General :: Risks Of Installing Grub Into Partition?
Jan 26, 2010
Using Ubuntu which comes with grub 1.97~beta4:
root@voyager:~# grub-install /dev/sda7
grub-setup: warn: Attempting to install GRUB to a partition instead of the MBR. This is a BAD idea.
grub-setup: warn: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are unreliable and its use is discouraged.
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect, fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.
(hd0) /dev/sda
As you can see, the installation goes well, but, why installing grub into a partition instead of MBR is a bad idea? I like to have many distros on my computer, and each one comes with their own menu.lst parameters, which also can change during updates. So it's much more pratical to create an empty partition of 64MB or less, create a /boot/grub there, install into MBR and then chainload into the other partitions.
So if I mess up with any distro, my mbr is still intact. And also if the parameters of grub setup required for a distro changes with any updates on the distro, they keep updated. So for me it is not pratical to have one distro installed on MBR controlling the other ones, having to constantly change my menu.lst. What are the risks of installing GRUB into a partition instead of MBR? Why is this message displayed? Maybe the question goes for why blocklists are unreliable or something like that?
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Sep 1, 2011
I was wondering what will happen if I cancel a partition half way through? I am using Ubuntu 8.10 (yes, I know it's outdated) and I am trying to install Windows XP alongside. Turns out GParted is trying to take about 16 hours to complete what I told it to do; shrink the Ubuntu partition to make room for Windows. I have a slight time constraint, and would rather not spend this 16 hours. If I cancel the partitioner right now and completely wipe the disk, will there be any permanent damage to the disk?
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Mar 3, 2011
The XP partition ceased to boot (in fact when it seems to start Windows, it re-boots once and again). I can access the XP partition from Ubuntu 9.10
If I boot with the WXP CD and reinstall it in the original NTFS partition, will it wipe the boot menu out, loosing any chance to boot in Linux?
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Jul 28, 2010
I want to install grub on the ubuntu root partition because I have another boot loader (boot-us). But when I reach : device for boot loader installation and set the device to the root partition (/dev/sda3) the OK button is not highlighted, I can use the windows partitions but not ubuntu root partition, what goes wrong?
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Feb 25, 2010
I having a problem getting my grub loader to see one of my hard drives. I added a drive, and my grub loader lost track of where everything was. I couldn't get my old linux (Red Hat 9) so I installed SuSe on my new hard drive. But I need my be able to boot from my old hard drive because it has apps that only run on the earlier version. From /proc/partitions the old hard drive is sdd
major minor #blocks name
8 0 976762584 sda
8 1 2104483 sda1
8 2 20972857 sda2
[code]....
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Jul 17, 2010
Are there any security risks I should be aware of if I have Mono installed?
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Aug 30, 2011
I am currently running a dual boot machine with Ubuntu 11.04 and Windows Vista.Is there any way I can delete the Linux partition and Grub boot loader without affecting the Windows partition at all?I would also like to be able to repartition all of the space that was previously occupied by Linux.
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Jan 1, 2011
I have successfully setup a connection from Ubuntu 10.10 to Windows XP Pro via rDesktop, which of course was quite easy, but I intend to do permanently setup via my computers on the same connection. Like KVM switch, but what kind of risks or problems could come up? What kind of tweaks could I apply to add extra security? I would like to do a ssh connection between them, but I have had major issues with it in the past. What kind of options do I have?
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Jan 3, 2010
I'm just slightly confused here, but... what the? Why does installing grub-doc remove BOTH grub-pc, and grub-common? So basically it seems like by installing grub-doc, I have uninstalled grub totally (yes, it is still there as the bootloader, but i have no way of updating it now!) from my system. What's the conflict between grub-doc and grub-pc, such that grub-pc has to be removed?
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Sep 20, 2010
so my new job had me install Linux on a laptop at work, the laptop will be handed off to multiple users, 3 total (for now) The HDD is about 320gb, I believe. First, they just said "Install your flavor of linux", so I installed ubuntu 10.4. Then he said "Make sure you split it into 3 partitions, all boot-able...
fml. So I suck at managing partitions, I took up 100% of sda1. HTF do I split that up, without losing all of my data? My guess is I would need to boot in from a bootable DVD, unmound sda1, then..Im googling it now, but id love to go into work and already know what to do, lol
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Aug 29, 2009
I have 2 hard disks. In the first one, I have installed Archlinux, with GRUB. The second one is empty. I have a Windows XP .iso file. Is it possible to install Windows XP in the second hd, without having to burn the ISO file? I don't have got any CD recorder/reader.
