Sorry Rick, I honestly have no idea why your installations don’t pick up each other.
I understand that the encrypted boot causes problems but why the unencrypted ones aren’t added is beyond me.
Could be. But you’ll have to carefully 
experiment on your own, as freebird suggested. 
I’m quite happy with the way it’s working. I kind of like the fact that it doesn’t add the entries to the grub menu. I’m just curious why? It does if i install a normal installation. But if i install with your Btrfs set up it does not. I am using rEFInd and then it is booting from the grubx64.efi
Edit: Everything seems to work as far as i know? It creates snapshots. I can go into Timeshift and restore and or create a snapshot. So as far as i can tell it’s working right?
Works as intended 
.
The grub boot entry issue is probably btrfs related; have you tried if os-prober-btrfs at least sees the unencrypted installs, even if the boot entries produced may be faulty?
No i haven’t done anything except install a normal install but not lately.
@2000
This is what i get when i update grub with os-prober installed.
[ricklinux@eos-plasma ~]$ sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
[sudo] password for ricklinux:
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found theme: /boot/grub/themes/EndeavourOS/theme.txt
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-linux
Found initrd image: /boot/amd-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-linux.img
Found fallback initrd image(s) in /boot: initramfs-linux-fallback.img
Detecting snapshots ...
Info: Separate boot partition not detected
Found snapshot: 2020-10-25 16:57:04 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-25_16-57
-04/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-25 15:12:37 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-25_15-12
-37/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-25 15:01:46 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-25_15-01
-46/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-25 14:57:31 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-25_14-57
-31/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-25 10:44:13 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-25_10-44
-13/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-24 16:25:39 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-24_16-25
-39/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-24 02:17:08 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-24_02-17
-08/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-23 11:14:42 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-23_11-14
-42/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-17 00:53:14 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-17_00-53
-14/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-09 11:45:07 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-09_11-45
-07/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-08 11:00:02 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-08_11-00
-02/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-07 11:00:01 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-07_11-00
-01/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-03 14:11:39 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-03_14-16
-41/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-03 14:09:22 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-03_14-11
-39/@
Found snapshot: 2020-09-24 10:56:27 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-03_14-09
-22/@
Found 15 snapshot(s)
done
[ricklinux@eos-plasma ~]$
@2000
This is what i get updating grub with os-prober-btrfs installed.
[ricklinux@eos-plasma ~]$ sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
[sudo] password for ricklinux:
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found theme: /boot/grub/themes/EndeavourOS/theme.txt
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-linux
Found initrd image: /boot/amd-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-linux.img
Found fallback initrd image(s) in /boot: initramfs-linux-fallback.img
Found EndeavourOS on /dev/nvme0n1p2
Detecting snapshots ...
Info: Separate boot partition not detected
Found snapshot: 2020-10-25 16:57:04 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-25_16-57-04/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-25 15:12:37 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-25_15-12-37/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-25 15:01:46 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-25_15-01-46/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-25 14:57:31 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-25_14-57-31/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-25 10:44:13 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-25_10-44-13/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-24 16:25:39 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-24_16-25-39/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-24 02:17:08 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-24_02-17-08/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-23 11:14:42 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-23_11-14-42/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-17 00:53:14 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-17_00-53-14/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-09 11:45:07 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-09_11-45-07/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-08 11:00:02 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-08_11-00-02/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-07 11:00:01 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-07_11-00-01/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-03 14:11:39 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-03_14-16-41/@
Found snapshot: 2020-10-03 14:09:22 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-03_14-11-39/@
Found snapshot: 2020-09-24 10:56:27 | timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2020-10-03_14-09-22/@
Found 15 snapshot(s)
done
[ricklinux@eos-plasma ~]$
Edit: This one is not the encrypted install and it doesn’t add the other non encrypted install to the grub menu. The only difference i see is that it does see the install on /dev/nvme0n1p2
@2000
So i installed os-prober-btrfs on all three installed desktops. The only one that actually added one of the installs was the encrypted installation. Both of these are on the m.2 drives so it didn’t pick up the SSD. I didn’t see any difference and it all worked so i have put it back to os-prober on all 3. There is no point if it doesn’t do the same on all installations.
