Hello:

Yes.

My first drive hosts a PCLinuxOS installation, it is set as the first drive to boot in the SAS adapter card and uses grub2.
My second drive hosts my Devuan ASCII installation, it is set as the second drive to boot in the SAS adapter card and uses grub2.
My third drive is an old W7 installation I keep for reference purposes, it is set as the third drive to boot in the SAS adapter card (getting scrubbed soon).

When I boot my rig it starts from the first drive and its grub2 installation offers me to boot into PCLinuxOS, Devuan ASCII or W7 from there.
If I remove this first drive (or if the drive fails), the rig boots from the second drive and its grub2 installation offers me me to boot into PCLinuxOS Devuan ASCII or W7 from there (obviously it does not find PCLOS).

If the first and second drives change places, the same thing happens, with the first OS order changed.

No. (I don't think so)

Each installation (PCLinuxOS first and a year later Devuan) was done with only one drive in the first bay.
That way I could only screw up only one thing at a time.=^D! 

I'm sorry but it's not too clear to me which of these I am doing.
It has worked well and I've always had an OS at hand, which was my primary objective.

For emergencies, I also have a TinyCore Linux installation on an old 1Gb pendrive plugged into a USB socket I discovered on the mobo (Sun Ultra24).   
It's actually saved my skin a couple of times.

I'm sorry for that oversight on my behalf.

What files would you need to see?

No.
The screen output at boot is in the correct console resolution.

Both PCLinuxOS and Devuan use the non-free Nvidia drivers.

I do not remember adding it so it must have been added by the Nvidia drivers installation?

Looking for some info on this, I came across a post from 2012 in the Mageia forum:
https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic. … 971#p14396

I expect that the nokmsboot parameter was set after I installed the Nvidia drivers in PCLinuxOS. I have not seen anything acting up since I removed it.
Since then I have seen the Nvidia drivers get updated more than once, so maybe they have caught up and the nokmsboot is no longer needed.

It was not put in Devuan when I installed the Nvidia drivers.
Let's see if any problems arise.

--- EDIT ---

I may have come across something:

You're quite right.

From my PCLinuxOS terminal

[groucho@groucho ~]$ dmesg | grep vesafb
[    0.341689] vesafb: mode is 1280x1024x32, linelength=5120, pages=0
[    0.341692] vesafb: scrolling: redraw
[    0.341700] vesafb: Truecolor: size=8:8:8:8, shift=24:16:8:0
[    0.341724] vesafb: framebuffer at 0xfb000000, mapped to 0xffffac3140800000, using 5120k, total 5120k

The frame-bufefr is only loaded if I boot Devuan from it's own drive ie: not from PCLinuxOS's grub2.
From my Devuan terminal (booted independently)

[root@devuan groucho]# dmesg | grep vesafb
[    0.645586] vesafb: mode is 1280x1024x32, linelength=5120, pages=0
[    0.645590] vesafb: scrolling: redraw
[    0.645594] vesafb: Truecolor: size=8:8:8:8, shift=24:16:8:0
[    0.645612] vesafb: framebuffer at 0xfb000000, mapped to 0xffffad6701800000, using 5120k, total 5120k

--- EDIT ---

Thank you very much for taking the time to write this up.
Much appreciated.

Best,

A.

Hello:

Sorry for the delay in answering.
Automatic subscription was off ... =^/

Yes. I am using the Nvidia non-free drivers.

It was the only way to get my two cards and three monitors to play nice.
RandR gets disabled because of Xinerama but I don't think it has anything to do with this.

I was looking into a possible version mismatch this morning.

PCLinuxOS uses Grub2 2.02.0-3
Devuan uses 2.02Beta3-5

I don't know if there's any real difference between these two, but ...

If both installations run of the same hardware and the problem in the Devuan installation arises when I boot it from the grub2 in PCLinuxOS and not with it's own grub2, then the problem seems to be with how grub2/PCLinuxOS "talks" with grub2/Devuan.

Is it a version mismatch or is it a configuration issue?
ie: is there something that grub2/PCLinuxOS needs to know or find to boot Devuan the same way it boots from its own grub2?

Thanks for your input.   =-)

Cheers,

A.

Hello:

Spoke too soon.  =^/

This is how it is done:
https://wiki.debian.org/GrubTransition

It happens that it does work ...
But if I boot directly from the drive hosting Devuan that is.

In my setup, my first drive hosts a PCLinuxOS installation, another systemd free OS I have been using since before Devuan.

