[MULTI BOOT] BTFS multi-booting, updates, and grub hijack - What happened?

[TwoFistedJustice]

First, the problem appears to have resolved "on its own" so this a WTH happened() post.

Context:

I booted up a SSD after about 2 months of it sitting in a box. So I don't remember what I did last with that drive.

This drive is multi-boot per Oshunluvr's BTRFS multi-boot technique, with all my tweaks that I have posted about previously. It has Kubuntu (main OS), Kali, and Debian 12

The short version:

When I tried to boot to Kubuntu, it booted to grub rescue instead.

I was able to get it to the grub menu via the grub prompt all on my own, like a big boy. I ended at either "cannot allocate initrd" or at the initramfs prompt.

After much failure, I attempted to boot Debian 12 from its grub menu. It began booting then installed some updates. And after that I was able to boot into all distros.

My hypothesis is that the last distro I booted before pulling the drive was Debian 12 where I downloaded updates. I routinely set my distros to install updates on boot. But rather than rebooting to install the updates, I powered down and pulled the drive without installing them.

Then when I reinstalled the drive and tried to boot into Kubuntu the boot process failed because Debian had some kind of precedence set up with grub in order to install the updates.

Once Debian installed the updates, the precedence was released, and other distros could boot normally.

Does this sound right?



I have a small pile of notes on what I did and the grub output from the various failures and can post them if anyone cares.

[jlittle]

If you have grub installed in several installs, with those grubs thinking they control the boot, they fight with each other for control of the boot, and the last one to update has control. That's a recipe for unpredictable behaviour, but I'm not sure if that was the cause of the trouble.

You "booted up a SSD after 2 months", implying the computer was booting from another drive during the last 2 months. Did you remove that drive to put in the SSD?

Back two months ago, did you delete an install back then?

[TwoFistedJustice]

If you have grub installed in several installs, with those grubs thinking they control the boot, they fight with each other for control of the boot, and the last one to update has control. That's a recipe for unpredictable behaviour, but I'm not sure if that was the cause of the trouble.

You "booted up a SSD after 2 months", implying the computer was booting from another drive during the last 2 months. Did you remove that drive to put in the SSD?

Back two months ago, did you delete an install back then?

I wouldn't have deleted an install. I think I probably downloaded updates in Debian and rather than rebooting, powered down and pulled the SSD.