GRUB2 solution for dual boot image ( Windows/ Ubuntu)
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First I want to say hi to everybody in this forum. I’m new to fog project and for my first week with fog I’m really impressed of the work you have done wit it. I’m responsible for a lab with 400 computers and I found FOG is one of the best solutions for me in my lab. I came across FOG after several problems with Clonezilla server drbl and now I’m happy with your product :).
Now I have one issue which unfortunately I could not find up to now a good solution. All my computers are dual boot windows/Ubuntu with grub2 installed on first partition alone. When I deploy an image it hangs on grub. I red here and on internet for a solution but what I found here for example is really out of date and I was wondering if you have some new solution for grub2 without downgrade to grub legacy. I see others use labels for their hard drive in grub2 instead of UUID which in my opinion is the root of the problem.
For example what Clonezilla does with this problem is to reinstall grub2 at the end of deployment of the image. I’m not aware you to have option like this.I really look forward to find a solution and to keep using FOG because I like it very much.
I home someone here have a solution…
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@marted said in GRUB2 solution for dual boot image ( Windows/ Ubuntu):
When I deploy an image it hangs on grub.
Please be more clear on what you mean by that. Best if you can take a picture of where it hangs/spits out an error and post that here!
I’m happy with your product :).
I hope you know FOG is not a commercial product. We are a community driven open source project.
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@marted said in GRUB2 solution for dual boot image ( Windows/ Ubuntu):
When I deploy an image it hangs on grub.
Yes I think an clear picture taken with a mobile of the error screen should help a lot. FOG doesn’t care about files or applications. Its a block level data mover much like clonezilla. FOG doesn’t know the difference between grub or vi.
Its possible that having the image identified as windows, linux, or other is causing the problem. On a functioning system can you run these commands from the linux command prompt?
lsblk
df -h
This one is going to print several lines of data.
fdisk -l
If you use putty to connect to the linux target computer using ssh you will be able to copy and paste text into this forum easier. It is important to see the layout of your disk structure for this dual boot system.
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I’ll post an image tomorrow, but in general three partitions : GPT (first one 100Mb efi for grub2, second one Windows , third one Linux ext4 )
The image was captured like Other and I tried like Linux .
In both cases when I deploy the image I see on the screen just the command prompt for grub like this:
grub>
All partitions are there but grub doesn’t know what to do I think. -
@Sebastian-Roth I know it is open source and it’s not a product, my mistake
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@Sebastian-Roth no, it’s primary partition. The disk was separated before installation on three partitions 100M/300G/100G.(grub2/Windows/Ubuntu) For example the same disk cloned with Clonezilla works fine when you deploy on other computer but like I said Clonezilla reinstall (repair) grub at the end of cloning, FOG not.
In wiki it’s written that FOG doesn’t support grub2.
Is this still valid for the version now?
If yes why it supports grub but not grub2? Where is the problem? -
@marted said in GRUB2 solution for dual boot image ( Windows/ Ubuntu):
100M/300G/100G.(grub2/Windows/Ubuntu
Can you explain the steps you used to create this type of disk configuration. Windows itself will not allow only one partition for all of its bits to work correctly (unless your windows version is XP). With Windows 10 you should always have 3 partitions. (I understand it worked before with Clonezilla). 1) boot (which grub can do) 2) System reserved. 3) OS Disk. You can usually discard the recover partition and that would be #4.
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@george1421 I install windows and manually delete partitions and leave only the boot and windows OS and after I create third one for example fat32 which when I install Ubuntu I format to ext4. During the Linux installation grub is installed on first partition efi mounted like /boot
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@Sebastian-Roth Can you explain why grub2 is not supported in FOG and need to be downgraded to grub?
I red this in fogwiki . -
@marted said in GRUB2 solution for dual boot image ( Windows/ Ubuntu):
I red this in fogwiki .
Please post the wiki link here so we know what you mean.
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@Sebastian-Roth https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Client_Setup#Dual_boot_Images
it says : The installation is a standard Linux installation, but the default grub is not supported, so we downgrade to grub-legacy.
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@marted Yeah, that is an article created January of 2013. Using a dual OS system for that period of time (Ubuntu 11 and Windows 7).
Maybe that was true for whomever created the original article, but have you tried running this for yourself?
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@Tom-Elliott I’ve never tried it, but I want to try a simple installation first windows and after that ubuntu without touching the partitions, I’ll see if it work. If not I’ll check the solution proposed in the wiki to downgrade grub to legacy. I’ll post my results here soon.
I came across other issues. I tried to activate https SSL and my pxe doesn’t boot anymore and the web access got certification problem (not trusted). I saw a lot here in the forum about that but still can not find a place here where it is explained step by step how to activate SSL and got it to work well with iPXE https and access web trusted certificates. Maybe I missed it, but if you can guide me on how to do it I’ll be so helpful.
Thanks again for all your help!!
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@marted said in GRUB2 solution for dual boot image ( Windows/ Ubuntu):
I came across other issues. I tried to activate https SSL and my pxe doesn’t boot anymore and the web access got certification problem (not trusted). I saw a lot here in the forum about that but still can not find a place here where it is explained step by step how to activate SSL and got it to work well with iPXE https and access web trusted certificates. Maybe I missed it, but if you can guide me on how to do it I’ll be so helpful.
Mod Note: Please start a new thread for this since the issue doesn’t match the title of the thread.
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@marted Yes, some of the wiki content is really old and the mentioned article is not up to date.
Though we do try to keep up with many things it’s possible that Windows/Ubuntu dual boot cloning is broken at the moment. I have not tested this myself in quite a while. But let’s try to grab all the details and I am sure we can make it work for you or fix FOG.
Please run
ls -alR /images
on your FOG server and post output here. As well go to the/images/IMAGENAME
folder, get the text filed1.partitions
and post contents here.Is the partition layout GPT or old school MBR?
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@george1421 ok. Thank you
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@Sebastian-Roth thank you so much. Tell me how you want me to take the image , like Linux OS or Others?
I’ll make a new image after installed a fresh copy windows/Ubuntu and will post the information today. -
@marted I have not created a dual boot system in a very long time, but with windows 10 and Ubuntu, I would start out by installing windows 10, use the advanced disk options so you can manually set the size of the drive to be less than the entire disk. The space you leave unallocated will be for ubuntu. Once windows is installed and happy then boot with an alternate live OS and remove the recovery partition. Since you are using FOG there is no real reason for the recovery partition. Then install ubuntu side by side with windows. If I remember correctly ubuntu will install grub on the boot partition replacing windows boot loader merging the windows boot loader into grub to make the dual boot environment. Once you have a working golden image fog should clone this. It should work rather well if the system is uefi based because the boot up logic is a bit simpler than bios mode.
If by chance you need to make changes to grub during deployment you should be able to do what is needed with a post install bash shell script.
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@george1421 thanks. I’ll do that today and will post the results.
Could you tell me more about post install script? If for example I want to repair grub at the end of the cloning image how to run a post installation script? I saw a folder in /images with that name. It should be bash or sh script ?