Ubuntu Mate on second hard drive in a laptop

Support & Help Requests
#1

Hello!

I have tried Ubuntu Mate on a very old Dell Inspiron Mini 10 and decided that it looks and works very good. That made me try it on my production machine. But before moving it to production I have to test it on a daily basis so recently I have thrown out my old DVD drive and bought a second hard drive for my Lenovo Think Pad Edge

Now the setup is like this:

  1. the internal hard drive - Linux Mint 64 bit - encrypted install

  2. the second drive - Ubuntu Mate 64 bit not encrypted install.

I have tried to set it up so at boot I can pick up from which drive the system starts up but ended up with a failure. According to help provided at Linux Mint community I did steps like this:

fw190@ta152 ~ $ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for fw190:

Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60022480896 bytes
głowic: 255, sektorów/ścieżkę: 63, cylindrów: 7297, w sumie sektorów: 117231408
Jednostka = sektorĂłw, czyli 1 * 512 = 512 bajtĂłw
Rozmiar sektora (logiczny/fizyczny) w bajtach: 512 / 512
Rozmiar we/wy (minimalny/optymalny) w bajtach: 512 / 512
Identyfikator dysku: 0x000f2cdf

UrzÄ…dzenie Rozruch PoczÄ…tek Koniec BlokĂłw ID System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 499711 248832 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 501758 117229567 58363905 5 Rozszerzona
/dev/sda5 501760 117229567 58363904 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
głowic: 255, sektorów/ścieżkę: 63, cylindrów: 60801, w sumie sektorów: 976773168
Jednostka = sektorĂłw, czyli 1 * 512 = 512 bajtĂłw
Rozmiar sektora (logiczny/fizyczny) w bajtach: 512 / 512
Rozmiar we/wy (minimalny/optymalny) w bajtach: 512 / 512
Identyfikator dysku: 0x960a9487

UrzÄ…dzenie Rozruch PoczÄ…tek Koniec BlokĂłw ID System
/dev/sdb1 * 2048 97656831 48827392 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 97658878 976771071 439556097 5 Rozszerzona
/dev/sdb5 97658880 107421695 4881408 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb6 107423744 976771071 434673664 83 Linux

Disk /dev/mapper/sda5_crypt: 59.8 GB, 59762540544 bytes
głowic: 255, sektorów/ścieżkę: 63, cylindrów: 7265, w sumie sektorów: 116723712
Jednostka = sektorĂłw, czyli 1 * 512 = 512 bajtĂłw
Rozmiar sektora (logiczny/fizyczny) w bajtach: 512 / 512
Rozmiar we/wy (minimalny/optymalny) w bajtach: 512 / 512
Identyfikator dysku: 0x00000000

Dysk /dev/mapper/sda5_crypt nie zawiera poprawnej tablicy partycji

Disk /dev/mapper/mint–vg-root: 55.7 GB, 55679385600 bytes
głowic: 255, sektorów/ścieżkę: 63, cylindrów: 6769, w sumie sektorów: 108748800
Jednostka = sektorĂłw, czyli 1 * 512 = 512 bajtĂłw
Rozmiar sektora (logiczny/fizyczny) w bajtach: 512 / 512
Rozmiar we/wy (minimalny/optymalny) w bajtach: 512 / 512
Identyfikator dysku: 0x00000000

Dysk /dev/mapper/mint–vg-root nie zawiera poprawnej tablicy partycji

Dysk /dev/mapper/mint–vg-swap_1: 4081 MB, bajtów: 4081057792
głowic: 255, sektorów/ścieżkę: 63, cylindrów: 496, w sumie sektorów: 7970816
Jednostka = sektorĂłw, czyli 1 * 512 = 512 bajtĂłw
Rozmiar sektora (logiczny/fizyczny) w bajtach: 512 / 512
Rozmiar we/wy (minimalny/optymalny) w bajtach: 512 / 512
Identyfikator dysku: 0x00000000

