Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (1709) destroys Linux Partitions

It was time for me to do the Fall Creator Update to Win10 1709 from my current Win10 1607 installation that i use on my dualboot system together with Fedora 27. And because it is a big update, i decided to do some preparations. I made backups of everything including the disk layout and updated with a flash drive like Microsoft described it here.
The Update itself worked pretty well, after i made sure that Windows is the default UEFI boot entry. No major error and the new Windows features worked immediately.
But: Now Linux was not able to boot.
Usually this is nothing special, it is well known that after big Windows Updates or Installations you have to reinstall GRUB (or whatever bootloader you are using). I am used to this in my >15years of Windows-Linux-Dualboot experience.
But this time it was special.

Lets see what happened… this was the partition layout before the Update (fdisk):

Gerät         Anfang      Ende  Sektoren  Größe Typ
/dev/sda1       2048    534527    532480   260M EFI-System
/dev/sda2     534528    567295     32768    16M Microsoft reserviert
/dev/sda3     567296 265443327 264876032 126,3G Microsoft Basisdaten
/dev/sda4  265443328 266364927    921600   450M Windows-Wiederherstellungsumgebung
/dev/sda5  266364928 268462079   2097152     1G Linux-Dateisystem
/dev/sda6  268462080 537234734 268772655 128,2G Linux-Dateisystem

Here the UUIDs of the Linux partitions with blkid:

/dev/sda5: LABEL="Fedora-Boot" UUID="5bed5e31-25a0-4446-8557-285098cc5812" TYPE="ext2" PARTUUID="826dae72-36a5-408a-89f6-8a16e2906fca"
/dev/sda6: UUID="64725166-1b67-4393-aa3c-b4097e3c869a" TYPE="crypto_LUKS" PARTUUID="3cc18e74-de0b-4e2e-a906-b7328136f737"

And here the partition layout after the Update (gdisk):

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
1            2048          534527   260.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
2          534528          567295   16.0 MiB    0C01  Microsoft reserved ...
3          567296       264405092   125.8 GiB   0700  Basic data partition
4       264407040       265441279   505.0 MiB   2700
5       265443328       266364927   450.0 MiB   2700
6       266364928       268462079   1024.0 MiB  8300
7       268462080       537234734   128.2 GiB   8300

And the UUIDs of the Linux partitions with blkid (it is sdb because its from a booted live system):

/dev/sdb6: PARTUUID="826dae72-36a5-408a-89f6-8a16e2906fca"
/dev/sdb7: PARTUUID="3cc18e74-de0b-4e2e-a906-b7328136f737"

Here we can see that Windows Update shrinked the sda3 partition (Windows C: drive) and created a new Recovery Partition in the resulting space (even thought that we already have one). The Linux Partitions in the Partitiontable did not get touched, their start- and end-sector and PARTUUID are the same. The Linux stuff in the EFI partition is also still present and the Linux Boot entry in the UEFI is still there.
But the UUID, the label and the filesystem type of both partitions vanished. Those information belong to the Filesystem itself and are not part of the partitiontable, they are on the partition itself.
Windows Update destroyed the Linux Partitions. It did overwrite the Filesystem there. The 1GB partition had an ext2 filesystem of /boot and the 128GB partition was an LUKS encrypted partition. Both were wrecked and completely useless now. There was no way to even mount those partitions in a booted live system and no way to repair them (it always complained about brocken superblock and the BackUp superblocks didn’t work either), the data on them was completely lost.
The only way to repair it was with formatting those partitions again and restoring from full backups.

Panel Icons on the left afer Xfce-4.10 Update

If you are using Xfce4, you may noticed that after the last update to 4.10 the Panelicons are all aligned from the left.

The panel is not broken, it’s just redesigned. To get your workspace, notification area, a.o. back to the right, you just have to:

1. go to the Panelsettings (xfce-menu -> Preferences -> Panel)
2. add a Seperator where you want to move your icons to the right
3. edit it, set style to „Transparent“ and tick the Expand Box.
4. Done

Source: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=140674

 

HowTo: Update your Galaxy Nexus via fastboot

If you are the owner of a Galaxy Nexus and you dont want to wait until the OTA Update comes to your phone, you can get the official Android Updates from GoogleCode.
Its the official Google Build, so you dont have to install some third-partie Bootloader/RescueSystem like ClockworkMod and you will still get the OTA updates. The only downside of this methode is that you must unlock your bootloader and this could may void your warranty and it will delete all data from your phone, so backup before doing this!

The requirements are a proper setup of the Android SDK and fastboot (its in the „PlatformTools“ Package which you can install from within the android sdk). If you don’t know how to do this, ask Google about it, there are many Tutorials out there.
Note: You dont need eclipse or the ADT Plugin, just the SDK with the package „platform tools“.

How its done:

1. Download the Update-package
   Head over to http://code.google.com/android/nexus/images.html and download the proper package. yakju is the package for the non-LTE version of the GalaxyNexus.
2. Add the platform-tools to the path variable:
   Open the terminal, and type:

    export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/your/android-sdk/platform-tools/

3. Boot into fastboot-mode
   Shutdown your Galaxy Nexus and press the VolUp & VolDown while turning it on, a green Android robot should appear
4. Unlock your Bootloader
   Type

   fastboot oem unlock

   into the terminal, this will unlock your bootloader. Warning, this will reset your phone! Backup your pictures, videos, etc. before doing this!

5. Extract the Update
   In the terminal, cd to the directory where you have downloaded the Update-package from 1.
   Extract the package with

   tar xvfz yakju*.tgz

6. Execute ‚flash-all.sh‘ if you want to update your whole phone (bootloader, radio, and android) or ‚flash-base.sh‘ if you want to update just the bootloader and the radio.
   

   cd  ./yakju-imm76d

   ./flash-all.sh

7. It may take a while, but when its finished you have a fully updated phone. Done!

Possible Problems:

•  „fastboot cannot be found“:
  Make sure „Platform Tools“ are installed in the SDK and the PATH-Variable is set correctly (Point 2)
• fastboot waits forever:
  Your phone might need a udev-rule!
  Create the file /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules  and enter something like this:
  

  SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
  SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"