g. during kernel-update.
#
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Mon Oct 15 11:04:42 EDT 2018
timeout = 80
##YaST - boot_efilabel = "SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP4"
default = SLES11_SP4_16
prompt

image = vmlinuz-3.0.101-108.77-default
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
 label = SLES11_SP4_16
 append = "splash=verbose showopts "
 initrd = initrd-3.0.101-108.77-default
 root = /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-35000cca070168a20-part2

image = vmlinuz-3.0.101-108.77-default
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
 label = Failsafe_15
 append = "showopts ide=nodma apm=off noresume edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 nomodeset x11failsafe "
 description = "Failsafe (3.0.101-108.77-default)"
 initrd = initrd-3.0.101-108.77-default
 root = /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-35000cca070168a20-part2

You do NOT want boot=/dev/sd? or root=/dev/sd? anywhere, where ? is whatever letter. Reference the disk out of /dev/disk/by-id or /dev/disk/by-uuid; you could even use by-label provided you set partition labels and trust them to be unique.

This should answer your questions:

• Generally, the GRUB that is used is the one that is on the disk that is seen first by the BIOS or selected to be run first in BIOS. Because the MBR of the drive pionts to the GRUB that loads.




• The /etc/fstab is only responsible for automating the process of mounting, partitions.
  In curtain cases you can bypass the fstab completely.