How to reinstall Linux in a dual boot Windows 7/Linux Mint PC?

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Question: how does one reinstall Linux (Mint in particular) in a dual-boot machine where the other OS is Windows (7 in my case)? Thanks for any helpful and informative answers. Others besides myself might find the answers interesting and helpful too.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Fred

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Well it should work pretty much like the original Linux install, except partition adjustments are already done (unless you’re changing them.)

Really depends on why you’d be reinstalling.

For some cases it’d be nice to have originally made / and /home separate, so it’d be easy to leave the latter unwiped.

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Fred

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mn- “Really depends on why you’d be reinstalling.” Thanks, that is a good starting point to explain more fully why I begun this thread.

The main question that concerns me here is: when something goes very wrong and the only solution is to reinstall the system, how does one do it?

To put it more dramatically, in case that helps move the conversation forward: how does one reinstall a system in a dual-boot machine without wiping out the other system (Windows 7, in my case) by not following a correct procedure? And what would be, that correct procedure, preferably described step by step?

If I had a problem that required reinstalling one of the two operating systems in the PC, to me this would be a completely new situation completely beyond my practical experience. So I have no idea of how one would proceed to successfully reinstall Linux without wiping out Windows, failing to get Linux properly installed in its proper partitions, and ending up, not with a PC with a successfully reinstalled Linux, but with a fancy, shiny door-stopper.

And, by the way, the same questions can be asked about reinstalling Windows without wiping out, or at least corrupting, Linux.

Besides backing up the data reasonably often, so there are always recently saved copies of one’s files (and what to do about the installed applications, some of which can be pretty expensive?), would making an image of the whole HD while everything is still working OK, and reinstalling only the required system (Linux or Windows) from it be one way to solve the problem? Even if that were possible, are there simpler ways of doing this? Unlike others, who don’t seem to mind, I don’t particularly like the idea of having the machine repeatedly put through a slow and lengthy procedure just in case something awful happens some day. But if that is the best way of doing it, by all means, I wold like to know how. And why.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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OscarCP wrote:

To put it more dramatically, in case that helps move the conversation forward: how does one reinstall a system in a dual-boot machine without wiping out the other system (Windows 7, in my case) by not following a correct procedure? And what would be, that correct procedure, preferably described step by step?

Right, only examining the case where the reinstall would be essentially identical to the original state, or at least partition layout wouldn’t change.

In that case it’d be nice to have your partition layout on paper or something just in case. Same with how you decided to arrange your bootloader. (After all, some people use the Windows bootloader as primary and have Linux chainloaded from there, or use rEFInd or some such instead of Grub…)

Multiboot is always a kind of special case anyway.

Now I’m still not familiar with the particulars of Mint but all of these should have an installer screen where you have the choice of repartition the system or not. In this case you choose the not.
Then you should get to the part of where things go, what’s your Linux root (/), /boot, swap, /home and so on… which you can either figure out from memory, poke around mountable partitions from the installer to see what used to be where, or read from that paper. If your / got messed up to unbootable state you might wish to wipe that first, likewise any filesystems that got corrupted to the point of no longer being mountable even after fsck.

Then you just make the same choices as on the first time install.

OscarCP wrote:

And, by the way, the same questions can be asked about reinstalling Windows without wiping out, or at least corrupting, Linux.

Well that’s a lot less safe. Windows will normally at least wipe out other bootloaders, and in some cases will mess with partition tables too. And a recovery set made prior to installing the multiboot parts… like at the factory… will typically restore the partition layout from when it was made.

OscarCP wrote:

would making an image of the whole HD while everything is still working OK, and reinstalling only the required system (Linux or Windows) from it be one way to solve the problem? Even if that were possible, are there simpler ways of doing this?

If your threat scenario includes partition tables getting corrupted, a whole-disk restore is pretty much the only thing that’ll be guaranteed to get them back as they were. Especially with Windows in the mix, where the partition table can get ignored if the filesystem internal metadata gets corrupted to say it’s larger than the partition it’s in, or just located in the wrong place… lost one Linux installation to Windows doing that once. Also some commercial versions of UNIX were known to do that in specific circumstances.

And the metadata corruption can in extreme cases happen years before the actual overwriting…

So yeah. That latter is one weakness of a raw image backup. The better way is to back up layouts and geometries so that they can be reproduced, and then files with sufficient detail… and for the sufficient detail, you need a full backup application that understands the particulars of the filesystems you’re using. All of them.

