HessenZone wrote: ↑Wed Jul 04, 2018 2:17 am
I was thinking that I could edit the grub file manually in order to achieve the correct order? Why is it only possibly to set the grub file from the "primary" of the three linux installations?
That doesn't make sense to me since grub is supposed to be installed in the root of the drive, as that's always the default. That would indicate to me that
there's only one grub file. Manjaro was the second OS which was installed of the three, yet when I boot the computer, a Manjaro logo still appears anyway and the manjaro/grub settings were more jumbled than the others. This would appear to indicate that Manjaro left some kind of trace which impacts the graphical/visible gui grub settings.
If there's only one grub file as I suspect there should only be one, then I should be able to edit that via terminal.
Off to search I go, will return shorly ...
Errr... if you installed a grub bootloader
in root partition instead of MBR, then it's not controlling grub of your PC.
Non-tech explanation follows.
I'm assuming you use legacy-boot:
1. For each distro that comes with grub (the program) already on the iso, that distro will have its OWN grub.cfg file in its OWN root partition under /boot [except for Solus, which is weird]
2. during installation of a particular distro X, if you chose to install that distro's grub as bootloader In the Master Boot Record (MBR) instead of in root partition, that distro's grub will be written onto the MBR of your main hard drive and take charge of booting the whole computer. Its grub.cfg FILE still remains in /boot of the root partition but the necessary stuff is also written on the MBR to make it the controlling grub.
3. so if distro Y was installed earlier and USED TO control grub because its grub was written on MBR, that is now no longer the case. The most recent distro installed on your PC will control grub if you always choose to install grub on MBR.
4. grub-customiser (I think) sets up its own folders with some sort of copy of the grub.cfg file, and then all changes and edits are made to this folder rather than the actual grub.cfg file. But it's only affecting the grub settings/configs of the particular distro on which you installed grub customiser. Thus, let's say you have grub customiser installed on MX. But the very last distro you installed was Mint and you chose to install its grub bootloader on MBR. Thus Mint's grub has seized control of the MBR bootloading duties from MX. In such a case, booting into MX and changing MX's grub settings using MX's grub customiser is not going to affect the controlling grub.
5. you will need to make MX's grub seize back control of bootloading duties. How? From within MX, enter
(I'm making the assumption that your MBR is on the device called /dev/sda).
This will write MX's grub.cfg file back onto the MBR.
6. Alternatively, you install grub-customiser onto the distro that is currently controlling grub and edit your grub settings from within that distro.
7. Manjaro is a special case because its grub menu entry needs to have an additional command (on the "initrd" line) to load intel ucode in addition to loading the .img file from the kernel. Of course its own grub when updated knows how to add this command in its grub.cfg file, but if you have another distro's grub as controlling grub, it won't know how to generate a correct grub menu entry for Manjaro.
If you boot with UEFI:
1. all distros' grub bootloaders are "dumped" into the ESP partition if you choose to install that distro's grub onto ESP instead of root partition. The actual grub.cfg file is still stored in /boot/ folder
2. but it doesn't mean that when you reboot your machine, your machine will choose to boot from the newly-installed distro's bootloader.
3. Your machine's BIOS will still choose to boot from whichever bootloader in ESP was set as number 1 in boot priority.
3. there are a few ways to change the boot order/priority of the various bootloaders in ESP - through the BIOS settings or using a command in terminal from within a distro.
Based on all the above, it could be that you keep changing MX's grub settings using grub-customiser but MX's grub is no longer the controlling grub on your PC. So every time you boot up, you are seeing the other distro's grub menu, which hasn't been changed yet.
Or you installed MX's bootloader in root partition, so the controlling grub in MBR is still Manjaro's.
It's no problem though, because now I can get back in touch with their support staff, to see if they can help me to figure things out. If the app works with systemd, I would imagine that it can't be too big of a deal to get it working with default MX. It's not some monster software application like libreoffice or gimp, but rather something small & basic that all of us in our household make use of.