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I have a pc with two 250 gb ssd's. I have ubuntu 21.10 on working well on one, and I want to install another linux-based os on the other so as to have a dual-boot. I have tried mounting the second ssd (with the first ssd) and installing the other os on it with Balena etcher as if it were a flash drive. When I boot to it, it thinks it is a flash drive, and treats the installation like it, asking me to remove the installation medium at shutdown, which is, of course, impossible, as the "installation medium" is the internal drive. It also will not save any settings changes I make. How can I install a working os on the second drive using the first one and without using a flash drive?

Random-Ubuntu-User
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1 Answers1

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While I still use boot stanza like those in the link in guiverc comment, just used this for jammy.

I never would remember to run sudo update-grub after changing an ISO or adding one. So I use a configfile entry to load a text file with boot stanzas that is in my ISO folder.

Entry in grub that I never change:

menuentry 'Live ISOs in data drive' {
search --set=root --label data --hint hd1,gpt4
configfile /ISO/livecdimage.cfg
}

I also found using label works better as my hd1 was changing to hd2 when rebooting with a flash drive or my external SSD connected. Used to have to edit stanza as I booted. But forget to edit stanza and found using label it still found it correctly.

Also found that newer versions of ISO have both grub & a loopback entry. So tried booting with the loopback entry. It worked.

This is one of many boot stanzas in my livecdimage.cfg which is just a text file, that is in my /mnt/data/ISO folder with all my ISO. The /mnt/data is only seen once booted in my system. When not booted or not mounted it is just /ISO.

menuentry "Kubuntu 22.04 Jammy amd64 loopback.cfg" {
      iso_path=/ISO/jammy-desktop-amd64.iso
      export iso_path
      loopback loop $iso_path
      set root=(loop)
      configfile /boot/grub/loopback.cfg
    }
oldfred
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