Dysk /dev/mapper/mint–vg-swap_1 nie zawiera poprawnej tablicy partycji

fw190@ta152 ~ $ sudo blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID=“092d253b-4e38-4287-aad9-62dc282e9d70” TYPE=“ext2”
/dev/sda5: UUID=“a41f05fa-dbaf-4d8e-9c74-b8d9a4c0fdb6” TYPE=“crypto_LUKS”
/dev/sdb1: UUID=“a2c42d6e-2f36-4571-a043-b70908a0d4df” TYPE=“ext4”
/dev/sdb5: UUID=“cfbd8888-99ea-4619-80b3-1c461e419275” TYPE=“swap”
/dev/sdb6: UUID=“2225cfc9-ae2a-4a7d-8303-c511e52ca9a7” TYPE=“ext4”
/dev/mapper/sda5_crypt: UUID=“8ZKUbn-fIuB-ysgZ-K097-xJyq-Mykv-KsvYNf” TYPE=“LVM2_member”
/dev/mapper/mint–vg-root: UUID=“9131d36a-85b1-4ebd-9c2c-b2b090caa43d” TYPE=“ext4”

fw190@ta152 ~ $ sudo os-prober
/dev/sdb1:Ubuntu 15.04 (15.04):Ubuntu:linux

fw190@ta152 ~ $ sudo update-grub
Generating grub configuration file …
Uwaga: Setting GRUB_TIMEOUT to a non-zero value when GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT is set is no longer supported.
Znaleziono obraz Linuksa: /boot/vmlinuz-3.16.0-38-generic
Znaleziono obraz initrd: /boot/initrd.img-3.16.0-38-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /memtest86+.elf
Found memtest86+ image: /memtest86+.bin
Znaleziono Ubuntu 15.04 (15.04) na /dev/sdb1
gotowe
fw190@ta152 ~ $

At boot I see grub options and both Mint and Mate are there - if I pick up Mint it starts normally. When I pick up Mate the grub disappears and it stops at a blank black screen and nothing happens. At some point it reboots the laptop.

In BIOS I can only see the internall hard drive and not the on it he DVD socket.

Is there any rescue for my situation?

Ubuntu Mate on laptop take two
#2

I am far from being an expert on this but hera are my 2cents.
When installing mate, did you installed grub ?
I have a similar setup on my laptop, and when I have installed the os on the second drive I also installed grub to the PARTITION (sdb1). Then, on my main os I have run the update-grub.
Hope it helps you.

#3

Well to be honest I don’t know. I just did 3 partitions as usual - root, swap and home during the install and that was all. When I have tried for the second time I have selected lvm and changed nothing and it didn’t work.

#4

OK - my journey take 2. I have installed Lubuntu thinking that it was something wrong with Ubuntu Mate and still nothing.

This time I did it like this: /boot, /, swap, /home

Mint discovers Lubntu, at start I can pick up Lubuntu from Grub but then nothing happnes and after a while I get a restart. Any hints?

1 Like
#5

I assume the external drive is connected via USB?

If it is, the problem might not be fixable. I have had trouble in the past with Windows deployments (recognising and/or booting from external drives sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t) which I tracked down to buggy USB controllers.

A worthwhile exercise would be to swap the drives round physically (internal = unencrypted, external = encrypted) and see how that goes. I would have thought that having the unencrypted drive internal, as you have at present, would have been “better” but have seen so much odd behaviour in situations like this I could be wrong …

#6

The second drive is in the place of the dvd drive I bought a special box in which you put the disc and then put it in the place of the dvd drive. I have tried it before with the swap but will give it a try again.

#7

OK - I did some testing (with the Lubuntu as it was already there).

When I have swapped the drives (Lubuntu not encrypted in the main drive place) the system saw the encrypted Mint install ine the DVD place. It could not gain access to the drive at it lacks cryptsetup. After installing that package I was able to decrypt the drive with the password but a pop up came - unknown file system or something like this.

Trying os-prober after decrypting the drive gave no results - It showed no extra systems which could be added to Lubuntu grub but the other commands showed the drive.

Any hints what now?

#8

Ah, a caddy. (By coincidence I have a laptop on order which has a similar device - it can be backed up simply by slotting in a second hard drive).

In that case, unfortunately, I’m out of ideas :confounded: