Dual-boot with Windows 10 from separate drives

CTAKAH · 2019-01-29 13:11:19

Hello, sorry for bothering,

last time I dealt with grub/mbr/.. was years ago and now it seems to be all different.
So, I've got one ssd with Win10 installed (UEFI,GPT) having 260MB EFI partiotion. I'd like to insert another ssd to install Devuan to.
Would anybody be so kind to give a starting point to discover action needed to accomplish that or to a right Devuan manual if any.

Regards,
Alexander

Last edited by CTAKAH (2019-01-29 13:11:39)

Duke Nukem · 2019-01-29 16:12:18

Shouldn't be a problem, although I've never done it with Win10, only XP and Win7. Windows should be installed first (for a simple life) which you have already done. Now install Devuan, during which it will ask you where you want Devuan installed (at least it does so if you choose the expert installation, as I always have) and obviously you choose the other drive. You will later be asked where you want Grub installed and you can choose the Master Boot Record of the first drive. Grub will detect that there is also Windows available and will add it to the boot menu alongside Devuan.

guuml.dev1 · 2019-01-30 00:18:40

CTAKAH wrote:

last time I dealt with grub/mbr/.. was years ago and now it seems to be all different.
... (snipped)
Alexander

Welcome and thank you for the question, but as far as I know there are some points to consider:

In 2015(!) it was the last time (for me;-) to install a dualboot of a debian/jessie besides "Win XP SP4" on the same boot device. Since then some things has changed, but some basics remain the same:

1.) Microsoft likes it to be "the one and only" on your boot device: they call it "drive C:", i'll prefer "/dev/sda". And the partition the BIOS want's to boot the operating system from has to be marked as "bootable".

2) The UEFI-BIOS of your own! hardware may not cooperate: In one single case I found one specific BIOS does not want to boot from my! USB-Stick because of "checksum error". Please check this step! Note: I was not able to reproduce this specific error the 1st time and there was no 2nd chance (for me).

3) Download devuan_ascii_2.0.0_{amd64,i386}_desktop-live.iso and check the sha256sum! Then create your! boot media and proceed with step #2.

And last but not least: Backup your data to a save place you can restore from with low effort (IMHO m$-backup is not the 1st choice, consider GNU-tar for mounted ntfs partitions). And really cool is sfdisk for saving/restoring partition tables, lsblk -f for current UUIDs and fdisk -l from util-linux 2.25.2 that handles "Disklabel type(s)" dos or gpt.

Update: IMHO the 1st problem may be caused by UEFI, see e.g. zdnet.com - MINIX: Intel's hidden in-chip operating system or other sites. Just for the records: I have never ever done any "firmware upgrade" on any machine up to now. In each and every case (except one) I was able to boot the devuan from a trustable medium and install it to /dev/sda3. The step from jessie to ascii (on /dev/sda1) isn't that hard.

CTAKAH wrote:

... I'd like to insert another ssd to install Devuan to. ...

Next step after BIOS is the MBR. As far as I know does the devuan installer his (or her?) aim well: it places GRUB to the (1) MBR (say /dev/sda) or to your (2) devuan partition (say /dev/sda3). (3) Your Wiń10 doesn't boot from /dev/sda1 anymore? Look at answers.microsoft forums "windows boot loader in Windows 10" or "How to restore missing dual boot menu in latest Windows 10 build" for example.

The choice between (1), (2) and (3) is somewhat exclusive in a strict sense: You should know what your doing before installation, but there is a lack of documentation.

Last edited by guuml.dev1 (2019-01-30 04:01:28)

CTAKAH · 2019-01-30 08:52:27

guuml.dev1 wrote:

CTAKAH wrote:
last time I dealt with grub/mbr/.. was years ago and now it seems to be all different.
... (snipped)
Alexander
Welcome and thank you for the question, but as far as I know there are some points to consider:

guuml.dev1, thanks for a detailed answer!
I however have a laptop already working in UEFI/GPT with win10 installed on ssd with GPT table and UEFI partition, so I was picturing installing Devuan on a second ssd in UEFI/GPT mode too.
Windows is already installed, so no worries it'll override Devuan installation boot records.

The questions I was looking answers to were

- do I have to create a separate EFI partition on a second, Devuan ssd or will grub-efi(or whatever used put it's .efi files into partition already existed on a win10 drive?

