Trying to unstall Mint 21.3 on a new system.
When it gets to installing GRUB it fails giving these lines.

Unable to install GRUB in /dev/nvme0n1
Executing 'grub-install /dev/nvme0n1' failed
This is a fatal error.

I did not want a UEFI system, so did not install a UEFI partition.
Could that be the reason for this?

TIA

--
Linux Mint 21.1 kernel version 5.15.0-94-generic Cinnamon 5.6.8
AMD Phenom II x4 955 CPU 16Gb Dram 2TB Barracuda

On 2/10/24 07:40 AM, pinnerite wrote:
> Trying to unstall Mint 21.3 on a new system.
> When it gets to installing GRUB it fails giving these lines.
>
> Unable to install GRUB in /dev/nvme0n1
> Executing 'grub-install /dev/nvme0n1' failed
> This is a fatal error.
>
> I did not want a UEFI system, so did not install a UEFI partition.
> Could that be the reason for this?
>
> TIA
>
>
>
>
If you manually configured your partitioning, probably. I got that error once too, so I simply let
it partition (automatic).

I didn't take much time to see how to make that uefi partition. It was on a VM.
I have one on this laptop probably because Windows was here first. I just loaded dual boot and put
the loader in UEFI so it was a no brainer.
--
Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon 6.0.4
Al

On Sat, 10 Feb 2024 08:13:14 -0500
Big Al <alan@invalid.com> wrote:

> On 2/10/24 07:40 AM, pinnerite wrote:
> > Trying to unstall Mint 21.3 on a new system.
> > When it gets to installing GRUB it fails giving these lines.
> >
> > Unable to install GRUB in /dev/nvme0n1
> > Executing 'grub-install /dev/nvme0n1' failed
> > This is a fatal error.
> >
> > I did not want a UEFI system, so did not install a UEFI partition.
> > Could that be the reason for this?
> >
> > TIA
> >
> >
> >
> >
> If you manually configured your partitioning, probably. I got that error once too, so I simply let
> it partition (automatic).
>
> I didn't take much time to see how to make that uefi partition. It was on a VM.
> I have one on this laptop probably because Windows was here first. I just loaded dual boot and put
> the loader in UEFI so it was a no brainer.
> --
> Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon 6.0.4
> Al
>

Yes I did manually partition the ssd. I always do.
Why would this be a no-no now?

Alan

--
Linux Mint 21.1 kernel version 5.15.0-94-generic Cinnamon 5.6.8
AMD Phenom II x4 955 CPU 16Gb Dram 2TB Barracuda

On 2/10/24 08:43 AM, pinnerite wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Feb 2024 08:13:14 -0500
> Big Al <alan@invalid.com> wrote:
>
>> On 2/10/24 07:40 AM, pinnerite wrote:
>>> Trying to unstall Mint 21.3 on a new system.
>>> When it gets to installing GRUB it fails giving these lines.
>>>
>>> Unable to install GRUB in /dev/nvme0n1
>>> Executing 'grub-install /dev/nvme0n1' failed
>>> This is a fatal error.
>>>
>>> I did not want a UEFI system, so did not install a UEFI partition.
>>> Could that be the reason for this?
>>>
>>> TIA
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> If you manually configured your partitioning, probably. I got that error once too, so I simply let
>> it partition (automatic).
>>
>> I didn't take much time to see how to make that uefi partition. It was on a VM.
>> I have one on this laptop probably because Windows was here first. I just loaded dual boot and put
>> the loader in UEFI so it was a no brainer.
>> --
>> Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon 6.0.4
>> Al
>>
>
> Yes I did manually partition the ssd. I always do.
> Why would this be a no-no now?
>
> Alan
>
I guess it doesn't matter in your case.
I'm not sure I've done an mbr install. I guess I did since I've had mint from Version 13 on. So
where does the loader go if you're MBR?
--
Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon 6.0.4
Al

On Sat, 10 Feb 2024 13:37:18 -0500
Big Al <alan@invalid.com> wrote:

