this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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I'm a bit bias right now because I tried to install PopOS on a partition last night to see if i could play with it and make a media server. My VPN client failed to install properly, corrupted the OS and when I booted back to the live disk (Rufus made USB) I was able to format the partition but no longer install to it. The boot loader no longer works and it can't get into any OS now.
I have to say I haven't had this problem before, but working in IT and installing Windows on over 10 thousand computers in my career, this has happened to none.
(I'll try another installer likely and format the partition over and see if another bootloader like grub will take and fix the issue).
Edit: changed course and said fuck it.. formatted the entire drive and so much for the other data that was there. Clean install maybe the VPN client won't botch everything this time.
Bootloader no worky can be caused by a hundred different issues. The installer may have removed the kernel or a CPIO archive (initramfs or processor microcode) that the bootloader needs. You could be missing some EFI program. If the boot entry is set to identify the root filesystem by its UUID, formatting/reinstalling would have changed the real UUID and then the bootloader wouldn't be able to find it. Maybe installing the OS simply wiped or damaged that partition.
If you have to reinstall the OS, you should also reinstall the bootloader (the OS installer usually lets you do that from the GUI), or if you're confident, update the boot entries to reflect the state of the computer. I strongly recommend using btrfs as your root filesystem instead of ext4, and use Timeshift to set up regular snapshots (btrfs) or backup clones (ext4) in case this happens again.
Darn, wish I would have read this prior to restarting the install after wiping the disk. I would have tried btrfs, it defaulted to ext4 as the machine was using mbr previously and not uefi for the boot, so I Rufus popped up with ext4 recommended and I ran with it
Ext4 is still perfectly fine. It's a mature technology, and much more stable than btrfs. Your experience will not be any different because of this.
I still recommend using Timeshift. The only downside is that only the Rsync backup method will be available, which creates a full on-disk copy of your system files.
Thanks I'll try it out once I set up the media server and figure out storage setup. Right now it just has an old 256ssd (sata) for the boot drive, originally was just taking 50gb for that and was going to use old 7200 drives for media storage. I assume I'll need to have the time shift backups running to one of the other drives or it would be useless if the drive dies.
Yes, it's best to store them on a separate hard drive. The target partition must be formatted as a Linux filesystem (ext2/3/4 or btrfs) in order to retain file ownership and permissions. I have a 512 GB partition on a hard drive reserved for the last three weekly backups and never ran out of space.