My linux installation isn't reliable

[Nuh_]

I have kali linux on an ssd, the problem keeps coming back whether I have disk encryption or not. what happens is, I remove the SSD with linux on it from my pc to put the one with windows on it, then when I go to put the linux ssd back the pc can't boot off it. I have specified the boot device in the BIOS so that's not the problem. the PC tells me that the linux SSD isn't bootable, yet if I haven't removed the SSD since I installed linux on it, it works fine.

 

So basically, every time I remove the ssd from the machine I have to reinstall linux.

 

technical details:

the way I do the installation is, I create boot and UEFI partitions with the bootable flag enabled in UEFI (can't set it to on in boot whether the UEFI partition exists or not). I can't pinpoint what I'm doing wrong here.

I have an HP EliteDesk 705 G3 Small Form Factor PC, intel core i5 6500, 8gb single-channel ram. 

 

[Kilrah]

Not clear if you're using an internal SSD and it's always the only one present or if it's an external one...

Don't know about kali but for example ubuntu doesn't respect the choice of where to put the loader that you make in the installer, even if you tell it to use the EFI partition you made on the SSD if there's one on the PC's internal drive it'll use that anyway.

Solution is to physically disconnect the other drives when installing it.

[Nuh_]

36 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Not clear if you're using an internal SSD and it's always the only one present or if it's an external one...

both windows and linux are internal SSDs and only one is in the system at a time

[Nuh_]

37 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Don't know about kali but for example ubuntu doesn't respect the choice of where to put the loader that you make in the installer, even if you tell it to use the EFI partition you made on the SSD if there's one on the PC's internal drive it'll use that anyway.

If you're referring to the GRUB bootloader thing, I don't remember getting a prompt about it during installation.

[Kilrah]

With your linux drive installed you can try booting off the boot-repair iso and see if it can fix it...

[Nayr438]

By default Grub doesn't install in "portable" mode, instead it registers a EFI entry with the EFI Boot Manager in your BIOS. Some motherboards when the drive isn't detected will remove this entry.

 

You will need to identify your boot directory and efi directory and re-install grub with the following options

Quote

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/path/to/efi --boot-directory=/path/to/boot --removable

 

Edited August 14, 2022 by Nayr438
Remove bootloader-id it wont serve much of a purpose on portable installs

[Nuh_]

56 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

With your linux drive installed you can try booting off the boot-repair iso and see if it can fix it...

this fixed it, but I have to go through the process every time I put the linux SSD in, which is less than ideal.