> On 2/10/24 08:43 AM, pinnerite wrote:
> > On Sat, 10 Feb 2024 08:13:14 -0500
> > Big Al <alan@invalid.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 2/10/24 07:40 AM, pinnerite wrote:
> >>> Trying to unstall Mint 21.3 on a new system.
> >>> When it gets to installing GRUB it fails giving these lines.
> >>>
> >>> Unable to install GRUB in /dev/nvme0n1
> >>> Executing 'grub-install /dev/nvme0n1' failed
> >>> This is a fatal error.
> >>>
> >>> I did not want a UEFI system, so did not install a UEFI partition.
> >>> Could that be the reason for this?
> >>>
> >>> TIA
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >> If you manually configured your partitioning, probably. I got that error once too, so I simply let
> >> it partition (automatic).
> >>
> >> I didn't take much time to see how to make that uefi partition. It was on a VM.
> >> I have one on this laptop probably because Windows was here first. I just loaded dual boot and put
> >> the loader in UEFI so it was a no brainer.
> >> --
> >> Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon 6.0.4
> >> Al
> >>
> >
> > Yes I did manually partition the ssd. I always do.
> > Why would this be a no-no now?
> >
> > Alan
> >
> I guess it doesn't matter in your case.
> I'm not sure I've done an mbr install. I guess I did since I've had mint from Version 13 on. So
> where does the loader go if you're MBR?
> --
> Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon 6.0.4
> Al
>

When I tried to boot into the BIOS/setup screen, the system reported a
cpu fan speed error. Eventually I got into the AMI BIOS which shows
little graphics of all six fan options with those connected spinning
and revealing their rpms. The one that isn't is CPU_FAN. The ones on
are CPU_OPT_FAN andf AIO PUMP.

CPU_FAN is a must and camn only accept one fan.
My CPU cooler has two fans. One if them is clearly on CPU_OPT_FAN.
There should not be one on AIO_PUMP.

I will have to check these tomorrow morning when the light is better.

The loader, I always believed would be under /boot.
grub is in /boot/grub.

Alan

--
Linux Mint 21.1 kernel version 5.15.0-94-generic Cinnamon 5.6.8
AMD Phenom II x4 955 CPU 16Gb Dram 2TB Barracuda

On 2/10/2024 1:37 PM, Big Al wrote:
> On 2/10/24 08:43 AM, pinnerite wrote:

>> Yes I did manually partition the ssd. I always do.
>> Why would this be a no-no now?
>>
>> Alan
>>
> I guess it doesn't matter in your case.
> I'm not sure I've done an mbr install.> I guess I did since I've had mint from Version 13 on.
> So where does the loader go if you're MBR?

It goes in the boot track.

Clean a disk. Install WinXP (fake CHS partitioning). Install Mint 21.3 .
Skim the disk with HxD and have a look. How big is the boot track ?

Clean a disk. Install Win7 (MBR, with 1 megabyte partitioning). Install Mint 21.3 .
Skim the disk with HxD and have a look. How big is the boot track now ?

Clean a disk. Install Win10 (GPT, with 1 megabyte partitioning). Install Mint 21.3 .
Skim the disk with HxD and have a look. No boot track, presumably. A different GRUB.

The boot track is never completely used up, as a rule.
A more typical case, is to find three sectors of "material" in there.

Sometimes you can find the odd, sparsely populated sector also
in the boot track, but it is hard to say who or what put it there.

There are a number of test cases for GRUB, sufficient for a "short hobby" :-)

An OS can have a PBR (Partition Boor Record) right after the
file system sector header (that's the first sector of the partition
and it may have a text string indicating file system type).

The 440 byte MBR code, is different for Windows and Linux. Windows
likes to look for the 0x80 boot flag, to identify a partition.
Linux does not look for the boot flag. Presumably there
are some different codes injected, for GPT usage.

GRUB has more than one stage. The MBR, the boot track, the PBR,
and so on, could be component parts. At least one part of GRUB
is partition number sensitive. Other parts of GRUB use BLKIDs
or partition numbers or other things (flexibility, for the rest
of the stages).