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[Ascaris]

OscarCP wrote:

Question: how does one reinstall Linux (Mint in particular) in a dual-boot machine where the other OS is Windows (7 in my case)?

Start the installer from the Mint install USB drive and start the installation.  After the usual initial questions (whether to download updates, whether you want to use proprietary drivers, etc.), it will propose a few options for installing Linux.

I’m using the Neon installer, which is also an Ubuntu derivative like Mint, so I am guessing it will be mostly the same.  I remember them being pretty much the same the last time I installed Mint.

In my case, when I tried this on my Dell G3 (which has a triple-boot configuration; Neon, Kubuntu, and Windows), the installer proposed obliterating everything else and making it all Neon.  That’s not what you want, obviously, so if it says that, or anything else that you don’t want (which is likely), select Custom.

It will show a graphical representation (as a bar graph) of the first hard drive in the system.  If that is not the right drive, select the correct one first.  You should see the usual partitions on the drive.  There will be at least a Windows partition, a Linux partition, and possibly others.  A UEFI PC set to perform a UEFI (non-legacy) boot will also have an EFI partition, and there will also usually be a Microsoft reserved partition.  The EFI and MS Reserved partitions are quite small, generally.

Depending on how the Windows was set up, there could be others, too, but you’re only interested in the Linux partition, or partitions, at this point.

If you have a single partition Linux install, as Mint installs by default, simply tell the installer to install over the existing Mint installation. To do this, look for the Linux partition in the list… it will be the only one that’s listed as EXT4 (most likely).  The bar graph is not clickable, but it will help you identify the correct partition in the list below.  Click on the entry for the Linux partition, then click the Change… button.

If your old partition was already sized how you want it, don’t change the size (the first option).

The next option down is “Use as:,” and the default is “do not use the partition.”  Change that to Ext4 journaling file system.

Below that is a checkbox for format the partition.  Make sure it is checked.

The final option is Mount point.  The default should be /, which means the root partition.  If so, you’re good; that’s what you want.

Click Ok, then look at the bottom of the dialog where it says “boot loader.”  Select the boot hard disk (probably /dev/sda), not one of the partitions (/dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, etc.)

That’s all there is to it if you have one Linux partition on a MBR or legacy boot setup.

If it is a UEFI PC with a GPT disk, make sure that the small EFI partition (usually on the left of the bar graph, or the beginning of the disk) is also configured.  It should be automatically configured by the installer, with “Use as:” set to EFI System Partition, and the other options will be grayed out.  That’s what you want, so you’re good.  If not, select EFI System Partition.

If you selected multiple partitions during the first installation (which you probably didn’t), repeat the configuration you created at that time.  The partitions are already in place, so you just need to tell the installer what to do with each of them.  Make sure each one is assigned to the correct role.  You can uncheck the box for formatting /home if you wish to preserve your settings.  For people who used the guided setting to install Mint in the first place, just skip this paragraph.

Make sure everything looks to be correct the best you can, then hit Install Now.  After that, you can just follow the prompts as usual.

That’s all there is to it.  You didn’t tell it to do anything with the Windows partitions, so it will leave those alone, and the Linux installer will automatically look for Windows and configure it to work as a dual boot without you having to tell it to.

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
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• This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by Ascaris.

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Fred

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Thanks mn- and Ascaris for taking the time and trouble.

A couple of questions:

mn- wrote: “The better way is to back up layouts and geometries so that they can be reproduced, and then files with sufficient detail… and for the sufficient detail, you need a full backup application that understands the particulars of the filesystems you’re using. All of them.” I am not familiar with the concepts of “layouts and geometries” in this context; also: how does one back them up? Does this advice extends to recovering applications (next paragraph)?

As I mentioned previously, when backing up to an external mass-storage device in order to copy them back to the HD, how to do so with individual data and executable files is no mystery. I’ve done this repeatedly when moving from one version of Windows to the next, for example. But, in the case of Linux, how about applications already installed, some of them pricey ones? How does one save them with a backup and how does one restore them in full working order after reinstalling Linux (I am assuming a worst case here, with no application installation disks available)? There may be cases where all one has to do is to backup to an external HD before and afterwards copy back to the PC’s HD one, or just a few executable files, including  a few scripts, but what if there is more to it than that? What can one do then, other than having to buy the applications again, of course.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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OscarCP wrote:

“…you need a full backup application that understands the particulars of the filesystems you’re using. All of them.” I am not familiar with the concepts of “layouts and geometries” in this context; also: how does one back them up?

Most people find just regular file ownership, links and standard Unix permissions sufficient, those you can get with standard Unix tools like tar and cpio.

