triple boot works but something seems off

[usmamyer]

Hello all. I've been dual booting for a long time and have never had any issues using Windows 7 and Ubuntu or Kali in the past as dual is very easy. I recently decided to set up my laptop to triple boot Windows 10, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and Kali Linux 2016.2 64-bit on a single drive in my laptop. I decided to use this method because i prefer it over a virtual machine and can easily separate my work areas from my play ones.

I did experience some slight issues during installation and thought I had everything sorted, but there are some slight discrepancies in boot and performance that has me thinking I may have done something improperly and have not been able to find just the right answer anywhere yet. This is what I did.

System Specifications
Model: Acer Aspire E 15 (E5-571-563B)
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4210U CPU @ 1.70GHz × 4
Memory: 6gb
Graphics: Intel Haswell Mobile
Disk: 1tb

fdisk -l output:



This pc originally came with windows 8 which i found generally useless so I formatted and installed Kali 2.0 by itself to use as a penetration tester until deciding to make it triple boot. All installations were conducted from a USB drive with each OS on them individually using Rufus 2,1, GPT UEFI, Fat32, and official ISO's for each.

Installation Process and issues:
1. Delete all partitions and format full disk
2. Installed Windows 10 Enterprise without a hitch.
3. Installed Ubuntu 16.04 LTS without a problem.
4. Changed BIOS boot order to put ubuntu grub2 before Windows boot manager
5. Had issues getting Kali Linux 2016.2 to boot in UEFI after trying multiple suggestions to get it to do so, so...
6. Used Ubuntu installation's Startup Disk Creator and the Kali Linux 2016.2 ISO to create Kali installation drive. This is the only way I was able to get the Kali image to actually boot.
7. Kali 2016.2 seemed to install just like normal including saying it updated grub info and everything, used the option home folder and system on one partition recommended for new users.
8. Upon reboot I was able to boot from Win10 and Ubuntu, but Kali was not listed, so I booted into Ubuntu again and employed the Boot-repair program using recommended settings.
9. Rebooted and was now able to see my Kali installation on the list as well as a couple unknown listings like windows boot.efi type entries which simply reboot to the grub2 again but every OS does boot.
10. Booted into Windows and updated all drivers and windows system
11. Booted into Ubuntu and updated/upgraded dist/packages/drivers
12. Booted into Kali and updated/upgraded dist/packages/drivers

I noticed it seems to take a little longer to boot Ubuntu than I believe it should but it does not give me any errors. everything seems to operate properly but seems just a little slower than expected for sure, and I noticed that regardless of what OS I am running, whenever I open a new Firefox window, they all use the home page of "data:text/plain,browser.startup.homepage=file:///usr/share/kali-defaults/web/homepage.html" and the page below reads "browser.startup.homepage=file:///usr/share/kali-defaults/web/homepage.html" without quotes.

This makes me believe maybe my partitioning is out of order somehow or I missed/damaged a setting with boot repair in the Ubuntu environment (i did not use boot-repair from a live cd/usb environment, I booted into the Ubuntu already installed on my disk to run it.) I will generate a bootchart image soon and provide it here as well if that would help, but i figured i have to ask someone who knows more about this than me as I have tried every suggestion I was able to find so far and have yet to find an explanation as to why things are the way they are. Please let me know if there is anything else I left out or need to try to get this worked out.

Thanks in advance for your time and assistance.

[jaclaz]

The GRUB2 has now a "mechanism" that creates grub.cfg (the configuration file for GRUB2) "on-the-fly" and on the actual grub.cfg there is a "warning" against NOT editing the grub.cfg manually.

The idea is that this way when GRUB2 is updated there are no (or less) issues (if I get it right) but the practical result is that a number of entries in grub menu are added, and possibly the "auto-magic" mechanism *somehow* mixes up the two Linux distro's.

The same kind of "mixed up" may happen due to glitches with the update mechanisms for dist/packages/drivers.

Which of the volumes is Ubuntu installed on?

Which of the volumes is the Kali installed on?

Not on the same volume I hope, anyway I suspect that since you have two distro's using the same GRUB2 mechanisms there may have been a glitch in the grub.cfg making scripts (kernel parameters passed at boot time?) or some form of cross-linking between the two installs in some other configuration or "default" file.

Can you try making a bootabe USB stick (or other boot media) with GRUB2 and a "static" (handmade) grub.cfg (with just the two or three boot entries you use) and check if the behaviour is the same?

jaclaz