Manjaro 20.2.1

[fox]

The external drive was a consequence of the limited space on the internal drive. Its capacity is 500 gb, which might sound like a lot, but I also have the Mac OS on it. Aside from the Mac OS, it houses Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and 21.04. I suppose I don't need both, but I like to keep an LTS fallback just in case one of Ubuntu's 9 month upgrades goes south. When the next LTS comes out in 2022, I can delete one of them, giving me more internal SSD space to play with. Because this Mac has two Thunderbolt ports, I got the idea of putting "tryout" distros on an external drive. When Samsung came out with the T7 series of external SSDs, I bought a 500 gb for distro-hopping and storage of photos and important backup files. The T7 is fantastic when run in a Thunderbolt (or USB 3.2) port. On my Mac it feels every bit as fast as the internal drive.

Unfortunately, things get complicated when you need a bootloader that can properly list MacOS partitions as well as Linux and you also have an external drive. When you update a grub in a Linux partition, the default boot is on that drive. Unplug the drive and things can change. That's what seems to have happened in my case. What I can't figure out, though, is why the older Manjaro kernel would boot but the newer ones wouldn't. Perhaps the bootloader (called Refind), didn't pick up the right code for the newly installed kernel until the external drive was unplugged and replugged.

[Jason]

After I upgraded Xubuntu 20.04 to 20.10, I had a similar problem. You can usually hit ESC to see the boot messages. I saw in the bootup screen the list of messages and it seemed to get stuck on a particular partition. It kept doing the timeout countdown. And then it would but into maintenance mode (or something similar).  So I went into fstab and commented out the other partitions. It worked fine after that.


"I suppose I don't need both, but I like to keep an LTS fallback just in case one of Ubuntu's 9 month upgrades goes south."

That's exactly where Timeshift is very useful. I can't use it now unfortunately as I have 3 distros on a 128 GB drive and no external drive big enough.

[fox]

After I upgraded Xubuntu 20.04 to 20.10, I had a similar problem. You can usually hit ESC to see the boot messages. I saw in the bootup screen the list of messages and it seemed to get stuck on a particular partition. It kept doing the timeout countdown. And then it would but into maintenance mode (or something similar).  So I went into fstab and commented out the other partitions. It worked fine after that.
....

Why would other partitions be in your fstab, unless they were for boot or swap?

[Jason]

Why would other partitions be in your fstab, unless they were for boot or swap?

I don't know. You saw the part about where I said it happened right after the upgrade, right? I don't know why the upgrade changed that file to automount them. I assume it wasn't initially set up that way or I would have had the error before. They're other distros so they don't need to be available right after boot.

But other partitions/drives you might want to mount right away include /home, a place to do backups, for log files, for server files, etc. You might even want to mount network filesystems. If it's a backup directory and backups start automatically before or after login, you may need to have it ready to go.

[fox]

The booting issue with Manjaro seems to have resolved itself. The current kernel is 5.15.25-1, and it boots up OK. However, I now think that the problem is/was the thunderbolt 3 connector on the iMac. I'll tell you why. I have two distros on this Samsung T7 external SSD: Manjaro and Linux Mint. Both of these boot up fine if I plug the T7 into a USB 3.0 port. However, when plugged into the thunderbolt 3 port, Mint now won't boot up. I'm wondering if the boot sequence doesn't automatically recognize that port in time to mount the partition.

On another matter, I was just noticing how fast Manjaro is relative to Ubuntu 21.10. Manjaro seems to start up applications noticeably faster. With the updates I've done, Manjaro is now at version 21.2.4. (Manjaro is a rolling release distro.)

[Jason]

That sounds like it. Good sleuthing!

You can check the boot messages to see if you can find when the problem occurs. It's not very friendly but you can look through /var/log/syslog to see if you can find any failures (e.g. do a search for 'fail') and then look at messages before or right after it. You need to be root to do this normally but you could pipe the results to a text file that you can open in an editor and search through.

For example:

sudo cp /var/log/syslog ~
sudo chown $USER:$USER ~/syslog

$USER should be either typed exactly as you see it or enter your username to replace it (i.e. mike:mike). It's the variable representing the user that is logged in.
~ is the home directory of the presently logged-in user
chown, unsurprisingly, changes the ownership of the file to you so you don't need to be root to view it afterward. Make sure that you only do this to the COPY.

[fox]

Today I updated Manjaro, and following the update it didn't boot. I looked up the error message and found two things to try, but neither revived it. Just to make sure I didn't do anything wrong, I tried updating a backup of Manjaro on another disk. It also updated and then couldn't boot up. You might say that this was a foolhardy thing to do, but since I don't depend on it, I figured why not?

