What's Going On Here?

[keg]

Hi, I am very new to Mageia and the world of Linux in general.I am very impressed with Mageia it is very polished.I got tired of flash drives for Linux and bought a second hard drive just for Linux distro's.The performance difference is shocking.I know most of you wouldnt partition your hard drive the way that I have and I'm sure I've made some mistakes.It all seems to work as intended though.
I wanted to keep all the Linux on my second hard drive which I will refer to as /sbd. I did not allow grub to be installed on /sba.I did not want to compromise Windows EFI boot loader with other distros so I installed all including Grub to /sbd. Now I can boot my computer and hit f12 to choose which distro I want or just allow Windows to boot normally if I dont use f12. Seems to work real well.
I noticed something strange in relation to Mageia. I noticed with Gparted that when Mageia boots it mounts another partition from another distro.I have included a snapshot of my sbd drive from Gparted.I am hoping someone with more experience than me can tell me whats going on.I also want to mention that I know that I really dont need all the EFI/ESP partitions but being a newbie I was trying to keep each distro independent of another and especially keep the distros on my second hard drive.
If you look at the snapshot you will see Mageia running on sbd14, sbd15, sbd16 and sbd3 as swap.I also see that it has mounted sbd8 which is my question.Why is it mounting sbd8? Is that where Mageia placed Grub?Maybe the mount points will give someone with more experience than me the answer.Your input would be appreciated.

[doktor5000]

As you installed in UEFI mode, that is the ESP partition where the EFI bootloader is stored. See at the right side where it says "boot,esp" in the flags column.
You may want to read https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installing_o ... I_firmware

EDIT: Seems the installer may have been confused by the large number of ESP partitions - usually you only have one which is shared among all operating systems AFAIU.
That's why it seems to have added it as a second windows partition, indicated by the mountpoint /mnt/win_c2
So you can try to remove sbd8 from /etc/fstab as it already uses /dev/sbd14.

[keg]

Thank you for your quick reply doktor5000, I kind of see what you are saying about sbd8 but I dont quite get the part about a second windows partition.Looking at my primary hard drive /sda I see only Windows partitions.I think if I had it to do over again I would just put in the one EFI ESP partition.Not going to though, too many updates and config settings to redo.All the distros are booting, so if it aint broke --------.I was just curious why it was mounting a non Mageia partition.
I looked in the /etc/fstab folder and I see the entry for sdb8 that you mentioned.If I save the line that specifies sbd8 to a text document then remove that line from the /etc/fstab file do you think I can put it back in if removing it causes Mageia to not boot?

[doktor5000]

If I save the line that specifies sbd8 to a text document then remove that line from the /etc/fstab file do you think I can put it back in if removing it causes Mageia to not boot?

No need to delete the line, simply put a # at the beginning of the line.

[benmc]

Just to clarify,
this HDD has no Windows, just Linux of various flavours, yes?

the following : sdb1, sdb4, sdb6,sdb7 and sdb11, unless you specifically made them, are likely due to poor alignment of the partition start sector / end sectors relative to the physical block size.

a bit technical, but have a read here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/201164/p ... ing-parted.

given that it is a large drive, it may not be important to you, but adding new partitions is likely to add new small "alignment error partitions"
here is one of mine for comparison:

partitions.png (114.22 KiB) Viewed 2146 times

[keg]

If I save the line that specifies sbd8 to a text document then remove that line from the /etc/fstab file do you think I can put it back in if removing it causes Mageia to not boot?

No need to delete the line, simply put a # at the beginning of the line.

