How to have a custom UEFI grub menu for a multiboot system

[mrmazda]

English for non-English words other than Erweitert please.

[karlmistelberger]

English for non-English words other than Erweitert please.

Rosetta Stone of grub.cfg:

erlangen:~ # grep menuentry /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg |cut -d \' -f 2

Fedora (4.19.5-300.fc29.x86_64) 29 (Workstation Edition)
Fedora (0-rescue-9742ec8b11704f37811b4ded5cb4fae7) 29 (Workstation Edition)

openSUSE Tumbleweed (on /dev/nvme0n1p2)
Advanced options for openSUSE Tumbleweed (on /dev/nvme0n1p2)
  openSUSE Tumbleweed (on /dev/nvme0n1p2)
  openSUSE Tumbleweed, mit Linux 4.19.5-1-default (on /dev/nvme0n1p2)
  openSUSE Tumbleweed, mit Linux 4.19.4-1-default (on /dev/nvme0n1p2)

Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS (18.04) (on /dev/sdb2)
Advanced options for Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS (18.04) (on /dev/sdb2)
  Ubuntu (on /dev/sdb2)
  Ubuntu, mit Linux 4.15.0-36-generic (on /dev/sdb2)
  Ubuntu, mit Linux 4.15.0-36-generic (recovery mode) (on /dev/sdb2)
  Ubuntu, mit Linux 4.15.0-29-generic (on /dev/sdb2)
  Ubuntu, mit Linux 4.15.0-29-generic (recovery mode) (on /dev/sdb2)

openSUSE Tumbleweed (on /dev/sdb3)
Advanced options for openSUSE Tumbleweed (on /dev/sdb3)
  openSUSE Tumbleweed (on /dev/sdb3)
  openSUSE Tumbleweed, with Linux 4.19.1-1-default (on /dev/sdb3)
  openSUSE Tumbleweed, with Linux 4.18.15-1-default (on /dev/sdb3)
erlangen:~ #

Drives:

erlangen:~ # inxi -D
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 4.56 TiB used: 1.85 TiB (40.5%) 
           ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 950 PRO 512GB size: 476.94 GiB 
           ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WD40EZRX-22SPEB0 size: 3.64 TiB 
           ID-3: /dev/sdb vendor: Samsung model: SSD 850 EVO 500GB size: 465.76 GiB 
erlangen:~ #

Devices:

NAME        FSTYPE LABEL          UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
sda                                                                    
├─sda2      swap                  3bfe28c8-c708-4859-9222-94b0ea4bddca [SWAP]
├─sda3      ext4   Tumbleweed-HDD dbc33c75-0fbb-4619-add6-d204ecf63a43 /Tumbleweed-HDD
└─sda4      ext4   Home-HDD       f5177cae-4082-44ed-9471-b99030f06866 /home-HDD
sdb                                                                    
├─sdb1      vfat                  4A24-B10D                            
├─sdb2      ext4   Xubuntu        f3c36796-d1b7-426d-9bef-6c61c39db0b1 
├─sdb3      ext4   Tumbleweed-SSD 083dd95e-4073-43b1-a213-ad3ed8dd9a33 /Tumbleweed-SSD
└─sdb4      ext4   Home-SSD       f4c5463f-f43d-420a-a0ea-4456cfbc54fa /home-SSD
nvme0n1                                                                
├─nvme0n1p1 ext4   Fedora         a233e0b2-944b-4d62-a948-cbcc134b357f /Fedora
├─nvme0n1p2 ext4   Tumbleweed     8b190950-c141-4351-9198-7a9592b4fb34 /
├─nvme0n1p3 ext4   Home           704621ef-9b45-4e96-ba7f-1becd3924f08 /home
└─nvme0n1p4 vfat                  6DEC-64F9                            /boot/efi
erlangen:~ #

fstab:

erlangen:~ # cat /etc/fstab
UUID=8b190950-c141-4351-9198-7a9592b4fb34  /                ext4      defaults             0  0
UUID=704621ef-9b45-4e96-ba7f-1becd3924f08  /home            ext4      defaults             0  0
UUID=f5177cae-4082-44ed-9471-b99030f06866  /home-HDD        ext4      defaults             0  0
UUID=dbc33c75-0fbb-4619-add6-d204ecf63a43  /Tumbleweed-HDD  ext4      defaults             0  0
UUID=083dd95e-4073-43b1-a213-ad3ed8dd9a33  /Tumbleweed-SSD  ext4      defaults             0  0
UUID=f4c5463f-f43d-420a-a0ea-4456cfbc54fa  /home-SSD        ext4      defaults             0  0
UUID=6DEC-64F9                             /boot/efi        vfat      defaults             0  0
#
/home-HDD/drives/SAMSUNG-SP2014N/p6.sqsh   /drives/SAMSUNG-SP2014N/p6  squashfs  noauto,loop          0  0
UUID=3bfe28c8-c708-4859-9222-94b0ea4bddca  swap             swap      defaults             0  0
UUID=a233e0b2-944b-4d62-a948-cbcc134b357f  /Fedora          ext4      noauto,data=ordered  0  0

