On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 10:18 AM, Iznogoud <iznogoud at nobelware.com> wrote: > For what it is worth, I second the hypervisor idea. That is what those > things are for. If you are going to be a sysadmin for your own business, > you cannot shy away from being bold in your learning and investment in > learning new things, or _current_ things, I might add. Thank me later. Ah ja - -- -that being bold is what has put my butt in a crack and caused extreme pain far too many times already!!! That's why I've set up a testing system. Yes I have used VMs (virtualbox being the current champion) but that idea comes with some serious system overheads. So I looked at lxd (set up using snapd because I'm on Debian). Well the dev teams for both lxd AND snapd truely believe that the newest thing is ALWAYS the best. Me, I want something that is going to work. One of the joys I imported with snapd/ lxd is the daily update/upgrade miasma. When something is working there is just about zero need to update or upgrade things unless there is a security issue. Nevertheless these teams require updates, if updates are not allowed - - -- well my system has internally done a reboot 4 separate times now on the anniversary of its scheduled update/upgrade date. Even better it is not possible to just remove lxd - - - - there is a 6 or 7 step process that must be followed BEFORE lxd can be removed and then, and only then can snapd be removed. I won't apologize for it but I choose what happens on my system and not someone else and when things are being done because the enhance the finances of someone/s else well then I get grumpy and most often if there isn't enough benefit for me - - - well that gets dumped!! I have also spent 2 and 3 weeks at a time trying to get things working and after realizing that I have done a stupid fixing things. I would rather not have my use systems down that long so want a test bed - - - bare iron one in fact. (It still seems like an incredible rarity in linux systems to use multiple graphics cards and more than 3 monitors and yet my system has been that way for well over 5 years - - - that's been a right royal pita more than once. I would like even more monitor space just the $ aren't there or I would get that asap - - - the added space makes for a lot better work flow when on has it ans is using programs that can handle the space not email programs sadly!)) > > I am not too competent with GRUB2, but I am sure I can dig some info > for you. The general idea with GRUB is that it really is something like > a bootloader and a primitive OS. In general, all you have to do is edit > the "grub.conf" file, wherever it lives (typically on a partition like > /dev/sda1 that is typically mounted as /boot on a standalone system). > You put an entry for a particular syste that you want to boot and then > it just makes it appear on the menu at bootime. But the powerful thing > is that you can just walk into a command prompt like a boss and take > care of matters from there. This is how I rescue systems, tweak them, > etc. Stuff I haven't done very much of at all. I remember having to do some things in grub 0.97 but that was a very long time ago but it also seems to be the most common instruction set when looking for information with there being precious little up for grub 2.xx. > > The tricky thing is to be able to tell GRUB for each entry in that boot > menu where the kernel is. I keep a kernel handy in /dev/sda1 so that I > can just boot, and then throw an "init=/bin/bash" as an argument and I > get a prompt on the root filesystem that I choose (you give another > option for that). There are 20+ partitions on the hard disk so both systems have everything separate except /boot and /efi (whatever that partition is called). > > Invest some time in learning the booting sequence of Linux. Then learn > soem about GRUB. Then experiment (preferably with a VM in VirtualBox > or similar), because those boot faster and do not break the system in > general. > > Send us your "grub.conf" that is found in /boot/grub of your main system. > I will tweak it for you. This is what I hadn't found yet. What I had found to date was the idea of editing /etc/defaults/grub and there is precious little in there that would help what I want. I will have all 3 systems up and see if I can set up things myself and if I run into some more snags - - -well - - - I'll be back! Thanks Dee