Install Manjaro over Ubuntu on an existing dual boot (Win/Ubuntu) with grub loader

[knoerpeltaeng]

Hi guys, I’ve read through the “Installation & Boot” category and did find a lot of similar things but nothing that really answers my question. And in some of those I’ve read that one should ask before doing something stupid…

So here is the output regarding my two harddrives:

$> lsblk -f
NAME        FSTYPE    FSVER    LABEL UUID                                   FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINT
...
nvme1n1                                                                                    
├─nvme1n1p1 vfat      FAT32          F2D6-8E1F                                             
├─nvme1n1p2                                                                                
├─nvme1n1p3 ntfs                     D4A8D710A8D6EFCA                                      
└─nvme1n1p4 ntfs                     80789331789324C6                                      
nvme0n1                                                                                    
├─nvme0n1p1 vfat      FAT32          E111-46F1                               503,2M     2% /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2 ext4      1.0            582aa0ac-8b93-4acb-b68c-4b58175ea6ba    428,9M    32% /boot
└─nvme0n1p3 crypto_LU 2              6a667a1b-b991-4647-98d8-5f7c4dabc7f6                  
  └─nvme0n1p3_crypt
            LVM2_memb LVM2 001       bvl5oI-FvaH-gwqE-TKBQ-CTWy-54Rd-u9ApIr                
    ├─vgubuntu-root
    │       ext4      1.0            c038f694-f9e9-4947-9c6b-fa929c03110a    743,6G    14% /
    └─vgubuntu-swap_1
            swap      1              821c1561-4ffe-4f88-a17e-9ad1f8f397cf                  [SWAP]

And here the grub loader infos:

efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0003
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0003,0000,0004
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager	HD(1,GPT,3e099f8f-e06d-44f8-88bb-7e55f4afb6de,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI)WINDOWS.........x...B.C.D.O.B.J.E.C.T.=.{.9.d.e.a.8.6.2.c.-.5.c.d.d.-.4.e.7.0.-.a.c.c.1.-.f.3.2.b.3.4.4.d.4.7.9.5.}....................
Boot0003* ubuntu	HD(1,GPT,539133fe-d7fa-46a7-99b4-8e581592c21f,0x800,0x100000)/File(\EFI\UBUNTU\SHIMX64.EFI)
Boot0004* ubuntu	HD(1,GPT,3e099f8f-e06d-44f8-88bb-7e55f4afb6de,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\UBUNTU\SHIMX64.EFI)..BO

The partition Ubuntu is installed in is encrypted.

So my assumption is that I just load Manjaro from USB and install it to nvme0 and it will install a new (instance of) grub loader with Windows as another entry aside from Manjaro?

Thanks!

[knoerpeltaeng]

Okay, turns out my assumption was wrong… and here is how it turned out.

I wiped the harddrive Ubuntu was installed previously and used the Manjaro installer to create partitions automatically including encryption. It set up an EFI partition and a root partition. So far so good. After restarting Windows got started, no grub loader, nothing. I checked the Bios settings and for some reason I had to reorder my hard drive BBS priorities.

After that still no grub loader but a decryption dialog (side note, it was no eye candy, basic resolution and such, …). When I gave my password it took quite some time until an errro message was shown that completly threw me off:

error: no such cryptodisk found.

and the grub rescue console was loaded. In retrospective I should have known what was wrong at this point, but … yeah. I found myself mounting the Manjaro and efi partiton and double checking the configuration and existence of the not to be found cryptodisk… everything seemed fine…

Then I tried to input my passphrase assuming I had an american keyboard layout and it turned out Manjaro started afterwards - so cryptodisk WAS found but couldn’t get decrypted. And no message such as “Wrong password” or “Decryption failed, try again” one would expect.

At some point after more grub updates and initial ramdisk rebuilds I got a grub loader menu containing Manjaro and Windows after the encryption dialog which I never got to accept german keyboard layout.

What fixed it for me was to install Manjaro again but this time I created the partitions myself including a boot partition which wasn’t encrypted. Now I can startup Windoze without decrypting ma linux hard drive, I got a nice grub boot loader, decrption passphrase can be given using german keyboard layout and the interface is configured to use the gfx driver and so on…

Un résumé: I would love to see the Manjaro installer be aware of a scenario like mine since it doesn’t seem to be something that is alien but a common thing. Not sure if my solution is something that a installer should propose but how it’s done now isn’t working. Back in November I installed Ubuntu on the same machine and it did it exactly the way I did it now. But I’m way too rookie to make further suggestions…