erlangen:~ #

Boot managers:

erlangen:~ # efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0001,0004,0005,0006
Boot0000* opensuse      HD(4,GPT,0497bfdf-73d7-47a8-9d8e-6b911574f774,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\OPENSUSE\GRUBX64.EFI)
Boot0001* Fedora        HD(4,GPT,0497bfdf-73d7-47a8-9d8e-6b911574f774,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\FEDORA\SHIMX64.EFI)
Boot0004* ubuntu        HD(4,GPT,0497bfdf-73d7-47a8-9d8e-6b911574f774,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\UBUNTU\SHIMX64.EFI)
Boot0005* ubuntu        HD(4,GPT,0497bfdf-73d7-47a8-9d8e-6b911574f774,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\UBUNTU\GRUBX64.EFI)..BO
Boot0006* opensuse      HD(1,GPT,2fe6b58a-379a-4f6e-899b-8be22ef6e885,0x800,0x32800)/File(\EFI\OPENSUSE\GRUBX64.EFI)..BO
erlangen:~ #

[Cavsfan]

I've been using *SUSE for far more than a decade than I can remember. I've never seen a new kernel installation not produce symlinks vmlinuz and initrd for the newest kernel and initrd.

You are quite right. I don't know what happened. I looked after the kernel was installed and the symlinks were there pointing to the newly installed kernel, rebooted and they were gone. Maybe I lost my mind for a few, I do not know but, the symlinks are there just like they should be.
I just did a fresh install of TW yesterday afternoon. I learned not to use the G05 Nvidia driver. It would not work and that is what got me into a position where I had to re-install.

The above is output from:

grep menuentry /boot/grub2/grub.cfg |cut -d \' -f 2

Erweitert = Advanced

grep -e "menuentry " /boot/grub2/grub.cfg | sed 's/^[ \t]*//' | cut -d "{" -f1 | nl --starting-line-number=0

Or this:

grep -e "menuentry " -e "submenu" /boot/grub2/grub.cfg | sed 's/^[ \t]*//' | cut -d "{" -f1 | nl --starting-line-number=0

Also gives you a good list.

@mrmazda, what does the noresume do for your system? I've read up on it a bit but, just curious to hear your opinion and why you use that.

[mrmazda]

@mrmazda, what does the noresume do for your system? I've read up on it a bit but, just curious to hear your opinion and why you use that.

1-Systems/PCs, not system/PC, lots of PCs and no laptops or tablets
2-all PCs multiboot, as in lots of Gnu installations per PC; few have as few as 4; one has upwards of 40
3-one swap partition per PC almost without exception
4-default stanza selection is locked down in every Grub menu (nothing present in any Grub menu, or elsewhere, to suggest what was last booted)
5-almost without exception I'm interested in a fresh start when I boot or login, the reason for booting
6-grub menu files are smaller without a conventional resume=UUID= string
7-multiple users
8-I know of know way to declutter and shrink initrds by omitting unusable resume functionality
9-without a conventional resume=UUID= string, more of the kernel is on one line, or visible at all, when editing or otherwise perusing a grub menu or stanza

Can anyone think of any way I could benefit from not having noresume as a personal default?

[Cavsfan]

@mrmazda, what does the noresume do for your system? I've read up on it a bit but, just curious to hear your opinion and why you use that.

1-Systems/PCs, not system/PC, lots of PCs and no laptops or tablets
2-all PCs multiboot, as in lots of Gnu installations per PC; few have as few as 4; one has upwards of 40
3-one swap partition per PC almost without exception
4-default stanza selection is locked down in every Grub menu (nothing present in any Grub menu, or elsewhere, to suggest what was last booted)
5-almost without exception I'm interested in a fresh start when I boot or login, the reason for booting
6-grub menu files are smaller without a conventional resume=UUID= string
7-multiple users
8-I know of know way to declutter and shrink initrds by omitting unusable resume functionality
9-without a conventional resume=UUID= string, more of the kernel is on one line, or visible at all, when editing or otherwise perusing a grub menu or stanza

Can anyone think of any way I could benefit from not having noresume as a personal default?