My second drive hosts my Devuan ASCII installation which also has a grub2 setup just in case my PCLinuxOS drive goes south.
My third drive is an old W7 installation I keep in a SATA drive for reference purposes, it's getting scrubbed soon.

In any case, when I boot my rig it starts from the first drive and its grub2 installation offers me to boot into PCLinuxOS, Devuan ASCII or W7 from there.
If I remove this first drive, the rig boots from the second drive and its grub2 installation offers me me to boot into PCLinuxOS Devuan ASCII or W7 from there (obviously it does not find PCLOS).

If the second drive gets set up as a first drive, the same thing happens, with the order changed.

The thing is that when I boot my rig without the first drive in place, Devuan ASCII boots as I want to, with the screen size I set.
But if I boot into Devuan ASCII selecting it from the grub2 menu, it does not.

I had the idea that grub2 looks for other OSs and boots them according to what the grub.conf file in the drive hosting that OS says.
ie: the screen size set by GRUB_GFXMODE.

But it seems this is not the case.

Or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks in advance.

A.

Hello:

Ok.

I started there and saw that x11-xkb-tools was not installed.
Assuming x11-xkb-tools should be there (and maybe other missing configuration files) and that an update would install whatever was needed, I exited aptitude and decided to try apt-get update.

I first checked that the /etc/apt/sources.list was this one and that everything else was remmed out:

deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii main
deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii-updates main
deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main
deb http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged ascii-backports main

Then I did apt-get update and got a warning about dpkg having been interrupted which got fixed with the instructions on the screen with ...

dpkg --configure -a

... and then ran apt-get update again.

It started to do its work but complained about /etc/pam.d/login having been modified and asking about which version to keep.
I guessed that that could have been the glitch that affected my kb/mouse (?) so I kept the existing script version (default option) and continued.
If that one did not work, I could try the new version which obviously was not an option if I accepted the new one from the start.

When it was done (it was a lot) I exited, rebooted and got my desktop, this time with working kb and mouse.  =^ )

Once there, I started SPM and updated everything again.
Then for safe measure, I did the same through apt.

Now, it seems everything is well again:

root@devuan:/home/groucho# apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
root@devuan:/home/groucho#

root@devuan:/home/groucho# uname -a
Linux devuan 3.16.0-5-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.51-3+deb8u1 (2018-01-08) x86_64 GNU/Linux
root@devuan:/home/groucho# 

groucho@devuan:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Devuan
Description:	Devuan GNU/Linux 2.0 (ascii)
Release:	2.0
Codename:	ascii
groucho@devuan:~$ 

A big thank you to all of those who pitched in to help.
Really appreciated your input.

That said, it I think I have to brush up and deepen my command line skills.

Best,

A.

Hello:

I have read them.
But have not been able to identify anything specific that would help me solve this.
At least not with my level of exposure to Linux.

Perhaps you could point out anything I may have (surely) missed?

Thanks in advance.

A.

Hello:

Anyone?

I tried using a different mouse directly connected to a USB port (instead of a PS2 connected to a port on the Kb) but still no dice.
Is there any way I can get out of this problem without having to do a full reinstall?
That's the MS way out...

I was wondering about using a live Jese/Ascii *.iso to boot and do an update to see if that fixes anything or change repos to Jesse and then do an update to see if I can get to where I started from ie: a healthy and perfectly working Jesse installtion 8^/.

Or try to do the same things from the terminal, but I'd need some instructions.

Thanks in advance.

A.

Hello:

I did as you suggested.
I was able to start the X server and got my full desktop across the three monitors (so it would seem that it is not a Nvidia non-free driver issue) but the Kb was as unresponsive as before.

I have a gut feeling (?) that this is something related to Xorg.conf.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks for your input.

A.

Hello:

OK.
Thanks a lot.  8^)

In contrast to what I was used to with MS OSs, I've never had to do go to recovery mode with my Linux installations.
It's actually the first time.

I'll try it and report back on how the Kb behaves.

This:
https://devuan.org/os/documentation/dev … e-to-ascii

"This document shows how to upgrade from Devuan Jessie to Devuan Ascii. It assumes a working Devuan Jessie system is already installed and should not be used for migrations."

Thanks for your input.

A.

Hello:

I boot devuan from the grub in my PCLinuxOS setup.
ie: the default boot is PCLinux, the second options in the list is Devuan (for the time being, till things smooth out)

Can't see how to get into recovery mode, the keyboard is not responsive.

My Devuan installation is the *default* Jesse using SLiM and XFCE.

Thanks for your input.

A.

Hello:

OK, I had not thought of that important detail.

OK.

I'll post the results as soon as I get it up and running.

Best,

A.