- is it possible(mandatory) to have EFI partitions on both drives and let laptop UEFI firmware choose between them (from a boot menu or just by changing default boot order)

- what steps should I reproduce in Devuan installer to achieve that

actually I looked through some articles, looks it's possible to install Devuan on a second ssd, creating distinct efi partition on it and installing grub there. And then UEFI firmware should just let me to choose a boot device (or even will read efi records and let choose an OS to boot).
That seems to me the best way to ensure OS-ses will not even know about each over.

Do my assumptions make sence?

Regards,

rolfie · 2019-01-30 19:28:27

I looked up my ASCII on a Ryzen 2700X platform with a NVME installation for Devuan and another SSD for Windows 7. Both installed in UEFI mode. I boot Devuan per default and get the choice in grub to boot Win7 if required.

I think you should create individual EFI partitions on the drives to have maximum decoupling.

Windows ignores other OSses. When you boot into Windows per default you normally have no choice. With some fiddling you may be able to boot other stuff from the Windows boot manager, but that can get screwed by updates. When I had a Debian and Windows7 on the same drive (without UEFI), I got some issues with Win7 updates that did not like grub in the MBR or even fail to update if Win isn't the only OS on the drive.

When you choose Devuan as default, run osprober (should run automatically actually), and this will enter Win10 into the grub menu, so you can select at boot time into which OS to boot. No issues with this setup.

My EFI Bios has the option to override the default an select from a menu which OS I want to boot.

Regards, rolfie

CTAKAH · 2019-02-05 22:39:32

rolfie wrote:

I looked up my ASCII on a Ryzen 2700X platform with a NVME installation for Devuan and another SSD for Windows 7. Both installed in UEFI mode. I boot Devuan per default and get the choice in grub to boot Win7 if required.
I think you should create individual EFI partitions on the drives to have maximum decoupling.
Windows ignores other OSses. When you boot into Windows per default you normally have no choice. With some fiddling you may be able to boot other stuff from the Windows boot manager, but that can get screwed by updates. When I had a Debian and Windows7 on the same drive (without UEFI), I got some issues with Win7 updates that did not like grub in the MBR or even fail to update if Win isn't the only OS on the drive.
When you choose Devuan as default, run osprober (should run automatically actually), and this will enter Win10 into the grub menu, so you can select at boot time into which OS to boot. No issues with this setup.
My EFI Bios has the option to override the default an select from a menu which OS I want to boot.
Regards, rolfie

Thanks rolfie!

writing a responce from my newly installed Devuan, great )
Installed on a second ssd, so now I see two boot records(devuan + windows boot manager) in laptop boot menu, looks grub put its record in the NVMe. If selecting Devuan there I can then load Windows from grub menu also, so it's even a bit superfluous, but thats fine.
Had a little problrem with missing wifi firmware while installing, but IIRC with debian it was the same.
What's bad with co-existing Win/Devuan on separate drives - after I boot into Windows, next time I boot Devuan it got it's root system fsck-ed, no idea what Win is trying to do with it, but tried several times with the same result.

The rest is great, my old-good debian is back, thanks devs!

CTAKAH · 2019-02-05 23:54:43

BTW, my laptop has 3 disks actually, two M2 ssd with Win10 and Devuan and one sata 2.5 disk, now they are named

/dev/sda - Win10 ssd
/dev/sdb - 2.5 disk
/dev/sdc - Devuan ssd

any ideas on wouldn't there be any problems with device naming if I remove 2.5 disk and the insert other 2.5 disk for example?

Thanks in advance,

rolfie · 2019-02-06 15:02:20

Under Linux use the UUID to address the drive/partition, do not use sdx. Then it does not matter if drives are detected in different order, renamed, exchanged....

I think Devuan ASCII does that automatically. Look up your fstab, if you see something like:

# /boot was on /dev/nvme0n1p2 during installation
UUID=6b1a5449-77ac-487b-b9e6-737ec8b8c677 /boot           ext4    defaults        0       2

for all your partitions you should be fine.

Regards, Rolf

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#1 2019-01-29 13:11:19

Dual-boot with Windows 10 from separate drives

#2 2019-01-29 16:12:18

Re: Dual-boot with Windows 10 from separate drives

#3 2019-01-30 00:18:40

Re: Dual-boot with Windows 10 from separate drives

#4 2019-01-30 08:52:27

Re: Dual-boot with Windows 10 from separate drives

#5 2019-01-30 19:28:27

Re: Dual-boot with Windows 10 from separate drives

#6 2019-02-05 22:39:32

Re: Dual-boot with Windows 10 from separate drives

#7 2019-02-05 23:54:43

Re: Dual-boot with Windows 10 from separate drives

#8 2019-02-06 15:02:20

Re: Dual-boot with Windows 10 from separate drives

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