no error logs, have you tried to boot directly from that second disk? (I'm not fully following this thread so i don't know all the details)
note that for that to work you need to have a separated /boot partition (so, what boots is the /boot partition, loading the micro-linux system which is the initrd file, in order to be able to detect and decrypt your encrypted real root system and switch to it)
this is where the EFI partition is mounted, so it is where the grub of elive has been added (EFI works a a per-directory os-bootloaders, so there should be a directory called elive which is meant to boot this one)
if all these things are correctly configured, does installing "refind" helped to boot from its own elive grub boot system?
stable 3.0 ? this is too old for me to remember what the installer exactly (lots of changes has been made), the logs shows that is the last (bullseye-based) beta version, I wonder if he's affected by a bug on grub that was in these recent builds (basically, if the package grub-efi-amd64-signed is installed on that installed system, this is the cause of the issue). But back to the Stable-3.0 topic, I'm not sure that EFI was supported on these versions
No it wasn't and isn't.
But there was also an issue with the formatting of an SD-card with Beta ..... and not entirely clear what was going on there or that the perceived bug could be replicated.
This one: https://forum.elivelinux.org/t/installing-on-hp-stream-11-notebook
I have installed elive stable on the sd card on my old laptop. The card is seen as mmcblk0 device. I see the card from the install image and I could install on it. But I can't boot from it.
Same situation as my new laptop : the bios doesn't see the mmcblk0 card. And grub was installed on it. So it just doesn't boot. On this computer grub is installed on the hard disk and it boot a Solus linux. I don't see how I could chainload from the first grub to a second disk it doesn't see from the bios ???
I can read the mmcblk0 disk. It is formatted correctly on 2 partition boot, encrypted root with a volume group with root and swap (on an extended partition).
On the old laptop with Elive stable 3.0.6 I just tried to boot elive from KVM by creating a virtual machine from an existing disk and assigning the disk to the /dev/mmcblk0. I gave it 2048MB memory and 2 processors.
It does boot and I can get to the grub menu. But while booting the machine I get a message from E16 that "cryptsetup evms.activate not available". And follow the message that it is loading but it never load for eternity.
I will test this too on my actual laptop. And we'll see what happens.
Regards,
BT
edit:
I tried on my actual laptop and it does exactly the same thing. Grub start, I choose the default entry. Then it flashes some text very rapidly saying that there unknown hardware and then that amd-ucode/microcode doesn't load. It may be that I haven't installed correctly the virtual environment. Not that the elive install itself is in problem. I think that I would have to do a P2V conversion to convert the physical hardware to virtual hardware first to be able to run on a VM.
Anyway, we got an answer. The mmc is formatted correctly and it could boot if the bios could see the mmcblk0 disk.
So in your case we're down to the BIOS/Firmware not recognizing the SD-card. Which could be attributed to the BIOS (needing to activate USB emulation for the reader) but I personally think it's the SD-card itself.
Anyway, all machines that boot using BIOS/Firmware and that don't see the carrier, will never boot from that carrier ...which leaves only the options of maybe upgrading the Firmware or ultimately 'libreboot' if the hardware allows.
that's the first problem, but yeah you should be able to install on the first disk to boot from the second disk, now there's two possible scenarios here:
not having an EFI partition on the second this (to make sure is not installed on this one, but on the first disk)
having an EFI partition on the second disk (in order to make it from it, but using a bootloader like refind that should find this efi partition)
i would start with the first option
Note: Installing an OS in a SD card is not recommended at all because it can reduce its lifespan very fast, these devices are not ready for strong RW operations (I think the installer already warns about that?)
It's ok I have abandoned the idea to have a bootable OS on that SD card. Instead I would to install elive on a external ssd drive.
I would like to replace the POP OS on it by elive. Is it possible to install over the actual OS and keep the home directory intact ?
I have seen on the elive site it should be possible to replace one linux by elive and keeping personal data. But I have not found documentation on how to do it actually.
It's a piece of cake with Elive.
You just allow the installer to do the work for you.
We have a thread going on about that:
Concluding from there I'd wait out a few days for 8.3.28 to show up. There's quite a few enhancements in there that haven't been implemented in older versions yet.
And I did post a review, a while back of moving Ubuntu 18.04 to to Elive 3.8.24 which went quite smoothly.
Well if that were the case it wouldn't make much sense using the word "compatible" ..... In general think Debian based i.e making use of repositories the way Debian does.
So in your case:
SolusOs = No
PopOs=Yes
But anyway, if the option isn't offered it wont work. Leave it to the installer.
I did try it first on a laptop with Solus, then another with Archlinux. It didn't offered to "transgrade". It makes sense. I will wait for the next beta to try it with PopOS on my spare ssd drive.
"transgrade", "mutagrade", "elivegrade", "imprograde", "promograde", they all make sense to me. You may call it the way you like. It's YOUR very good idea!
All the kudos go to @Thanatermesis for the work/code and idea. The consisting naming of the feature is important for publicity, though....'crossgrade' seems to be the best.
any (actually), only a few ones have been betatested but it should work more or less the same in all of them (you are welcome to post a review of the things you needed to "fix" later if you found things not working after to install, in order to improve the installer for next migration modes of that distro, and especially to enable reports on the installer )
yeah i think crossgrade sounds more simple to understand we will need now to know "where" to change (from migrate keywords) it, like website, newsletters, or installer messages
I don't want to put any pressure. But is Elive beta 3.8.28 still in the oven being prepared ?
Coming soon ?
Just to have an idea of when to expect the thing ?
Will try upgrading my existing 3.24 (manually switched Bullseye based) to 3.8.30 tomorrow
Excited to see what exactly is going to work (and not) ... I'll keep you lot posted and:
If there's no word at all, then something went horribly wrong and I'll have moved over to Arch and KDE.
I will wait for the latest beta 8.3.28.
