OS Prober no longer ran by default as of today's update of grub

I think many of us are multi-booting multiple Linux distros. It isn’t only Windows. :wink:

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This is what i do currently on one machine even though they are all Arch based and i use rEFInd as my boot manager.

After all, VMs are the way to run ‘other’ systems - so they can’t get at the hardware (in some cases)!

Ya …but some of us hate vm. BTW shall i mention virtualbox! :laughing:

someone can bring me light into why the grub update does not create a pacnew file for /etc/default/grub?
As grub package owns that file…

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Probably because it didn’t change.

For a pacnew to be created two things have to be true:

  1. The installed version and the new version of the file need to be different
  2. The version in the filesystem needs to be different than the installed version

I don’t use grub much, but as I understand it, the packager didn’t add a default entry for the new config so /etc/default/grub in the package was probably not modified.

The Arch wiki explains this in a more verbose way:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Pacnew_and_Pacsave#Types_explained

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Okay so if it would be installed with pacman what is not the case because we install it with pacstrap … it should create a pacnew, because file is changed from original installed one we add “nowatchdog” and other stuff into so md5sum will not be the same as from initial installed one…
But as i mention pacstrap could be the culprit as there is no original version to compare… ?
also there will be no initial installed grub package in cache at all on offline installs :wink:

pacman cross-compares three md5sums generated from the file’s contents: one sum for the version originally installed by the package, one for the version currently in the filesystem, and one for the version in the new package. If the version of the file currently in the filesystem has been modified from the version originally installed by the package, pacman cannot know how to merge those changes with the new version of the file. Therefore, instead of overwriting the modified file when upgrading, pacman saves the new version with a .pacnew extension and leaves the modified version untouched.

Even if the file on disk is changed, if the file didn’t change between versions you won’t get a pacnew.

just did a testing and removed /etc/dfefault/grub, downgraded grub ,changing it and after updating it was creating a pacnew file for /etc/default/grub …

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but file in filesystem differs from the one come with the new grub, it seems it can not check without having all 3 files or it does not.

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This might help someone else who has this issue.

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Nope you’re not the only one! I tend to use “Boot Menu” on UEFI to just choose what to boot at startup, with the default being Linux. It takes a bit of the stress out for sure.

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Well, I also noticed a problem with the lack of os-prober. I searched right away and the first hits led to the EOS forum. I would be interested to know the reasons why Arch Linux developers may have decided to disable os-prober by default from now on?

Yeah, the latest update (EOS/xfce) killed dual-booting via GRUB on my cheap little laptop. I entered the GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false line and updated GRUB but it didn’t fix it this time. I don’t use the laptop very much but when I do it is usually at work and I need Windows. I replaced the EOS partition with Mint. Unfortunate but practical. I enjoy tinkering but the laptop works for a living.

Arch is following what upstream sets per default, and this change is the new default setting from grub development.

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