Unfortunately, I have a notebook and booting from an external drive that might get physically disconnected during operation is not an attractiiipve proposition. I keep hearing good things about clonezilla, but the last time I tried it (a long time ago), it didn't seem that easy to use.

So, essentially, you're saying that my approach didn't miss anything, just something in one of the steps I took is wrong. I used grub-customizer to do exactly what you recommend, but it didn't work for some reason. That's why I included so much grub detail. I started out with just UUIDs and no LABELS. I still ended up in initramfs/ash with nowhere to go.

You can but need not boot from an external drive (except during the cloning operation, but that is only an alternative method). Is it possible for you to unplug the internal drive (in order to replace it with a cloned copy)? I have been using Clonezilla during several years, and I find it quite useful, but I understand from your answer, that you prefer to stay within the internal drive. I think it will work to modify /boot/grub/grub.cfg unless something has been damaged along the road.

Given that everything necessary to make it work should be displayed in the code blocks above - including the grub entries that I did modify as you suggest - before I asked this question, can you see anything specific that I got wrong? If there's anything else you need to see I'll gladly provide it.

@Joe, Is set root='hd0,gpt4' correct? You mention that your root2 is sda6. Maybe it should be 'hd0,gpt5' (because I think it starts with gpt0).

My notebook is one of the annoying new ones with no user accessible drive bays. I have to take the whole thing apart to replace the drive. What I was ultimately hoping to do was to get a new version working in the new partitions then switch those to be the default partitions and start the whole process over using the old root and home as the new test partitions. I don't want to do this just once. I seriously hesitate to disassemble my notebook. I'm not known for my manual dexterity.

I see. So we must focus on the internal drive. Tampering with it is potentially risky - you might damage the original operating system. So you should backup at least all the files that you cannot afford to lose, but it is a good idea to backup the whole drive, if you can. And with a good backup you can even test your modifications in the original operating system. If you break it you can easily restore it from the backup.

I don't speak grub. That's why I use grub-customizer. However, the current / that works is on sda4 and that entry says gpt4. So I extrapolated from that and since the new / partition is sda6, I put in gpt6 for it. I don't know if that's right or not.

You can try with 'gpt5'

if it does not work with 'gpt6'

Hi. I haven't used SE chat before. If that's the only thing that looks wrong, I can try it, but I'm on the notebook right now, so I will lose this connection if I reboot.

That is what I found. There may be other problems too, that I have not found.

OK. I'll try that. But I won't get back here for awhile. I have to call it a night here shortly. I would love to just pull the drive out. I'd put in an SSD. But it would probably void my extended warranty and I might have parts left over after I reassembled it. If not for that, going that route would be much easier.

I checked in a computer with UEFI and GPT (and Ubuntu 17.10). You are right about the partition number, it should be the same gpt as sda so sd6 --> gpt6. It is only the hd numbering, that starts with 0.

OK. I won't try that ;)

So aside from the fact that it doesn't work, everything is fine. ;)

According to the map it is fine. Too bad that the real world does not adjust itself to match the map ;-)

Do you know anything about the la la land I end up in when it doesn't boot? I end up with a CLI, but I have no idea what might make sense to do there.

It says something about being in initramfs and busybox ash shell.

I think there might still be a mismatch between /boot/grub/grup.cfgand /etc/fstaband the partition IDs. Have you mounted and modified the correct files?

correction: ... /boot/grub/grup.cfgand /etc/fstaband ...

I was thinking I may need a separate boot partition to address that. All my mods to grub are being saved on sda4, not sda6. As for the fstab, I manually mounted sda6 and edited it before trying to boot using it. I have not modified grub on sda6. I don't know what's really going on, but it looks like it never mounts sda6 - so it never gets to look at grub there. But I could definitely be wrong.

Should I just copy all of /boot/grub from sda4 to sda6? It would be kind of weird if it switched from one /booti/grub to another one in the middle of booting. But, I don't know how it works.

Yes, you must modify '/boot/grub/grub.cfg' on sda6.

Then you should get a line in the grub menu to boot into your system on sda6.

OK. When I get back to this (hopefully late tonight) I'll copy the grub stuff from sda4 to sda96 and see if that helps. That should copy the results of running update-grub on sda4 to sda6. I can't get sda6 to boot, so I can't do an update grub there unless I do some chroot stuff - which I'm clueless about. I tried a few flails at it the other day and found that I don't know enough about it to get it to do anything.

BTW, thank you for all your efforts!

sda96 => sda69

typo again

sda96 => sda6

I have entries in the grub menu for sda6. grub-customizer runs update-grub when it saves its edits

that's on sda4

OK. Thanks! I'm going to leave chat in a minute or two if I don't hear anything further from you.