Sometimes you need extended attributes and ACLs but not filesystem-specific features like the ZFS or Btrfs advanced parts. Some versions of tar and cpio do support these, Ubuntu’s tar at least does, but not all do. (Especially on embedded devices…)

If your tool of choice doesn’t support those directly, you can save xattrs and acls to a file before rolling it all up, such as with “getfattr” and “getfacl”, and then include the file too. Then as a post-action you reapply the metadata with “setfattr” and “setfacl” from those files.

And, well, if you’re using ZFS with fancy features like snapshots, variable case sensitivity and such, possibly even deduplication… or Btrfs with a bit less of those… you’ll need a backup tool that is aware of those if you want to preserve those fancy features too, and to restore them you need a similar-capability target again. (No restoring those to plain old Ext4…)

Veeam Agent for Linux claims to have support for Btrfs at least, last time I checked. Ext4 full capability support is more common.

OscarCP wrote:

But, in the case of Linux, how about applications already installed, some of them pricey ones? How does one save them with a backup and how does one restore them in full working order after reinstalling Linux (I am assuming a worst case here, with no application installation disks available)?

Well, for standard-compliant applications, you’re supposed to need /opt/$PACKAGE, /etc/opt/$PACKAGE and /var/opt/$PACKAGE …

So, assuming you have a full-featured “tar” command, backup application package “foopkg” for example like this:

tar --selinux --acls --xattrs -cJvf /media/user/extbackupisk/backup_foopkg_$( date +%Y%m%d ).tar.xz /opt/foopkg /etc/opt/foopkg /var/opt/foopkg 

That’ll leave you with compressed datestamped file that also sorts alphanumerically in date order if you make several. Also the v in there means list files as they’re read in.

Restore it with:

cd / && tar --selinux --acls --xattrs -xJvf /media/user/extbackupisk/backup_foopkg_YYYYMMDD.tar.xz

(Adjust YYYYMMDD for the datestamp you wish to restore)

The “cd /” is because tar strips leading slashes by default. That way it’s easier if you need to boot off a live-usb, mount your disk at /mnt/rescue, and then cd there and run the restore.

Unfortunately a number of applications aren’t quite standards-compliant… you may need to include links to/from /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /usr/share/applications, and such. Maybe even files in those locations. Maybe you’ll even need to include users’ settings to get an application started. So, same problem as with many applications on Windows.

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OscarCP

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Oh and for applications that came in a .deb file (everything that was installed with apt / dpkg / …) you can produce a list of files with “dpkg -L”. You can save that list in a file and then use “tar –files-from=” to pick them up.

However, the best way to back up applications that came in as .deb, might be dpkg-repack. That’ll make you a new .deb file of it with your local modified config files that you can then copy to external device and eventually install elsewhere.

One thing though – license key files (if your application uses those) are often not included in the dpkg package definition so those might not get picked up automatically.

See “man tar”, “man dpkg-query”, “man dpkg-repack” …

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OscarCP wrote:

As I mentioned previously, when backing up to an external mass-storage device in order to copy them back to the HD, how to do so with individual data and executable files is no mystery. I’ve done this repeatedly when moving from one version of Windows to the next, for example. But, in the case of Linux, how about applications already installed, some of them pricey ones?

If you did a full image backup of all of the Linux volumes, you would merely need to boot from the rescue media and restore from your backup location, as with Windows.  That would work whether you use a Windows backup program to back up the Linux partitions or a native Linux one (like Veeam).  There’s no need to reinstall anything.  When you’re done, the system is just as it was when you performed the backup.

Reinstalling things is what you have to do if you do a clean installation or a data-only restoration from a backup.  If you want to change to a different Linux distro, you’d be in that situation, but if you just want to keep the same OS as before, backing it up and restoring it as a whole saves a lot of effort and headache.

As far as how you would reinstall your software without having the disc… you’d have to ask the developer of that software.  It’s been a while since I’ve seen any software that actually used a disc!  It’s usually downloadable now.  Regardless of the installation media type, I would presume you’d simply install it again the way you did the first time.  Whatever licensing code or key that was used before should usually work again, though I must say I have never had any experience with Linux software that uses such a system.

How does one save them with a backup and how does one restore them in full working order after reinstalling Linux (I am assuming a worst case here, with no application installation disks available)?

A lot depends on what you mean by the term ‘backup.’  If it is a complete backup (ideally an image backup, but a file backup can work too if you back up everything, including the partition table), you just restore the backup… no installing Linux again, no worries about configuring anything.

