Comment by jeroenhd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeroenhd | Hacker News Reader

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This strongly depends on the issue though. In most dual booting cases I've had to deal with recently, a single efibootmgr command was enough.

Windows and some Linux distros like to replace the fallback EFI command and the two can conflict every now and then. By properly configuring the UEFI to pick the right OS at boot (sudo efibootmgr -o 0001,0000 or something like that) should be enough.

If you're still using MBR or you have a shitty motherboard with bad UEFI support you're right that you're still forced to do a full Grub reinstall.

I've had to do recovery on a non-booting Windows machine that broke after a recent update and it was just impossible to recover. Some file on the FS was corrupted, but SFC couldn't recover it and wouldn't report what file was corrupted. Rebooting into recovery takes forever, boot recovery constantly fails and the only saving grace is the "reinstall Windows" that uses a complete reinstall as a fix for a broken OS.

Yes, fixing Linux is difficult, but at least it's doable. On Windows you're basically stuck with the two or three auto-recovery options or an OS + software reinstall.

I can't speak for macOS but I can't imagine it being much easier (especially because the limited variety of macOS hardware makes it more unlikely for the OS to fail catastrophically because that's easier to test for).

It shouldn't be too hard to create a Linux boot ISO that lists installed operating systems and then automounts them for recovery. It's only a matter of parsing GRUB config files + fstab + crypttab and some predefined mount patterns for distros after all.

Mac lets you reinstall the OS from the recovery partition without losing data

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

If the recovery partition is toast you can do a clean install over wifi - Option-Command-R or Shift-Option-Command-R

(would only work over an open wifi the last time I did it)

Does this include programs and settings? Windows lets you reinstall with data as well, but installing every single program and getting it set up all over again takes forever, that's my main problem with the Windows recovery process.

The install over the internet is a nice touch, though I don't expect that feature to ever make it into normal computers because it would probably force manufacturers to put a minimal Windows installer in their UEFI.

>Does this include programs and settings?

Yes, I believe so - I'm guessing this is due to things being more siloed

I should also mention it won't let you choose an OS version, although it does say the name of the one that will be installed

It also works over Ethernet!

I tried it via an Ethernet to USB adapter and the laptop didn't see the wired connection

Maybe a proper rj45 would work

rEFInd can automatically detect linux, Windows, and mac partitions and boot them. You could just install it to a usb stick and use it whenever necessary.

That's a very neat tool! I'm kind of turned away by this though: > Warning: Your kernel and initramfs must reside on a file system that rEFInd can read.

Can it boot fully-encrypted disks (by chainloading GRUB, for example)?

What you mentioned is rEFInd’s auto detect feature which by design doesn’t work with encrypted disks. rEFInd will automatically detect other .efi binaries so you can just install your other bootloaders alongside rEFInd, make rEFInd the default and chainload into your other bootloaders when you need to boot an encrypted disk.

I have a setup where I moved /boot of the encrypted luks partition to the esp and boot from there using a custom entry in rEFInd

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