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Sep 22, 2009
I am using windows XP.I wish to install GRUB bootloader so that I can modify menu.lst & add lines to boot from an ext2 partition having iso of linux distro.One way is to use live cd & try 'sudo grub-install <device>' but I don't have live cd.I came to know about open source software 'wingrub' but I am not able to understand how to use it even after reading [URL] what should I do to install GRUB in mbr & have option to boot to c drive which has windows & another partition (/dev/sda2) which has linux.
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Aug 29, 2010
I am playing with grub and i change the root using:
How can i know what's x for /dev/sda7 ?
The problem is that in Gparted view, the order is not like sda5, sda6, sda7, ...but the order is like:
So what's x for /dev/sda7 ?
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Sep 12, 2010
I am trying to dual boot Windows and Linux. I would like to continue using the Windows bootloader in my MBR.
I installed Windows 7 first. During the install I left some unallocated space that I intended to install Linux.
I found this guide: [URL]
It says to install GRUB to the bootsector of the partition that Linux is being installed to and not the MBR of your hard drive.
I am trying to install Linux Mint Debian to the second partition. When the installer gets to where you are asked to install GRUB the only option is to install GRUB to /dev/sda which I believe is the MBR.
I decided just not to install GRUB and proceeded with the installation.
How can I install GRUB to the bootsector of my Linux partition?
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Dec 28, 2010
I'm multi-booting with Windows 7 x64 and (at least) Linux Mint. Because I hadn't yet made a backup of my MBR, when I installed Linux Mint on a logical partition, I told the installer to put GRUB on the partition instead of in the MBR. This turned out to be useless, as I need to use GRUB from a boot disk to get into the GRUB I installed. Before installing it in the MBR, I'd like to get it out of the partition, preferably without wiping and reinstalling Linux. I don't relish the prospect of going through two layers of GRUB when I want to boot Linux. How do I get it out, or what other options are available to me?
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Oct 4, 2010
I'm trying to install MS Windows from my Linux box. Because I have no CD drives nor USB ports, I can't use any live media to boot the computer and install Windows from the installation disk. So I've created a FAT partition and copy DOS files on that, so that I can boot this partition and install Windows from there. But the problem is I still haven't able to get it to boot.
Here's the output of fdisk -l code...
I created the partition by using cfdisk to format it as type 0B: WIN95 FAT32, and made dos filesystem on it using:
Code:
mkfs.msdos /dev/hda1
But when I reboot and select the DOS entry in GRUB, it tells me that:
"This is not a bootable disk. Please insert a bootable floppy and press any key to try again."
what I'm missing or doing wrong here? Do I need to change something on the MBR of hda1 etc...
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May 14, 2010
I'm using an Eee netbook so i have no CD drive. I've used Linux for about a week. Someone else installed it for me using their flash drive. If I need to use a flash drive to install I will need info on how to install to a flash drive. I had it set up so i could choose windows or ubuntu at start up. logged into windows to play a game and all it brought up was.
GRUB loading.
error: no such partition
grub rescue>
Now that's all I get when I turn it on.
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May 15, 2010
Because I am using one of the new WD disks I am trying to aling my root partition with the real sectors, as described here:[URL]31So I copied all files to a temp location, deleted my partition (/dev/sda3), recreated it a few cylinders later (same name) and copied the files to the newly created partition. But now when I try to boot, I get my old grub menu but after selecting my kernel version it hangs
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Jan 23, 2011
I moved my NTFS partition with XP and after restarting got the grub> prompt. ls,grub-install and mount are not recognized. find /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0,2,a)
how can I recover? my *nix is osol and I have grub 0.97 (legacy)
I have both a osol and ubuntu cds, but it seems I should be able to load from the grub prompt.
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Aug 15, 2009
I am trying to install Fedora on my machine, Vista currently installed. During the install process, I select the partition which I created, but install program says I must define a ROOT partition. How do I do this?
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Feb 16, 2010
want get Linux mint8 on to a separate partition but when i go into advance in the partition menu and and chose the partition i want,in this case (e),(c) having windows xp on it.it says ...no root file system is defined.
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Sep 29, 2009
I have two distros and windows installed. I only want one distro (I have decided on Ubuntu) and windows. But, the other distro, the one that I want to eradicate is the last one installed and it is its GRUB in the MBR.
I know what happens from experience if I just delete that partition with a liveCD - GRUB won't boot anything on reboot.
What do I need to do from within Ubuntu or the other Linux before deleting the partition of the second distro so that I have a working GRUB when I reboot ?
