On Fri, Jan 30, 2026, Joel Roth via Dng wrote:
> Aloha list,
>
> Trying to get linux to boot on my new-used T14. This model
> has secure boot, came from Newegg with Windows installed.
[...]
> Hopefully I'll be able to pop in my existing nvme drive
> (from my old T430) and have it boot up first time.
Old arrangement: nvme x 2
1 TB /dev/sda - UEFI with windows
200 GB /dev/sdb2 - devuan
I blew away the big 'doze partitions on /dev/sda,
created swap and root partitions for linux.
I copied my devuan to the root partition. This is
with a GPT partition table.
Okay, now all I need is to move the 1TB drive to the T14.
But hey, since I've got my devuan installation fully(?)
cloned, lets try booting while it's still in its T430 home.
Short story. I could not get the cloned partition to boot! I
upgraded my daedalus and ran grub-install, confused about
which grub I had. Last try was definitely grub 2, okay, but
the i386-pc flavor. Is that used for an amd64 system?
I tried various USB boot disks with no success.
I did get as far as some failure around initrd
load time. (I seem to recall that initrd files
are portable, shouldn't be tied to a particular
partitioning.)
At this point, I found the boot-info-script utility.
Output follows. I couldn't ask for more information,
and it's all in one place!!
I'm mainly posting to let other folks know about it. However
I'm also groping for a useful procedure to follow getting
the system to boot. I'm ready to give up trying on the T430,
and just give it a go on the newer T14.
My main innovation with this attempt is putting
UUIDs in /etc/fstab. This should be foolproof, right?
Any suggestions, rants, etc. are welcome.
Due to size limit for posting to this list, I've removed
the /dev/sdb entries from the output below, which are not
relevant to the problem at hand.
Thanks for reading!
Boot Info Script 0.78 [09 October 2019]
============================= Boot Info Summary: ===============================
=> Grub2 (v2.00) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks at sector
206848 of the same hard drive for core.img. core.img is at this location
and looks for /boot/grub. It also embeds following components:
modules
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
fshelp ext2 part_msdos biosdisk search_fs_uuid
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
config script
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
search.fs_uuid b4e1957f-d86d-483c-bbd6-ea5cfe535544 root hd0,msdos1
hd1,msdos1
set prefix=($root)'/boot/grub'
sda1: __________________________________________________________________________
File system: vfat
Boot sector type: Windows 8/2012: FAT32
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System:
Boot files: /efi/Boot/bootx64.efi /efi/Microsoft/bootmgfw.efi
/efi/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
/efi/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgr.efi
/efi/Microsoft/Boot/memtest.efi
sda2: __________________________________________________________________________
File system: BIOS Boot partition
Boot sector type: Grub2's core.img
Boot sector info:
sda3: __________________________________________________________________________
File system: ext2
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System: Devuan GNU/Linux 5 (daedalus)
Boot files: /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab /etc/lilo.conf
/boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img /boot/map
sda4: __________________________________________________________________________
File system: swap
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
============================ Drive/Partition Info: =============================
Drive: sda _____________________________________________________________________
Disk /dev/sda: 931.51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: TOSHIBA MQ04ABF1
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1,953,525,167 1,953,525,167 ee GPT
GUID Partition Table detected.
Partition Attrs Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors System
/dev/sda1 2,048 206,847 204,800 Data partition (Windows/Linux)
/dev/sda2 206,848 215,039 8,192 BIOS Boot partition
/dev/sda3 62,500,864 1,953,525,134 1,891,024,271 Data partition (Linux)
/dev/sda4 215,040 62,500,863 62,285,824 Swap partition (Linux)
Attributes: R=Required, N=No Block IO, B=Legacy BIOS Bootable, +=More bits set
"blkid" output: ________________________________________________________________
Device UUID TYPE LABEL
/dev/sda1 AEDE-EF05 vfat
/dev/sda2
/dev/sda3 d75934c2-081b-432a-8f06-511d1deef66b ext2
/dev/sda4 30a5b7b6-c752-4aa4-955a-45887b4bfc8f swap
========================= "ls -l /dev/disk/by-id" output: ======================
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
=================== sda3: Location of files loaded by Grub: ====================
GiB - GB File Fragment(s)
179.808609009 = 193.068023808 boot/grub/grub.cfg 1
263.307170868 = 282.723921920 boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img 1
179.806827545 = 193.066110976 boot/vmlinuz-3.16.0-4-amd64 7
179.806888580 = 193.066176512 boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-0.bpo.5-amd64 8
179.806949615 = 193.066242048 boot/vmlinuz-4.3.0-0.bpo.1-amd64 7
179.807010651 = 193.066307584 boot/vmlinuz-5.10.0-11-amd64 7
179.807071686 = 193.066373120 boot/vmlinuz-6.1.0-13-amd64 7
349.566791534 = 375.344484352 boot/vmlinuz-6.1.0-33-amd64 7
349.566791534 = 375.344484352 vmlinuz 7
179.807071686 = 193.066373120 vmlinuz.old 7
349.568542480 = 375.346364416 boot/initrd.img-3.16.0-4-amd64 7
349.566486359 = 375.344156672 boot/initrd.img-4.19.0-0.bpo.5-amd64 9
349.566547394 = 375.344222208 boot/initrd.img-4.3.0-0.bpo.1-amd64 7
349.566608429 = 375.344287744 boot/initrd.img-5.10.0-11-amd64 9
349.566669464 = 375.344353280 boot/initrd.img-6.1.0-13-amd64 8
349.566730499 = 375.344418816 boot/initrd.img-6.1.0-33-amd64 8
349.566730499 = 375.344418816 initrd.img 8
349.566669464 = 375.344353280 initrd.img.old 8
--
Joel Roth
::
[DNG] Moving and booting devuan
