Reinstall headaches

General system EndeavourOS installation
1

I reinstalled my system, which went fine and since I have a separate home partition, I’ve reused that partition.
When I did this almost two years before, my settings (passwords, preferences) came back after installing all the apps. This time it didn’t, I was left with a new system and my files on my Home partition.

I thought to be smart and put back a Timeshift snapshot, but now the system tries to find a hdd that isn’t there anymore.
My system was cloned some years ago from an HDD to a SSD and when I chroot and look into fstab, the partitions are there with the right UUID.
But when I start the system I get thrown into the emergency shell after GRUB, because the system is looking for the old HDD.

How do I solve this strange situation?

2

Look at definitions in files /boot/grub/grub.cfg and /etc/fstab.
It is possible that UUIDs, LABELs or device names are not compatible between them.

Also check UUIDs etc. with command

lsblk -fm

If you can’t boot, use the USB installer.

3

I already looked in those and everything looks fine, except when it tries to boot it is looking for an unknown partition device. that whole number isn’t in any of the files.

4

Then those files must have that wrong UUID.
Unless you have some special disk or partition settings…

Or BIOS or UEFI boot order?

5

Can I ask a possibly very obvious question? @Bryanpwo

6

I admit, that I’m tired but that number isn’t there.

7

Which is?

8

Did you remember to edit the old /home partition in the calamares installer and mount it at /home? Last time I did this (reuse an old home with a new system / ) I had to do this as it was not mounted.

9

Yes, it was mounted as /home. In the new installed system I had access to my files, but not my settings.

10

Any external or additional USB drives connected that conflict with booting?

11

Would need to see the actual error messages…

12

No, i removed the Live USB ISO.

13

I would reinstall to a new user and just copy across the files, 15 minutes vs struggling forever :smiley:

14

The thing that is lost, somehow, are the login info and ssh-keygens for several services. Not a big deal, but it would’ve been easier if it came back after install.

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15

Well if they are lost… But they should be somewhere in your old home surely?

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16

Indeed, but where :thinking:

17 
ls -la ~/.*

See those.

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18

~/.ssh ? or /root/.ssh

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19

“Reinstall headaches”
Why would you even do that? I mean reinstalling headaches … does sound rather hurtful, doesn’t it?

Okay, I show myself out …

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20

Relax - no-one’s chasing… :grin:

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