Grub conflicts with grub-customizer

For me the same config stayed.
Yeap, after the reboot I can confirm that my customizations stayed.

Excellent. :+1:

It’s a pity the old forum died and the saved contents were archived away. There were regular posts made advising against GC in the old forum. It’s not new info but users will use what they want to use, regardless. And with the old forum less convenient to access, the useful advice inside is usually not seen or part of people’s search process.

Yes, I seem to recall that that was what pushed me to installing grub-vanilla in place of grub package at that time.

Fedora’s grub since around F30 or 31 no longer automatically updated the grub.cfg whenever there was a new kernel, if you were on legacy MBR boot (which I am). At first I couldn’t even use the grub2-mkconfig command to manually update grub, until someone on the old Manjaro forum told me what setting in some root file (can’t recall which) to edit.

On my long-running Fedora install , I now have to manually use the grub2-mkconfig command after every update (which inevitably includes a new kernel), in order to update grub.

I remember being worried Manjaro would go down the same road, which is why I moved to grub-vanilla at that time. Now that I’ve shifted back to Manjaro’s grub package with the demise of grub-vanilla, let’s see. So far Manjaro hasn’t followed Fedora in that aspect yet. If one day it does, I’ll just get another distro to control grub instead.

I went the opposite route.

IgnorePkg = grub

And there it stayed until I decided to go with systemd-boot.

I first had double-entries from grub-customizer back in July 2016
long before silent boot, grub-vanilla or bootsplash

The developers on Launchpad do not respond very quickly to bug reports
These reports from Manjaro users still have no response
2020-04-30 - Bug #1876203 “Syntax error when saving on Manjaro 20” : Bugs : Grub Customizer
2020-10-02 - Bug #1898202 ""Failed saving grub configuration!"" : Bugs : Grub Customizer

the package is not even well supported for their upstream Debian
Bug #1612874 “Debian(pure) install throwing fit on higher versio...” : Bugs : Grub Customizer

At least in the last year all cases of double-entries in grub that I have seen in the forums have been caused by two things:

  1. Grub-customizer
  2. Kernel 4.19. For some reason Manjaro’s kernel 4.19 will make two entries for Manjaro.

IIRC, the problem with the duplicate entries caused by update-grub used to be fixable by simply re-running grub-customizer and re-saving the configuration. It might be necessary to add new/updated kernels to the menu before saving.

Grub-customizer requires extra manual maintenance whenever kernels are added or updated to any of the installed OS’s. (The extra steps are not necessary for Manjaro kernel maintenance releases, unless a kernel series is added or changed.)

The fix for “Failed saving grub configuration!” used to be to use the “reset” inside grub-customizer. Of course it is no fun to edit the menu again…

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I just wanted to thank you, been struggling with this for days since the last update, but this approach solved it!

My configuration seems to remain the same, after reinstalling and renaming the grub.d folder. Now I just wish there was a safe, CLI-friendly way to change the grub entries, should I ever need to customise them…

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How I would go about it:

  1. sudo cp /boot/grub/grub.cfg /boot/grub/grub.cfg.working

Make your changes:

  1. sudoedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg

If your changes seem to bork something, mount your boot partition from a live cd, then:

  1. sudo cp /boot/grub/grub.cfg.working /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Unmount, reboot and try again. :slight_smile:

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if you want grub customizes, save yourself the hassle and just build it from source its a simple cmake . && make and a make install to do it, no need to ■■■■ around with grub vanilla. duplicate entries are just so much easier to deal with, using grub-customizer. especially when it’s not the cause of it.

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You’re free to do whatever you’d like.

However, doing so is unsupported and one does so at their own risk. Just a disclaimer for anyone reading.

is there any good alternative??

and can I change grub menu entry order?
and make it like, always the 1st entry boots

You can try this,instead of the 1st entry,you can edit the file /etc/default/grub the GRUB_DEFAULT to always boot a specific entry,like Manjaro Linux for example would be

GRUB_DEFAULT="Manjaro Linux"

That way it gonna always boot that entry.

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Thank you…will try that

Already installed grub customizer from source :sweat_smile::stuck_out_tongue:
All is ok for now!

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No GUI alternative as far as I know.

A. The standard way is to edit the /etc/default/grub file. https://www.howtogeek.com/196655/how-to-configure-the-grub2-boot-loaders-settings/

Some possibilities:

  1. change the “GRUB_DEFAULT=” line so it points not at the first entry (number = 0) in the grub menu, but at a specific entry (menu line number minus 1)
  2. change the “GRUB_DEFAULT=” line to the “GRUB_DEFAULT= saved” so that it will auto boot the last selected menu entry if there is no manual input before the timeout

These won’t change order of entries but the cursor will automatically be placed over a selected entry by default.

B. Create custom entries in /boot/grub/custom.cfg - with this, you can order your boot menu entries the way you want

  • see this whole thread: Creating a new os-independent grub 2 bootloader - Tutorials - Manjaro Linux Forum

  • I didn’t use the information within the thread to create a os-independent bootloader but as a guide on how to create the various boot entries in my custom.cfg file

  • changes in your custom.cfg file do not need a sudo update-grub. It is automatically read by the /etc/grub.d/41_custom script , and will appear in the grub menu AFTER the normal entries in /boot/grub/grub.cfg (these are the entries generated by sudo update-grub), which is read by the /etc/grub.d/10_linux script. This is because 41 comes after 10

  • if you want your custom.cfg file entries to be displayed in boot menu BEFORE the grub.cfg entries, rename /etc/grub.d/41_custom to /etc/grub.d/09_custom (9 comes before 10).

you can use

sudo mv ~/initial/file/location ~/destination/location

Or just use root thunar to rename the file.

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How did you deal with these double enteries?
I have the same problem.
Is there a WIKI or Guide how to learn to edit GRUB manually.

Suddenly I also have two WINDOWS enteries on my GRUB after today’s update.

In case they point to different partitions - that’s normal.

Can one of the replies here be flagged as a solution so people like me who have this problem can easily solve it without spending half-an-hour reading this long thread?

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