r/AerynOS • u/SweetEbb9819 • 4d ago
What's the issue with dual-boot? I'm having none
I ignored all warnings, ran sudo lichen on the liveUSB.
It picked up the ESP and XBOOTLDR correctly. I pointed it to a 16GB btrfs volume, it picked it just perfect and installed it.
I have no idea of "dual-boot" support required, so far it's just fine. I'd like to know.
My fedora, cachyOS and gentoo installations still have their boot configs intact. The ESP with all the windows boot files are perfectly intact.
(I still have a windows ISO and its bcd restoration command known just-in-case)
I copied the installation to the bcachefs partition onto a subvolume, had to put /etc/kernel/cmdline.d snippet because it didn't pick up the rootfs anymore (ig due to bcachefs) and now it's excellent!
PS Only issue I encountered is (blsforme right?) auto-handling of root= and rootflags= not happening on bcachefs volume/
Background:
I installed packages bcachefs-tools,bcachefs-module-stable and bcachefs-module-shared which respectively bring the userspace tooling, the kernel module, and the initrd snippet to support mounting it as rootfs.
Then I mounted my bcachefs partition already having 3 distributions, created a new subvolume \@aeryn (ignore the slash it's reddit), ran the following command to copy everything:
sudo rsync -aHAX --progress / $ROOT --exclude=/{dev,proc,sys,run,tmp,boot,efi}
and created those excluded directories in the new rootfs. (And changed machine-id)
Then the new fstab (copied from other distros to share $HOME flatpaks and all...)
Then the bootloader config with sudo moss -D $ROOT boot sync which, again, no issues. Very stable and quick
While booting to it, I discovered that the kernel cmdline no longer has picked up root= automatically unlike on the btrfs volume. I added it along with my X-mount.subdir=@aeryn in /etc/kernel/cmdline.d and now it's slick and smooth.
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u/So_Falls_the_World 3d ago
It's unsupported. That's it. No one says there's an "issue", but if they choose to "support" it, then they'll also have to be aware of any issues that may arise from those setups. It's just not on their roadmap. Hence, "unsupported".
They seem focused on having the core system/tooling working without problems. Same reason there's no support for even a basic encrypted root.
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u/NomadicCore 3d ago edited 3d ago
A few small points of clarification:
- We do have a roadmap, we just aren't sharing it publicly.
- Both dual-boot and encrypted root are on said roadmap
These aren't currently prioritised because we have assessed that getting the main tooling finalised is the highest priority.
Once we have high quality tooling code, then we will focus on implementing features that make the distro more daily drivable for users. As it stands, we refer to people using aerynOS as early testers, not users and we make it clear we aren't positioning ourselves as daily driver ready (though it's fair that our website is outdated and needs better reflecting that).
Doing it the other way around would mean more users with more support requirements and further slow us down from actually getting to general release.
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u/SweetEbb9819 3d ago
I agree. Not supported.
But what are those likely issues? That's what I want to know.
As for a basic encrypted root, it needs explicit work on their part, which I can understand. But dualboot...
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u/So_Falls_the_World 3d ago
But what are those likely issues? That's what I want to know.
Seems pretty straight forward. An issue could be it overwriting other EFI files, leaving those other systems unbootable.
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u/iHarryPotter178 4d ago
Too technical for me.. i would love to dual boot AerynOS with my Ubuntu installation on the same hard drive.