If you mean copying things manually, like you hint at in the citation at the top of this reply… well, there’s no way to answer that without knowing what the specifics are about how you are going about it. The equivalent of .msi installer programs in Debian derivatives (like Ubuntu, Mint, Neon, etc.) is a .deb file.  If you have that, it’s the functional equivalent of the install disc. The software may also have its own software repo or PPA, in which case you can use the APT installer of your choice (Synaptic, the Mint software center or whatever it is called, not to mention the apt and apt-get command line tools) to reinstall it.  That would not restore the program’s settings, though.

A full backup, however you perform it, will save you a lot of work both in creating the backup (each time you do) and in restoring from it, if you ever need to.  You can just back it all up and not worry about having the disc or .deb.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Ascaris wrote:

The equivalent of .msi installer programs in Debian derivatives (like Ubuntu, Mint, Neon, etc.) is a .deb file.  If you have that, it’s the functional equivalent of the install disc. The software may also have its own software repo or PPA, in which case you can use the APT installer of your choice (Synaptic, the Mint software center or whatever it is called, not to mention the apt and apt-get command line tools) to reinstall it.  That would not restore the program’s settings, though.

And that’s where I particularly like dpkg-repack. It *will* also repack system-wide config files into the resulting new .deb … and can be done even if/when the package isn’t available in repositories any more, or never has been. (Commercial applications in particular may not be in any repositories.)

Still won’t catch user-level settings though.

Note that dpkg-repack isn’t usually installed by default.

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Ascaris: “If it is a complete backup (ideally an image backup, but a file backup can work too if you back up everything, including the partition table), you just restore the backup… no installing Linux again, no worries about configuring anything.”

That sounds like a great way to bring Linux and all that sails on her back up from the deep. Although I wonder how does one back up when the OS is not working? (I’d thought the OS has to be working to make such things as backups, as well as restoring them.) Or perhaps the system has to be alive just a little, not totally dead?

Perhaps someone could write something about which backup utilities (especially those available to someone using Linux Mint) are good for making this kind of backup to an external HD or SSD? That would be really helpful to know and definitely easier that doing it by hand.

And thanks again to mn- and Ascaris for taking the time to explain how does one restores the system itself, the data files and the applications, after something happens that puts Linux out of action, when it is installed in dual boot with (in my case) Windows 7.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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OscarCP wrote:

Perhaps someone could write something about which backup utilities (especially those available to someone using Linux Mint) are good for making this kind of backup to an external HD or SSD? That would be really helpful to know and definitely easier that doing it by hand.

Veeam Agent for Linux claims to do that. I haven’t tested it myself (yet) but the user manual looks promising.

It at least has a friendlier user interface than most other ways to do the same thing… and has a reasonably complete support for various kinds of disk layouts.

(It still can’t cope with my home laptop though, but my personal setup is a little… well, complicated…)

Other alternatives that I know of tend to have narrower restrictions on what kinds of disk layouts they support. Also some are expensive.

OscarCP wrote:

Although I wonder how does one back up when the OS is not working? (I’d thought the OS has to be working to make such things as backups, as well as restoring them.) Or perhaps the system has to be alive just a little, not totally dead?

Running a backup tool from a live-usb boot or some such is a valid method, if a bit tedious normally and causes a service outage… but unless you have a snapshot-capable disk layout you may need to have databases and such stopped while running the backup anyway.

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mn- “…but unless you have a snapshot-capable disk layout you may need to have databases and such stopped while running the backup anyway.”

(1) Snapshot capable: Would this include “Timeshift”?

(2) Data bases: I have a laptop PC, not a server and, as far as I know, there are no data bases running in it, nor have I set up any myself. So, could the caveat apply to my PC even so?

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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OscarCP wrote:

(1) Snapshot capable: Would this include “Timeshift”?

Well at least in Btrfs native mode.

Rsync mode, wouldn’t count on it.

OscarCP wrote:

(2) Data bases: I have a laptop PC, not a server and, as far as I know, there are no data bases running in it, nor have I set up any myself. So, could the caveat apply to my PC even so?

Depends on what applications you run on it. If you run anything that keeps multiple files open and needs them to stay in sync, or one large file where it writes to multiple locations near-simultaneously, do pay attention.