Really strange behavior. But good to know … Probably best to recommend rEFInd in Arch-btrfs-multiboot situations in the foreseeable future.
Well, you gave it a shot 
. Seeing as you’ve set things up near perfectly with rEFInd you have all the time in the world for this to get addressed upstream.
Well It was all working until i went to shutdown KDE last night and it wouldn’t turn off. I had to kill it with the power button and now kde won’t start. None of the snapshots will load say’s you have to load the kernel first. The others i haven’t tried a shutdown from but they are working right now. So i am going to do that on each. If kde died on me i’ll just have to load it again. Not sure if it was anything to do with loading os-prober-btrfs or not because it was all working till i tried the shutdown.
Edit: I can confirm both m.2 drives shutdown properly. It is only the SSD with KDE that went south. Don’t know why. The only thing i have done is try the os-prober-btrfs and then went back to os-prober which is what i left it at. I did that on all three drives just to see if it made any difference which it did only on one of the m.2 drives which is encrypted. The other m.2 and the ssd it didn’t pick up the other desktops. But kde had an issue when i shut it down. I had shut it down many times during the day. There were only a couple of updates so i don’t know what happened. None of the snapshots will load. Not sure if i can repair it?
Have you tried restoring a snapshot from a live system (e. g. EndeavourOS Install medium)?
sudo pacman --noconfirm -Syy cronieyay --noconfirm -S timeshiftIf the above doesn’t work you can still try some manual stuff. As long as you have those snapshots there’s hope 
.
No i didn’t try it from the live environment. Because i have nothing on here much to lose i just decided it’s faster to reinstall it. It’s already up and running. I’ll keep it in mind for next time. I honestly don’t know what happened but well see if the other two have any issues because i did the same on all. Thanks for you help and your advice.
Is this a good alternative to chroot?
Yes, no need to chroot if you only want to restore a snapshot.
@2000
Booting into the live environment probably would have worked to restore the more i think about it! It seems like something messed up the boot with the kernel?
@2000
Since i reinstalled KDE on the SSD drive everything is working fine again. Don’t know what happened except my experimenting with os-prober-btrfs. Maybe going back & forth a couple of times messed it up. Anyway … i like it best this way having each Grub menu specifically for the desktop it’s installed with. If i want to go to any other desktop it’s really the same process anyway.
I agree; it’s the way I would want it set up if I would multiboot.
I would definitely do it this way if I used btrfs. Not much luck with it so far though… (slow - and wants grub for TimeShift)
Slow, as in “btrfs is slower than ext4”? I personally don’t shove around huge amounts of data and therefore haven’t noticed any difference to my ext4 installations .
Timeshift doesn’t need or cares if you use grub. (?)
Limited experience - and coloured by the grub interactions tied into the particular setup I was working with, I guess.
Definitely seemed slower on transferring some files in from elsewhere when setting up the distro, and it was on the same drive as I had experience with as ext4. The REAL holdup was related to the hooks deployed to auto-snap on pkg installs, and updates - and they automagically generated grub rebuilds to add themselves to the available choices. Grub is horrendously slow when ‘probing’ multi-boot systems - and then generates unbootable entries on arch-based ones anyway - as I said, coloured by…
I realize I can run Timeshift without grub, and probably would - but so far I have never even needed it - between downgrade and ShiftTime (my Arch archive recovery system to back up pkgs to a previous date’s state) I can usually get back to normal pretty quickly. I DO have Timeshifts in some cases, just for the dotfiles in /home, but it is not consistently implemeted yet, due to lack of motivation (!)
Still pretty sure ext4 is faster, and needs less ‘care and feeding’ than btrfs - and “don’t fix it if it isn’t broken” has become a way of life at my age!
You’re probably right; no occasional scrub and balance needed for ext4.
I actually hadn’t thought about the os-probing 
. As a workaround you could just not use grub-btrfs, which generates the snapshot entries in the grub menu - OR- seeing as you probably use rEFInd anyway you could skip the os-probing (remove os-prober) alltogether.