I'm actually satisfied in a strange sort of way. I have alleged all along that rolling release distros cannot be relied upon, and I just proved my point. Too bad in another way though. I had Manjaro going for about two years before this happened, which is a pretty good run (for a rolling release distro, ha ha).

[Jason]

I wouldn't go as far as saying they can't be relied on, maybe not Manjaro, though. I don't think it's usual for most rolling releases to prevent the machine from even booting because of a bad update. But as far as that goes, I've seen Windows updates that caused the system to reboot repeatedly, although not personally.

But rolling releases definitely aren't as reliable as regular releases which themselves aren't as solid as LTS versions (or Debian Stable). How long has it been since you updated Manjaro? The one thing about rolling releases is that I believe you can't leave updating too long or things might break.

In any case, Timeshift would have been able to save a user's bacon if they were using a rolling release distro. I've used it when things have gone south. Not that seriously, but if it did, you can use Linux Mint or another live distro with Timeshift to rollback the, um, rolling release.

[fox]

I don't have a lot of experience with rolling releases, the only other one being Arch. In any case, because I don't trust them, I only use them occasionally, mostly to see how long they would last before they break. That's why I don't use Timeshift or any formal backup mechanism. In this case, I upgraded an external SSD and didn't erase the old one, thus having a Manjaro backup. I had Manjaro about 8 years ago, and that one only lasted for six months before becoming unbootable. This one made it for two years, and Arch before it lasted for two years before I got a new laptop and didn't bother to install it again so in that sense it passed the test. This time, it might have been a month or six weeks since the last time I updated Manjaro. With the rolling release tests, I tried to visit and update them at least once a month.

Compare with Ubuntu and Mint, the distros I have actually used on a daily basis. Neither one has ever become unbootable, through multiple updates and upgrades. My record with Ubuntu is pretty long; I'd say about 15 years. I believe that I have upgraded it continuously without incident, using Ubuntu's upgrade mechanism, since version 7.10. In the case of Mint, I used this as my main distro for about three years around 2015-18 when it was the only distro to boot quickly on my 2014 iMac. I have kept a backup of Mint ever since and have upgraded it up to the current version without incident. Again, I try to visit it monthly since I went back to Ubuntu as my active distro. I would not hesitate to use Mint again as my main distro if I ever have a problem with Ubuntu.

So now I'm trying to decide on whether to keep a rolling release distro to test, and if so, which one. I'll keep an eye on the Manjaro website for a short time to see if a fix emerges and if so, I'll apply it to my broken one. If not, I might try EndeavourOS; also Arch-based and highly rated in Distrowatch.

[Jason]

.
Compare with Ubuntu and Mint, the distros I have actually used on a daily basis. Neither one has ever become unbootable, through multiple updates and upgrades.j

You clearly aren't trying hard enough! I'm sure you can find a way to make them unbootable if you put in the extra effort!

So now I'm trying to decide on whether to keep a rolling release distro to test, and if so, which one. I'll keep an eye on the Manjaro website for a short time to see if a fix emerges and if so, I'll apply it to my broken one. If not, I might try EndeavourOS; also Arch-based and highly rated in Distrowatch.

Go with Arch or at least an Arch derivative that doesn't use its own update system as Manjaro does. I have a feeling that's why things get broken in Manjaro because of that. I believe Arch now even has an ISO now that gives a very basic system so you don't have to do everything by hand.

But... if you want easier rolling release distros, take a look at SUSE Tumbleweed or Debian Testing (I believe it's a rolling release, does anybody know)? If you really want some fun, use the unstable version of Debian where every day is possibly a new experience! I know there are other rolling releases besides Arch-derivatives although I can't think of them right now.

[fox]

Great suggestions, Jason! If I went with an Arch derivative, it would be Endeavour OS; which is basically Arch with an installer, a gussied up desktop and a choice of DE's. Going against it is that the problem I had with Manjaro has been reported in the past on Endeavour as well. (As well as on Arch itself.) OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is a good choice for me as well. I have had OpenSUSE Leap as a test distro before and never ran into any problems with it. It's the only RPM distro I've had any experience with. The default DE for OpenSUSE is Plasma, and I like having that on my test distro just to play with it. Debian SID would also be a good choice, as it uses the apt package manager, which I am very familiar with. There are also Sidduction and Nitrux to consider; both based on Debian sid.

[Jason]

They're based on Debian Sid? Wow. That's really cutting-edge. Sid has been described in this way. Imagine if you got up each morning and someone had rearranged all the furniture and some of it might break when you sit on it. That's Debian Unstable (sid). But I guess it's not that different from Arch except that it is the development version which then becomes testing. But you can also mix and match. You can use testing or even stable for the core and then unstable for programs (within reason) so you get the most recent versions.

Endeavour looks pretty good. Barebones but not so barebones that you can't get started with it right away.