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Any ideas on how to go about determining the OS Binary Present On External Disk Partitions; other than mounting a partition, and comparing actually file sizes between various files resting on comparison file systems? The partition table of disk where I've got partitions that I'm curious about, each hosts a different a different OS version, and is buggered; thus can't be booted. They are mountable, from the disk from which I am currently booted, however.

Douglas Randall ([email protected])

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  • If partitions can be mounted & read, Boot-Repair is a good tool to see what is where. May be best to see details, use ppa version with your live installer or any working install, not older Boot-Repair ISO: Please copy & paste link to the Boot-info summary report ( do not post report), the auto fix sometimes can create more issues. help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
    – oldfred
    Mar 3, 2019 at 20:36
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    If we're talking about Ubuntu... and we are only talking about Ubuntu here... just look in the /boot directory, and note what file has the highest version number in its name. Regarding your current problem, have you run fsck on the Linux partitions?
    – heynnema
    Mar 3, 2019 at 20:42
  • Exactly, the required data which was necessary. Cheers Doug
    – odoncaoa
    Mar 3, 2019 at 21:09
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    @heynnema Judging from OP's comment, your suggestion counts as a solution. Post that as a proper answer
    – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
    Mar 4, 2019 at 0:45
  • @odoncaoa Please see my answer. Please remember to accept it by clicking the grey checkmark icon just to the left of my answer. Clicking the grey up arrow for extra points. Thanks!
    – heynnema
    Mar 4, 2019 at 0:55

1 Answer 1

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From the comments...

For Ubuntu, if you look into the /boot directory in each partition, you'll find files encoded with the version information in the filename. Like so...

$ ls /boot
config-4.18.0-14-generic               memtest86+.bin
config-4.18.0-15-generic               memtest86+.elf
efi                                    memtest86+_multiboot.bin
grub                                   System.map-4.18.0-14-generic
initrd.img-4.18.0-14-generic           System.map-4.18.0-15-generic
initrd.img-4.18.0-14-generic.old-dkms  vmlinuz-4.18.0-14-generic
initrd.img-4.18.0-15-generic           vmlinuz-4.18.0-15-generic

In this example, 4.18.0-15-generic is the most recent OS binary installed on this partition.

Extra credit...

To fix potentially messed up Linux partitions...

  • boot to a Ubuntu Live DVD/USB
  • open a terminal window
  • type sudo fdisk -l
  • identify the /dev/XXXX device name for your "Linux Filesystem"
  • type sudo fsck -f /dev/XXXX # replacing XXXX with the number you found earlier
  • repeat the fsck command if there were errors
  • type reboot
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