Re: [qubes-users] Dual booting Qubes and Qubes?
December 20, 2019 2:19 PM, "Claudia" wrote: > > I decided I'm going to try the dual-ESP approach first and see if it works. > If not, then I'll try > the EFI directory hack. > > I formatted my disk like: ESP, /boot, root, ESP, /boot, root, (swap); and > installed Qubes into the > first "slot". I still have to install another Qubes instance into the second > "slot" and make sure > they both work. I'll follow up when I do. The dual ESP approach seems to be working fine for me, but you do have to manually fiddle around with efibootmgr. The installer overwrites existing Qubes entries, although I'm not sure what exactly it looks for. Maybe changing the label would be sufficient to preserve it. Dual booting R4.1 and R4.0, both using btrfs on dm-crypt. I can't speak to how LVM or anything else might be affected. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "qubes-users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/b673b6683a5fa2bd9008f6e45a64e0a2%40disroot.org.
Re: [qubes-users] Dual booting Qubes and Qubes?
December 19, 2019 3:44 PM, "awokd' via qubes-users"
wrote:
> Claudia:
>
>> My original thought was to just give each one its own directory in
>> /boot/efi/EFI/, but the /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/ path seems to be hard coded
>> somewhere, probably either in the grub2-efi package (which installs a
>> precompiled efi binary to that directory) or in a grub2-install hook
>> somewhere. Not sure which of those methods Qubes uses. At least, I
>> couldn't figure out any way to persistently change the name of the EFI
>> directory. Of course you could make your own directories by copying the
>> files. e.g. /boot/efi/EFI/qubes{0,1}/, but when it updates (or you
>> reinstall one of them), they would both try to install to
>> /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/ again. And you'd have to manually change the path
>> each time with efibootmgr.
>
> This is partly what I need to do anyways on an older UEFI system. I
> wrote a script that copies the updated files over to BOOTX64, and run it
> after every update that touches EFI. Shouldn't be too hard to add
> efibootmgr to it, and an edit to the .cfg file pointing at the
> appropriate root=. Ignore the redundant .efi copies at the end; I'm
> still not entirely sure which one my half broken UEFI implementation uses.
>
> rm /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/init*
> rm /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/vmlinuz*
> cp /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/init* /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/
> cp /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/vmlinuz* /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/
> cp /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen.cfg /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.cfg
> ls /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen-*.efi
> cp /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen-*.efi /boot/efi/
> cp /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen-*.efi /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/
> cp /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen-*.efi /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.efi
>
I see. I'm guessing your firmware only attempts to read from
/boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.efi, even if the menu entry has a different path? I
think an approach like this could work for managing EFI directories manually.
Automated by a script of course, but still manual in the sense it's not handled
by the OS.
I was really hoping there was a config setting or variable somewhere that could
change the EFI directory, e.g. to /boot/efi/EFI//. On systems that
use grub-install, this is specified by --bootloader-id= argument. So in that
case you may be able replace /usr/bin/grub-install with a wrapper script that
forces your desired --bootloader-id argument. However Fedora doesn't use
grub-install, it uses a package which installs a prebaked grubx64.efi binary
which is installed to the hardcoded path /boot/efi/EFI/fedora. This is in order
to support Secure Boot. I'm assuming Qubes does it the same way. I'm also
assuming that "fedora" gets changed to "qubes" by a patch or a compile-time
variable but is not configurable at runtime. Maybe there's an option in Yum/dnf
similar to apt's redirect option, to configure a file to be installed at a
different path than what it's packaged as. I have no idea.
I did some research, and apparently this is a very common flaw. In fact, Mint
uses the hardcoded directory /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/, meaning you can't dual boot
Mint and Ubuntu from the same ESP. But the good news is that you can use more
than one ESP, as long as your firmware supports it (it sounds like most of them
do). So that's also an option. I was originally worried it would cause problems
that they're using the same UUID, but actually they don't. I was confusing the
filesystem UUID, which is unique, with the GPT partition identifier (GUID),
which is a magic value. And I remembered you could also mount them by label
anyway.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/hands-on-linux-uefi-multi-boot-part-three-problem-solving/
So I guess I could use /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/ as a sort of staging area for both
instances of Qubes, and then religiously after every update, run a script to
move the directory to /boot/efi/EFI/qubes{0,1,...}, and then delete the
newly-created efibootmgr entry for \EFI\qubes\grubx64.efi and (if necessary)
re-create the one for \EFI\qubesN\grubx64.efi. Or, perhaps there's some way to
prevent modification of efibootmgr entries so the package install hook (or
whatever) can't mess with it.