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Sep 27, 2010
I have both windows7 and Linux 10.04 installed in my system. The problem occurred on a forced shut down.The message which is appearing on the screen isgrub rescueNo such partitionNo command other than ls and set are working. Set shows root to be in (hd0,6). ls is not listing (hd0,6)The ls is not able to read any of the partition it lists and shows error:unknown file system.
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Aug 22, 2010
I've resisted the urge to post for as long as I could. I use these forums quite often in finding answers to the numerous linux questions that I've had & found it to be a great resource. For some reason after an innocent reboot of my Fedora 12 Core system, GRUB decided it would no longer load the O/S. I was just getting a flashing _ in the top left of the screen. I thought there must be a problem with the partition table & have used the systemRescueCd to run testdisk (I have made a copy of the disk first to an image file using dd - don't worry I made sure I got the commands around the correct way!).
testdisk shows that I have a partition which is bootable & Primary, which appears to be the grub partition (I can list the files in test disk). However when I search the disk I get the following after it has found a couple of partitions. (it is an 80Gb disk)
[Code]...
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Jun 27, 2011
How to install grub in /sdb3 /media/{some-uuid} via Live CD?
# mount
# -> /dev/sd3 /media/{some-guid}
# grub-install --force --root-directory=/media/{some-guid} /dev/sda3
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Dec 15, 2010
i ran into this issue only because i wanted to learn. I was reading the book, linux troubleshooting and decided to give it a try.
1) I went to /boot/ and moved vmlinuz (kernel file) to my home directory. (/root/)
2) I booted, it didnt boot (as expected) and now the troubleshooting part begins.
3) i entered to grub config mode using c
4) When i press root (hd0, (tab) it gave me 2 partitions. hd0 which is my boot partition hd1 which is my '/' partition. Please keep in mind its LVM and not a physical partition
5) If i do this, root (hd0,1), and press boot, it gives the following error Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition
During my research i found that, LVM is not supported by grub, so kindly confirm me this ? is this the reason i am not able to access my root partition ? i am doing this on vmware so no issues, but just for the sake of learning, can someone tell me some way of restoring it without using any rescure disk (livecd, liveusb etc) ?
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Aug 13, 2011
I am to reinstall the notebook of my father, that had Windows XP and Ubuntu on it. And I dont know anything on Ubuntu. My objective was to make a fresh install with XP only.So I was checking the partitions within Windows and found 7 or 8 of them which I could not understand: I asked to remove them, one by one, and got some error mesage on Windows. Now I understand these were probably used by Ubuntu.Now, when I restarted the PC,n I got:"error no such partition grub rescue"..I tried to boot from the CD - a windows XP setup CD, but I get blocked as well, because when I try formatting the drive during the installation CD it makes an error, or otherwise without formatting I also get an error.I guess the partitionning information of the hard drive is inconsistent, making everything fail.I dont know what to do.I am thinking to use a USB disk to reformat the HD, but I am not sure it will help.
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Oct 24, 2009
Okay on /dev/sda
sda1 is windows xp
sda2 slackware /boot /system files
sda3 slackware swap
sda5 Centos LVM
Now my question is when I install CentOS grub did not automatically setup the slackware partition and I have to configure it manually. This is my grub.conf file
[root@centos ~]# cat /boot/grub/grub.conf
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,4)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01
# initrd /initrd-version.img
# boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,4)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title CentOS (2.6.18-92.el5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-92.el5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.18-92.el5.img
title Slackware root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-generic-2.6.29.6
title Other
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
How should I do the slackware in grub?
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Sep 1, 2010
I had two OS in laptop windows vista and linux mint and when I used to start my computer I used to get different option for os like linux mint, linux mint memory check, windows vista etc.. but because of virus windows vista got crashed so I formatted disk drive C: which were containing windows vista and reinstalled fresh copy of vista.. but now when I start my computer vista start automatically, I do not see GRUB options to run windows os or linux mint..Is there a way to reinstall GRUB to get options like I used to get before formatting ?
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Feb 23, 2011
I just bought a Intel D525MW ITX board, a PicoPSU and a stick of 2GB ram.
I burned the new stable debian netinst to a disk and booted it up from a usb cdburner. At this point I had a usb keyboard and a usb kingston pen drive (temporary / ) connected. The computer would freeze whenever I chose a menu item. I rebooted a couple of times, same thing. I disconnected the usb pen and were finally able to start a graphical install. I quickly reconnected the pen and the install went fine as far as I could see.
Now. When I boot from the pen it just freezes showing "GRUB lading. Welcome to GRUB!" and a blinking underscore.
I were able to boot the usb pen on my Alienware laptop just fine - although it wanted a reboot after it ran a fsck.
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