For some terminology or keywords, you can try here.
Some of his MBR stuff was handy. It doesn't look like
he's made a "career" out of GRUB :-)

https://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/GRUB.htm

Paul

> >
> > Yes I did manually partition the ssd. I always do.
> > Why would this be a no-no now?
> >
> > Alan
> >
> I guess it doesn't matter in your case.
> I'm not sure I've done an mbr install. I guess I did since I've had mint from Version 13 on. So
> where does the loader go if you're MBR?
> --
> Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon 6.0.4
> Al

Well, it only took three more reinstalls!

It is my first experience with SSDs. The speed of each installation
made it less than a chore.

I followed Al's advice the second time and let Mint do its thing.
It seemed to boot OK but the partitions I had created showed up under
"Disks". The difference was that they didn't have mount points.
I couldn't find a way to fix that.
So I did another reinstall. When I rebooted it didn't get as far as
Cinnamon, just a promptr. I rebooted into grub and selected the second
boot option. That brought it up.
I decided to go for all the updates believing that would clear and
glitches. It did.

The next stage is more tricky.

I am going to clone the hard drive of my work machine overnight.
Tomorrow I will wipe the non-home directory parts of the clone.

I will then try to rename /home on that drive to data before plugging
it into the new machine and seeing if my theory will actually work.

--
Linux Mint 21.1 kernel version 5.15.0-94-generic Cinnamon 5.6.8
AMD Phenom II x4 955 CPU 16Gb Dram 2TB Barracuda

On 2/11/2024 5:18 PM, pinnerite wrote:
>>>
>>> Yes I did manually partition the ssd. I always do.
>>> Why would this be a no-no now?
>>>
>>> Alan
>>>
>> I guess it doesn't matter in your case.
>> I'm not sure I've done an mbr install. I guess I did since I've had mint from Version 13 on. So
>> where does the loader go if you're MBR?
>> --
>> Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon 6.0.4
>> Al
>
> Well, it only took three more reinstalls!
>
> It is my first experience with SSDs. The speed of each installation
> made it less than a chore.
>
> I followed Al's advice the second time and let Mint do its thing.
> It seemed to boot OK but the partitions I had created showed up under
> "Disks". The difference was that they didn't have mount points.
> I couldn't find a way to fix that.
> So I did another reinstall. When I rebooted it didn't get as far as
> Cinnamon, just a promptr. I rebooted into grub and selected the second
> boot option. That brought it up.
> I decided to go for all the updates believing that would clear and
> glitches. It did.
>
> The next stage is more tricky.
>
> I am going to clone the hard drive of my work machine overnight.
> Tomorrow I will wipe the non-home directory parts of the clone.
>
> I will then try to rename /home on that drive to data before plugging
> it into the new machine and seeing if my theory will actually work.

You can put static mounts in /etc/fstab .

You can click on partitions presented by your
multiple disks and do "automounts", which are dynamic mounts.

From the sound of your terminology, it sounds like you are
cloning a hard drive to an SSD using "dd". Whether this works
properly done that way, an MSDOS partitioned disk may work
better than a GPT one (as the GPT one, the secondary GPT table
could end up in the wrong place).

This is why we use "smart" cloners instead, ones that only
copy occupied inodes or clusters, from one drive to the other.
Such activity can be accompanied by the placement of correct metadata
for the new drive size being used. Maybe something with the name
"partclone" in it, would do a more efficient job (not use up as much
of the SSD write life).

If I have 20GB of data on a 1TB drive, the "dd" method does 1TB of writes,
while a smart cloner does 20GB of writes, to move 20GB of data.

If a drive was absolutely full of files, from end to end, then
the difference between "dd" and "partclone" is not important. It
is partially filled drives, where the difference can be large.