Doktor,
I looked at the fstab file again and tried to disengage sdb8 from being mounted. I am so new that just removing one line I saw related to sdb8 did not stop it from mounting, entry 5, so I put it back.I had a hard time just figuring out how to get Kwrite to make the change as root.LOL.I have included a snapshot of fstab for you to review if you have a chance.There are a couple of references to sdb8 in there.Not sure which to modify.Maybe I should just leave it alone.It is running OK just not booting and mounting partitions as expected.
I think my major problem during this install was the drak partition manager.Of all the distros I installed it was one of the hardest to use.The first time I tried to install I created my first partition mount point as /boot/efi and the crazy thing formatted that partition to ext4. Maybe I missed a step in there.Well of course it wouldn't boot because Windows cant read ext4.The second time I tried to install I set my mount point to /mnt/windows so i could format to fat32.I also told it to place Grub on \sdb instead \sba That may be the reason it installed strange.That and the point you made about the installer getting confused by the large number of EFI ESP partitions I have.
When I use a Windows program called " Easy UEFI" I can see on all the distros I have point to their respective boot/efi partition and its Grub ,all except Mageia. It's boot path points to /sba Windows boot loader.So I think drak put it on Windows boot loader, in spite of being told not to.
Benmc thank you for your input.Was a bit over my head.I need to do some reading into what you said.Looking at your Gparted snapshot I see that your partition scheme is much better than what I've done and yes my second hard drive /sdb is only Linux distros.

[benmc]

the drak partition manager.Of all the distros I installed it was one of the hardest to use

We are all familiar with the tools that we use.
Of all the distros I have tried the drax partitioning tool, is for me, the most intuitive and also most powerful.

anyway back to those " windows partitions".
I'm thinking the installer is determining those "alignment error partitions" are MSdos as they have no Linux file structures that it can detect, so labels them as such.
Maybe a bug report will have to be raised against it. I'll look into that.

The first time I tried to install I created my first partition mount point as /boot/efi and the crazy thing formatted that partition to ext4. Maybe I missed a step in there

The installer will have scanned all drives and already found the existing windows /boot/EFI partition and and set it aside. edit:(note the UPPER CASE, it is important)
You would have had to locate the existing /boot/EFI partition, manually change its mount point to " " (empty) and then make your new one.
The installer will only allow 1 instance of any mount point.
Be aware that in-so-far as windows is concerned, you have NOT changed the mount point.

hope this clarifies how the installer works ( or just muddies the waters)

[boombaby]

Hello, keg...

For what this is worth...

I too, have a Windows system on my first drive (Windows2000). I too wanted to keep Linux to my second drive only. (Current intention is to become more familiar with Linux before any clean break-away from Windows.)

Here's what I did (at setup)...

The FIRST drive has 2 partitions:
FreeDos PRIMARY (and Hidden),
Windows2K PRIMARY (and boots).

MBR contains Legacy Grub (ie 0.97) bootmanager.


The SECOND drive has 2 partitions:
FreeDos PRIMARY,
Extended (PRIMARY)

The MBR is used on this drive as a dummy Grub (0.97 or 2) install point (if needed)

Every new distro is loaded into it's own separate LOGICAL partition (ie inside the EXTENDED partition)

So, at the moment I have:
First logical as SWAP for all Linux.
Second logical is Puppy for emergencies (it just works, and works, and works).
Third logical is MAGEIA-5 (WOW, what a system!)
Fourth logical is blank,
Fifth logical is currently a test area (currently Ubuntu stripped of Unity, loaded with LXDE)
Sixth logical is Antix.
Seventh logical is for LINUX files,
Eighth logical is Windows transfer files.

After looking at various boot managers I finally settled on Grub Legacy as the main bootmanager, which (as I said) exists on the A disk (ie with Windows). I used the chainloader technique to boot anything on B disk. I have now gained enough confidence to put a lot of faith in Grub for this purpose - but it took a while. I like it.

TIP
In fstab file I use target systems via partition LABELS (ie all actual partitions are labelled, and then called BY LABEL name in fstab). In this way, any new system that knocks out a "UUID" does not affect the LABELLING scheme, except if it happens to wipe labels. [AntixMX linux (not Antix) did that with the SWAP label - and it threw me for a while.]
<< Actually, keg, I am wondering if labelling your partitions and using that in fstab might help you with what you are doing too. >>

TIP
If worse comes to worst (in some kind of disaster) then the second drive can be connected as a single drive, and recovered separately.


I consider myself a newbie at Command Line Linux, and complex "rescues" are a bit beyond me, but this setup works for me.

(Yes; I know that new systems come with Grub2 and efi, but I don't need them right now.)

This may be a side issue for you, but since you claim to be a "newbie" too I thought it might interest you.


Regards,
wayne (of kelmscott)