See, the point is, a native snapshot is near-instantaneous for all its contents, but a copy operation – like rsync – has to read parts sequentially. This brings the risk that the copy process might first read in one part, then the application changes things, and only then the copy process manages to get to the rest of it…

For a proper database with possible pending transactions you want it to be in “sync and pause” mode while triggering the snapshot, just in case the snapshot isn’t fast enough. (Like Microsoft does automatically with MS SQL Server and Volume Shadow Services on Windows… have to do that trigger separately with other database engines. “ALTER DATABASE BEGIN BACKUP;” anyone?) But that’s normally seconds at most, and rsync can easily take minutes. And these days you can find database engines pretty much anywhere… yes, specifically including Watcom/Sybase/SAP SQL Anywhere(r), that thing can even run on Windows CE and BlackBerry.

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[Ascaris]

OscarCP wrote:

Although I wonder how does one back up when the OS is not working? (I’d thought the OS has to be working to make such things as backups, as well as restoring them.)

You can perform a backup from the OS itself using Veeam, or you can do it from the USB rescue media for Veeam.  If you are going to exclusively do it from the USB media, you can use certain Windows backup programs too.  Macrium Reflect will cheerfully back up and restore Linux partitions without a complaint, but you won’t be able to back your Linux installation while it is active (obviously, since Reflect does not run in Linux).  It worked to do it that way (booting from the Reflect media), but the PCs were out of commission while they were performing the backups, which was inconvenient.

That was why I switched to Veeam (I had been using Macrium for Windows to do my Linux backups) when I discovered that it existed.  I’d been looking for a Linux imaging backup program, and the only one I had found before that was Acronis, which has no free or low cost option for non-commercial Linux users.  Apparently, it doesn’t think we exist in sufficient numbers to be willing to create a consumer version of their enterprise Linux program.  Fortunately, Veeam disagrees, and even offers it for free to consumers.

The OS need not be working to back it up using Veeam or other similar programs (I am not aware of any others for Linux consumers, but there are plenty in the Windows world).  It only needs to be working in order to perform a backup from within the OS that is being backed up, but you can perform a backup just as well from the USB rescue media, or from a live session.  It just makes sense to back it up when it is working well, or before doing anything you know to be risky, so you can get back to that state any time you need.

If disaster strikes and you don’t have an up-to-date backup, it would be a good idea to back up the broken setup before trying any rescue attempts that may make things worse if they go wrong.  You could do that from the USB rescue media.

To restore, it does not matter if the installation to be overwritten is working, completely or partially.  You boot from the rescue media, and that performs the restoration.  You can do that even if the drive you are restoring to is completely blank!  If you did a full backup of the physical drive(s) in question, you can just restore that image and be ready to go when it finishes.  That is the best choice for non-techie types of users… more advanced users can pick only certain partitions to back up or restore, which means that they may have to manage the partitioning manually.  It’s easier to do entire physical disks at a time if you don’t want to have to concern yourself with that.

Veeam can image the system (on Ext4 volumes; they need not be BTRFS) from within the active session just as Windows backup programs that are using MS shadow copy.  I’ve restored the backups by now on several occasions, and it has always worked exactly as it should.  Timeshift using rsync (the way it works on a non-BTRFS system, like an Ext4 one) has the limitations described by mn-, by contrast.

Veeam didn’t work with 5.x kernels for some time after those kernels were released, but the current version works just fine with them.  Perhaps that was why it didn’t work for you, mn-?  If so, it may be worth another try.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

• This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by Ascaris.

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OscarCP

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Ascaris wrote:

Veeam didn’t work with 5.x kernels for some time after those kernels were released, but the current version works just fine with them.  Perhaps that was why it didn’t work for you, mn-?  If so, it may be worth another try.

Well I might try again, but my system is specifically not supported for the nice features even on a 4.15 kernel, says https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agentforlinux/userguide/system_requirements.html?ver=30 :

Btrfs is supported only if it resides directly on a physical device with no additional abstraction layers (such as LVM, software RAID, dm-crypt and so on) below or above it.

Well I have Btrfs on top of dm-crypt on top of LVM on one mountpoint and Btrfs on top of LVM on top of dm-crypt on another… hey, I wanted encrypted hibernate and multithreaded crypto… oh and my partition layout is a hybrid GPT/MBR on the same disk because of firmware bugs in this thing. (Yes, that’s specifically “known to break easily”… in the general case)

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Thank you  OscarCP  and  mn-  and  Ascaris  for starting and filling this thread, this is exactly where I bumped my head falling on this slippery road.
But working on a somewhat elderly laptop, lack of space, and most of all a great black hole of knowledge of the ‘Linux-bible’;
so it’s a very nice way to become very humble again.

* _ ... _ *

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