I decided I'm going to try the dual-ESP approach first and see if it works. If
not, then I'll try the EFI directory hack.
I formatted my disk like: ESP, /boot, root, ESP, /boot, root, (swap); and
installed Qubes into the first "slot". I still have to install another Qubes
instance into the second "slot" and make sure they both work. I'll follow up
when I do.
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Re: [qubes-users] Dual booting Qubes and Qubes?
Claudia:
> My original thought was to just give each one its own directory in
> /boot/efi/EFI/, but the /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/ path seems to be hard coded
> somewhere, probably either in the grub2-efi package (which installs a
> precompiled efi binary to that directory) or in a grub2-install hook
> somewhere. Not sure which of those methods Qubes uses. At least, I
> couldn't figure out any way to persistently change the name of the EFI
> directory. Of course you could make your own directories by copying the
> files. e.g. /boot/efi/EFI/qubes{0,1}/, but when it updates (or you
> reinstall one of them), they would both try to install to
> /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/ again. And you'd have to manually change the path
> each time with efibootmgr.
This is partly what I need to do anyways on an older UEFI system. I
wrote a script that copies the updated files over to BOOTX64, and run it
after every update that touches EFI. Shouldn't be too hard to add
efibootmgr to it, and an edit to the .cfg file pointing at the
appropriate root=. Ignore the redundant .efi copies at the end; I'm
still not entirely sure which one my half broken UEFI implementation uses.
rm /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/init*
rm /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/vmlinuz*
cp /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/init* /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/
cp /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/vmlinuz* /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/
cp /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen.cfg /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.cfg
ls /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen-*.efi
cp /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen-*.efi /boot/efi/
cp /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen-*.efi /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/
cp /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen-*.efi /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.efi
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[qubes-users] Dual booting Qubes and Qubes?
I'm wondering what the best way is to go about installing two instances
of Qubes 4.1 on the same machine, which are more or less independent of
each other.
It's fairly easy to dual boot different OSes because they each have
their own EFI directory, e.g. /boot/efi/EFI/{qubes,fedora,ubuntu}, but
what happens when you want to dual boot two of the same OS? (Or two
different releases of the same OS?)
My original thought was to just give each one its own directory in
/boot/efi/EFI/, but the /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/ path seems to be hard coded
somewhere, probably either in the grub2-efi package (which installs a
precompiled efi binary to that directory) or in a grub2-install hook
somewhere. Not sure which of those methods Qubes uses. At least, I
couldn't figure out any way to persistently change the name of the EFI
directory. Of course you could make your own directories by copying the
files. e.g. /boot/efi/EFI/qubes{0,1}/, but when it updates (or you
reinstall one of them), they would both try to install to
/boot/efi/EFI/qubes/ again. And you'd have to manually change the path
each time with efibootmgr.
My other thought is to give each instance its own EFI partition, /boot
partition, and root partition. efibootmgr allows you to specify which
partition, by index, the path resides on for a given boot menu entry.
However it's technically out of spec to have more than one EFI partition
on the same device and I don't know if UEFI implementations know how to
handle multiple EFI partitions correctly. Additionally, since EFI
partitions all use the same magic UUID, the OS wouldn't know which one
to mount at /boot/efi, so they could easily get mixed up. I guess you
could reconfigure /etc/fstab to mount based on partition number, e.g.
/dev/sda1, /dev/sda4, but that brings its own set of problems.
Nevertheless it seems like this might be the best option.
Another option is to uninstall grub on one of them, so that only one
instance ever touches /boot/efi/EFI/qubes. And then write a custom
grub.cfg with a menuentry for each instance. However I don't know how
you'd prevent the installer ISO from trying to install a boot loader
initially. A major reason for having two separate instances is so that I
can reinstall one or the other from ISO without much trouble. So I don't
want the installer clobbering my boot loader every time. Additionally
you'd have to manually modify your grub config with the new UUIDs every
time you reinstall.
I'm still new to UEFI systems so I don't know if any of these would
work. Anyone have any ideas or insights? (Funny how UEFI redesigned the
entire boot process, and it's still just as messy as it was before.)
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