Paul

On 2/10/2024 1:37 PM, Big Al wrote:
> On 2/10/24 08:43 AM, pinnerite wrote:
>> On Sat, 10 Feb 2024 08:13:14 -0500
>> Big Al <alan@invalid.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2/10/24 07:40 AM, pinnerite wrote:
>>>> Trying to unstall Mint 21.3 on a new system.
>>>> When it gets to installing GRUB it fails giving these lines.
>>>>
>>>> Unable to install GRUB in /dev/nvme0n1
>>>> Executing 'grub-install /dev/nvme0n1' failed
>>>>       This is a fatal error.
>>>>
>>>> I did not want a UEFI system, so did not install a UEFI partition.
>>>> Could that be the reason for this?
>>>>
>>>> TIA
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> If you manually configured your partitioning, probably.  I got that error once too, so I simply let
>>> it partition (automatic).
>>>
>>> I didn't take much time to see how to make that uefi partition.  It was on a VM.
>>> I have one on this laptop probably because Windows was here first. I just loaded dual boot and put
>>> the loader in UEFI so it was a no brainer.
>>> -- 
>>> Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon 6.0.4
>>> Al
>>>
>>
>> Yes I did manually partition the ssd. I always do.
>> Why would this be a no-no now?
>>
>> Alan
>>
> I guess it doesn't matter in your case.
> I'm not sure I've done an mbr install. 
> I guess I did since I've had mint from Version 13 on. 
> So where does the loader go if you're MBR?

In the boot track.

In fake CHS, a track is 63 sectors.

The MBR has the first stage of boot. 440 bytes of code and strings.

The boot track is from 0x200 to 0x7E00.

*******

I installed WinXP (for its fake CHS goodness), then Linux Mint 21.3. It all works.

+-----+
| MBR | 440 bytes boot, 64 byte partition table, 0xAA55 signature at end
+-----+ When Linux Mint installs, the 440 bytes is replaced with GRUB
|
Invalid partition table v
Error loading operating system GRUB Geom
Missing operating system Hard Disk Read Error

+-----------------------------+
| Empty boot track 62 sectors | <=== Once Mint is installed, it fills right up to 0x7E00 (entire boot track!)
+-----------------------------+ Hard to tell if this is all code or not. Windows doesn't use this at all.

+-----------------------------------------+ +-------------------------------------+
| "NTFS" file system header sector 0x7E00 | header plus 426 bytes code, 0xAA55 |EXT4 does not have this sort of stuff|
+-----------------------------------------+ +-------------------------------------+

A disk read error occurred
NTLDR is missing
NTLDR is compressed
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

$Boot 0-15 sectors 0x8000 - 0x8B76 less than 3K <=== Windows continuation of
boot materials, PBR?
NTLDR string? I30?
(the ntldr file is 245KB so this is not it)
9E00 Some light noise up to 0x39648

*******

So I did try a legacy dual boot and it still works. It does not
install in UEFI mode, just a warning dialog complains about
the format isn't what it expected, but once Mint hands off
to the GRUB installer, it does the actual work required.

That's the first time I've ever installed WinXP on the Test Machine.
A good little adventure. The only thing missing, was the video card
is too new to have a WinXP driver, so the display ran in VESA mode
the whole time (800x600, wow). LM 21.3, everything worked of course.

Paul

On Sun, 11 Feb 2024 22:10:42 -0500
Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

