Why doesn't my internal drive appear in Dolphin?

[Qqmike]

(Following Posts 14 & 15 ...)

IOW, looking at your Post # 5, I'm not sure what we are seeing.
Or what Dolphin could be seeing.
Is Dolphin looking at a (legacy) BIOS boot partition sda1, a modern UEFI ESP partition sda2, and a normal Linux swap partition sda3?

[oldgeek]

I took a screenshot from KDE partition manager. Actually, I accidentally took two, but only one is necessary. As for Bios/boot, I out that in because it looked like the right one to put in, but I really don't know what I have should have done here.

[oldgeek]

Maybe sda1 should have been 'root'.

[Qqmike]

Maybe sda1 should have been 'root'.

Well, as I say, I have never used btrfs. However, it seems to me that, yes, you do need a root (/) partition. btrfs is just another filesystem (format).
I'm gonna say, yes, it can't hurt to make sda1 root.

On sda2: looks OK with mount point /boot/efi. However, in GParted I am used to seeing a "flag" set EXPLICITLY as "boot" (highlight sda2, then: Partition > Manage flags > boot).
I don't know how KDE Partition Manager handles it.
I just opened KDE Partition Manager. It ONLY shows my ESP as being mounted at /boot/efi -- it does NOT show any "boot" flag.
BUT ... if I highlight the ESP, right-click > properties, it does show that a boot flag has been set on it!


Can you do it again? Run the Kubuntu installer?
Root = sda1.
sda2: mount point is /boot/efi; and while making that partition, do you see a place to set a flag on it? the flag should be "boot" or "esp" or "boot-esp" ...

So when installing Kubuntu, choose "Manual," and look for an opportunity to set the ESP, or to mark sda2 as the ESP -- should be at the top of that "partition" screen.
You highlight the partition, sda1, sda2, ... select Edit, then fill in the blanks INCLUDING marking sda2 as the ESP.

At this point, what have you got to lose?

[oldgeek]

I decided to re-install 24.04.1 again, and this time it worked! The problem was definitely not flagging the btrfs partition as root. Just in case, I made the boot partition sda1 and the btrfs partition sda2, although I guess that doesn't really matter. Thanks a lot for your time and for pointing me in the right direction, I really appreciate it.

[Qqmike]

Yes, it doesn't matter where that ESP partition is whether it's sda1, sda2, or even sda11. But it's "nice" to place it first, as sda1, just for "convenience."
Glad you got it going.

[Qqmike]

Btw, does Dolphin see it any differently?

[oldgeek]

Yes, Dolphin sees it as it used to, under devices. My system is now almost as it was before I decided to upgrade. I think I'll stick with the LTS for awhile...

[Qqmike]

That's great! 👍

[oshunluvr]

Teeing off Qqmike above, sda1 should not be the BIOS boot type (EF00) , it should be the basic Linux type (8300).

I can't say that would be the source of this problem, but you never know.

[Qqmike]

Teeing off Qqmike above, sda1 should not be the BIOS boot type (EF00) , it should be the basic Linux type (8300).
I can't say that would be the source of this problem, but you never know.

He decided to use sda1 for ESP and sda2 for his root (/) btrfs partition.
So now, sda1 is FAT32, and sda2 is regular Linux for his OS.

It solved the problem: Dolphin didn't have much to look for until he got rid of 'BIOS boot' and made his root (/) operating system.
So, it really should be marked "Solved."

[oldgeek]

Except that now I have a few problems booting; it seems to go into emergency mode and won't go further. Re-booting it seems to make it work. Perhaps I should transfer my @ snapshot from my previous setup again and see if that does the trick.

[Qqmike]

Don't know about the btrfs issues (it would help to place "btrfs" somewhere in the topic title so the btrfs users could see it).

I noticed with 24.04.1 that there were some booting issues until I got all the updates (after installing it), like 750 MB of updates.

[oshunluvr]

IME, the first thing to do if rebooting is a problem is run update-grub and grub-install then try again.

[Qqmike]

IME, the first thing to do if rebooting is a problem is run update-grub and grub-install then try again.

Yeah, agree.

So, get those updates to your newly installed K24.04.1.
Then as good measure, run (in Konsole):
sudo grub-install
sudo update-grub

I wish I had documented it when it happened. I was doing booting experiments for a new how-to,
I installed Kubuntu 24.04.1 on a new partition, I did not get the updates yet, I kept working on the dual-booting,
but I would get text code upon re-booting the PC (white letters on black background, verbose), and even got dropped to
a grub> prompt. I got into the new K24.04 and clicked to get all updates, 750MB, to the new system.
Afterwards, everything worked perfectly well.
I'm sure those updates included kernel, grub, firmware, and etc., (I haven't checked to see exactly).