Thanks for the explanation of why you use noresume. For me, I have one PC and prefer not to reboot every time I leave the room for 20 minutes or so.
I expect that whichever operating system I am currently booted into will wake up after a suspend (sleep).

Windows 10, Arch Linux and Xubuntu do not require any special grub resume command to wake from suspend. Fedora and openSUSE TW are the only ones that I know of.

[Medin25]

I'm new and I need a little help/advice on one thing. Since I already have an UEFI/EFI boot partition for Windows 10, I don't get it why Tumbleweed needs another one. The first time I just went with it and created two EFI partitions, but then Windows 10 crashed totally and couldn't recognize the right GPT partition in which it's EFI boot was held. I tried to convey all of it somehow to their right directories but it didn't work out at all. It pretty much killed my Windows system and my laptop, and that's why I had to reinstall everything. Now it again wants me to do the same and I don't feel safe doing it since I don't want to finish of the same. It is also important to point out that Tumbleweed and grub2 after that installation worked kind of strange compared to the last time I used it on my previous computer even though that wasn't that long ago and the main features felt buggy. Any help?

[nrickert]

Since I already have an UEFI/EFI boot partition for Windows 10, I don't get it why Tumbleweed needs another one.

It doesn't.

However, the installer is wanting to insist that the EFI partition be at least 256M in size. So if you have a smaller EFI partition, then it wants to create another.

I have successfully installed with a smaller EFI partition. But it requires using the expert partitioner, and telling it to mount the existing EFI partition at "/boot/efi". At the end of the partitioning part of the install, it then gives an error about there not being a large enough EFI partition. And you have to tell it to ignore the error and proceed with the install.

[arvidjaar]

The first time I just went with it and created two EFI partitions, but then Windows 10 crashed totally and couldn't recognize the right GPT partition in which it's EFI boot was held.

What are exact symptoms? When this corruption happens? When you simply boot Windows or when you perform some specific actions?

Originally openSUSE installer defaulted to separate ESP during installation. As side-topic of some discussion here it was found that this could lead to Windows installation corruption. I verified it with Windows 7. It happened trying to repair bootloader from within rescue system. Apparently Windows could not decide which of multiple ESP was the correct one, but at this point it already removed old content. I opened bug report which resulted in behavior change - installer now defaulted to reusing existing ESP. See https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=781689 for details.

Note that corruption happened under rather specific conditions, Windows continued to boot normally otherwise. It is of course possible that similar problem may have happened during patch installation.

If you have evidences that multiple ESP may corrupt existing Windows installation, you should really open bug report. But you need to provide convincing arguments and actually explain how to trigger this corruption.

[Medin25]

What are exact symptoms? When this corruption happens? When you simply boot Windows or when you perform some specific actions?

Originally openSUSE installer defaulted to separate ESP during installation. As side-topic of some discussion here it was found that this could lead to Windows installation corruption. I verified it with Windows 7. It happened trying to repair bootloader from within rescue system. Apparently Windows could not decide which of multiple ESP was the correct one, but at this point it already removed old content. I opened bug report which resulted in behavior change - installer now defaulted to reusing existing ESP. See https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=781689 for details.

Note that corruption happened under rather specific conditions, Windows continued to boot normally otherwise. It is of course possible that similar problem may have happened during patch installation.

If you have evidences that multiple ESP may corrupt existing Windows installation, you should really open bug report. But you need to provide convincing arguments and actually explain how to trigger this corruption.

After the installation of Tumbleweed the corruption happens. You can run openSUSE on grub2 but windows 10 crashes and fails to boot. First it showed the crash screen and after the restart happened. When windows started again it said something like: "Your PC couldn't start properly", and an error code and other things like diagnostics, recovery, try again, etc. I tried to edit the entry, to somehow recover it or restore the system and nothing worked.

[mrmazda]

With the info provided it's hard to understand just what happened when, and the current state of things. If you can boot TW, get the script from https://github.com/arvidjaar/bootinfoscript and run it in a vtty or Konsole or XTerm, then do

susepaste -n Medin25 -e 40320 RESULTS.TXT

so we can see what you have where and then suggest how to proceed. You may have to install susepaste first with zypper or yast. Also give us the exact model of your laptop so we can have an idea of its specifications. If you can install inxi with zypper or yast and provide output from

inxi -bGxx

run from Konsole or an XTerm it would be even better. Alternatively, output from inxi can be redirected to a file and uploaded with susepaste just like with RESULTS.TXT.