> On 2/11/2024 5:18 PM, pinnerite wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Yes I did manually partition the ssd. I always do.
> >>> Why would this be a no-no now?
> >>>
> >>> Alan
> >>>
> >> I guess it doesn't matter in your case.
> >> I'm not sure I've done an mbr install. I guess I did since I've had mint from Version 13 on. So
> >> where does the loader go if you're MBR?
> >> --
> >> Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon 6.0.4
> >> Al
> >
> > Well, it only took three more reinstalls!
> >
> > It is my first experience with SSDs. The speed of each installation
> > made it less than a chore.
> >
> > I followed Al's advice the second time and let Mint do its thing.
> > It seemed to boot OK but the partitions I had created showed up under
> > "Disks". The difference was that they didn't have mount points.
> > I couldn't find a way to fix that.
> > So I did another reinstall. When I rebooted it didn't get as far as
> > Cinnamon, just a promptr. I rebooted into grub and selected the second
> > boot option. That brought it up.
> > I decided to go for all the updates believing that would clear and
> > glitches. It did.
> >
> > The next stage is more tricky.
> >
> > I am going to clone the hard drive of my work machine overnight.
> > Tomorrow I will wipe the non-home directory parts of the clone.
> >
> > I will then try to rename /home on that drive to data before plugging
> > it into the new machine and seeing if my theory will actually work.
>
> You can put static mounts in /etc/fstab .
>
> You can click on partitions presented by your
> multiple disks and do "automounts", which are dynamic mounts.
>
> From the sound of your terminology, it sounds like you are
> cloning a hard drive to an SSD using "dd". Whether this works
> properly done that way, an MSDOS partitioned disk may work
> better than a GPT one (as the GPT one, the secondary GPT table
> could end up in the wrong place).
>
> This is why we use "smart" cloners instead, ones that only
> copy occupied inodes or clusters, from one drive to the other.
> Such activity can be accompanied by the placement of correct metadata
> for the new drive size being used. Maybe something with the name
> "partclone" in it, would do a more efficient job (not use up as much
> of the SSD write life).
>
> If I have 20GB of data on a 1TB drive, the "dd" method does 1TB of writes,
> while a smart cloner does 20GB of writes, to move 20GB of data.
>
> If a drive was absolutely full of files, from end to end, then
> the difference between "dd" and "partclone" is not important. It
> is partially filled drives, where the difference can be large.
>
> Paul

First, I am not using dd to copy from HD to SSD.
I planned to clone from one HD to another.

That has not gone well.

I normally do this by booting from sa live DVD orv flash drive, using
Knoppix.

My first flash drive would barely start going. The second completed
booting up but couldn't link the (wired) keyboard. It did display an
onscreen keyboard but I couldn't get that to work.

Finally I booted on the DVD version. No difference. All of these work
on my old machine!

Given that I had not booted on either hard drive, I decided to see if I
could still do the cloning after booting Mint 21.3 from the SSD.

First I had check to ensure that I was cloning the right way round.
I always rename a text file on source disk with the date. i.e
"Saturday 10 Febrary 2024".

It is then just a case of dd if=/dev/sda(x) of=/dev/sdb(x) etc

Not so easy. On this machine nemo doesn't show the sdx letter at the top.
Instead it gives a long string starting with /media/....

I haven't found a way to identify the sd code of the drive in focus.

It is a nightmare.

--
Linux Mint 21.1 kernel version 5.15.0-94-generic Cinnamon 5.6.8
AMD Phenom II x4 955 CPU 16Gb Dram 2TB Barracuda

On Mon, 12 Feb 2024 13:23:42 +0000
pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 11 Feb 2024 22:10:42 -0500
> Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
>
> > On 2/11/2024 5:18 PM, pinnerite wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>> Yes I did manually partition the ssd. I always do.
> > >>> Why would this be a no-no now?
> > >>>
> > >>> Alan
> > >>>
> > >> I guess it doesn't matter in your case.
> > >> I'm not sure I've done an mbr install. I guess I did since I've had mint from Version 13 on. So
> > >> where does the loader go if you're MBR?
> > >> --
> > >> Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon 6.0.4
> > >> Al
> > >
> > > Well, it only took three more reinstalls!
> > >
> > > It is my first experience with SSDs. The speed of each installation
> > > made it less than a chore.
> > >
> > > I followed Al's advice the second time and let Mint do its thing.
> > > It seemed to boot OK but the partitions I had created showed up under
> > > "Disks". The difference was that they didn't have mount points.
> > > I couldn't find a way to fix that.
> > > So I did another reinstall. When I rebooted it didn't get as far as
> > > Cinnamon, just a promptr. I rebooted into grub and selected the second
> > > boot option. That brought it up.
> > > I decided to go for all the updates believing that would clear and
> > > glitches. It did.
> > >
> > > The next stage is more tricky.
> > >
> > > I am going to clone the hard drive of my work machine overnight.
> > > Tomorrow I will wipe the non-home directory parts of the clone.
> > >
> > > I will then try to rename /home on that drive to data before plugging
> > > it into the new machine and seeing if my theory will actually work.
> >
> > You can put static mounts in /etc/fstab .
> >
> > You can click on partitions presented by your
> > multiple disks and do "automounts", which are dynamic mounts.
> >
> > From the sound of your terminology, it sounds like you are
> > cloning a hard drive to an SSD using "dd". Whether this works
> > properly done that way, an MSDOS partitioned disk may work
> > better than a GPT one (as the GPT one, the secondary GPT table
> > could end up in the wrong place).
> >
> > This is why we use "smart" cloners instead, ones that only
> > copy occupied inodes or clusters, from one drive to the other.
> > Such activity can be accompanied by the placement of correct metadata
> > for the new drive size being used. Maybe something with the name
> > "partclone" in it, would do a more efficient job (not use up as much
> > of the SSD write life).
> >
> > If I have 20GB of data on a 1TB drive, the "dd" method does 1TB of writes,
> > while a smart cloner does 20GB of writes, to move 20GB of data.
> >
> > If a drive was absolutely full of files, from end to end, then
> > the difference between "dd" and "partclone" is not important. It
> > is partially filled drives, where the difference can be large.
> >
> > Paul
>
> First, I am not using dd to copy from HD to SSD.
> I planned to clone from one HD to another.
>
> That has not gone well.
>
> I normally do this by booting from sa live DVD orv flash drive, using
> Knoppix.
>
> My first flash drive would barely start going. The second completed
> booting up but couldn't link the (wired) keyboard. It did display an
> onscreen keyboard but I couldn't get that to work.
>
> Finally I booted on the DVD version. No difference. All of these work
> on my old machine!
>
> Given that I had not booted on either hard drive, I decided to see if I
> could still do the cloning after booting Mint 21.3 from the SSD.
>
> First I had check to ensure that I was cloning the right way round.
> I always rename a text file on source disk with the date. i.e
> "Saturday 10 Febrary 2024".
>
> It is then just a case of dd if=/dev/sda(x) of=/dev/sdb(x) etc
>
> Not so easy. On this machine nemo doesn't show the sdx letter at the top.
> Instead it gives a long string starting with /media/....
>
> I haven't found a way to identify the sd code of the drive in focus.
>
> It is a nightmare.
>

I am delighted to announce a solution.
Two commands give all the information:

$ lsblk returns this:

├─sda1 8:1 0 28G 0 part /
├─sda2 8:2 0 1K 0 part
├─sda5 8:5 0 1.8T 0 part /home
├─sda6 8:6 0 14.5G 0 part /spare
└─sda7 8:7 0 8G 0 part [SWAP]

$ lsscsi returns this:

[0:0:0:0] cd/dvd ASUS DRW-24D5MT 1.00 /dev/sr0
[1:0:0:0] cd/dvd PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-118L 1.01 /dev/sr1
[2:0:0:0] disk ATA ST2000DM001-1CH1 CC24 /dev/sda

These are from a different machine but on the new machine I also had
[3:0:0:0] disk ATA ST2000DM006-2DM CC26 /dev/sdb

So my source was /dev/sda.
The partition that I wanted to clone was sda5

$ sudo dd if=/dev/sda5 of=/dev/sdb5 bs=16384 status=progress.
Almost 2TB so it took a while.

I deleted partitions sdb1, sdb6 and sdb7 and am now resizing sdb5

Should be good to go tomorrow.

Unfortunately I am still waiting to return 16GB of DDR5 and an ASUS Graphics card for replacement.

Still, only 3.5 months so far. What's another two or three weeks!

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Alan

--
Linux Mint 21.1 kernel version 5.15.0-94-generic Cinnamon 5.6.8
AMD Phenom II x4 955 CPU 16Gb Dram 2TB Barracuda