Installation :: Multi-boot Grub Menu Does Not Link
Mar 5, 2009
I have a single hdd, on which I do not require windows OS, just (multiple) linux; it is just a dev mule, exploratory... Have read the saikee methods, and much more... almost there Initial installs were with mint linux 4, just used ml6
partitioned with parted magic
partition table:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 64 514048+ 6 FAT16
/dev/hda2 65 2614 20482875 83 Linux
I just netinstalled Squeeze to a netbook with Windows7. The installation went well without any problem. Linux is also working OK. When I boot now, grub does not show Windows7. I took default settings during installation. I mean I did not do anything special. What should i do to fix it? Should I run osprober and grub-update?
There have been many postings on doing Raid 0 setups, and it seems the best way looks like softRaid, but there were some arguments for fakeRaid in dual boot situations. I've seen some posts on dual boot windows/linux in Raid 0, but I was hoping to do a multi-boot using a grub partition, with several Linux distros and Windows 7. There will also be a storage disk for data, but not in the array. From what I gather, I'll need a grub partition which can only reside on one of the two disks, one swap partition on each disk, then the rest I can stripe.
I've got two 73GB WD raptor drives to use for the OS's and programs. I'm just getting my feet wet with the terminal in linux (Ubuntu makes it way too easy to stay in GUI), and the inner workings of the OS, so I have several questions:
Is this going to be worth the effort? Obviously I'm trying to boost performance in boot and run times, but with Grub on a single drive, will I see much gain?
Does this sound like the right methodology (softRAID)? I only have two spare PCI slot's, which don't seem like they would be condusive to hardware raid, but someone who knows more could convince me otherwise.
I wrote a GRUB multi-boot configuration so I can boot multiple distributions and have storage space on one 32GB flash drive.
set imgdevpath="/dev/disk/by-label/multiboot"
Code: Select allmenuentry 'Debian Jessie amd64' { set isofile='/iso/debian-8.0.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso' loopback loop $isofile linux (loop)/install.amd/vmlinuz initrd (loop)/install.amd/initrd.gz }
This works in virt-manager when I boot the physical usb device a virtual disk with a usb bus and it works flawlessly, but when I plug it into a physical machine the cdrom detects fails to mount /dev/sdb1 as fstype=iso9660.
I've got a machine that I'd got 9.10 on, that I've now upgraded to Lucid Lynx - and I'm having the same problem with dual boot (or lack thereof) that I was having previously.
Rough scenario is:
(Original Vista machine had)
C: Windows Vista OS + Windows software, etc.: 500GB - single NTFS partition - SATA drive
D: General dumping ground for data. 500GB SATA drive. Was single NTFS partition, now shrunk to install Ubuntu.
So is now: - NTFS partition (containing general rubbish) - Ubuntu / partition - Ubuntu swap partition
... and then 3 x 1TB SATA drives making up an (Intel ICH9R) FakeRaid RAID5 array - that Windows can happily 'see' and use, but I don't care about Ubuntu having access to it or even seeing it.
Lucid Lynx is installed to /dev/sde6 (IIRC) - but when I boot the machine just boots straight into Vista.
I've done what I can to try and get GRUB correctly installed - to the point that right now I probably have it splattered just about anywhere and everywhere.
So - now - the machine boots and simply presents me with "GRUB Hard Disk Error" and stops...
I can fix this by running the Vista repair, with a fixmbr etc. and putting the MBR back to 'normal' on the first boot disk (/dev/sdd in this case). The machine then just boots straight into Vista.
...or I can boot into Ubuntu (or Vista) by booting off a Super Grub Disk (CD) and selecting "Boot Linux" (or whatever it is) - and it correctly boots Lucid Lynx from /dev/sde6
Ideally I want a proper GRUB dual boot menu - but I just seem to be getting into more and more of a mess!
The first is I seem to have 3 GRUB installs. So whilst I update the one from my live session, the change does not appear in the boot up menu. I had installed 10.10 from a CD into a different partition (sda6), but that will not boot, so I have just deleted this and done another grub install and update. The kernel I am using has just been updated from 10.04 to 10.10 too, and it is this that I use and the Grub I have been working on (sda5).
I installed 11.04 after Windows 7. when the GRUB boot menu starts up there is an option for Win 7 boot but it will not boot windows. When that option is selected the screen changes colour for 2 seconds and then reverts to the GRUB menu. Ubuntu boots fine.I downloaded the Boot Info Script and ran it, the results are
Code: Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================[code].....
I have 4 OS's on a publicly used pc. I want to hide the boot menu on GRUB2 and have it appear only when I press and hold the SHIFT key during boot. Will changing in /etc/default/grub GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT to 0 safely accomplish this goal? Also, what is the command for deleting all of the former kernel upgrades from the boot menu?
Problem: I have installed two Ubuntu servers, 10.04 32-bit and 10.10 64-bit, in a multi-boot environment (also have FDOS and WinXPsp3). The 64-bit will not boot because grub can't find the UUID for the disk with the 64-bit system.
Brief Background: Installed 10.04 LTS two months ago with no problems. 10.04 is in a primary partition on hda with FDOS.
Installed 10.10 (64-bit) in a new primary partition on the same hd. The install seemed to go ok, but the MBR and the fs on the 10.04 were corrupted; could not boot. Restored drive, and rebuilt grub.
Installed 10.10 on separate hd (hdb). In grub step all OS's were recognized so I pointed the grub to hda. Grub failed to boot.
Rebuilt grub from 10.04 on hda. All systems recognized but 10.10 will not boot because it says it cannot locate the UUID specified.
Compared the grub.cfg for both systems, the UUID specified for hdb is the same. Also, when I mount the drive for 10.10 on the 10.04 system the drive UUID is consistent.
I know I must be missing some thing, but I know not what. Have searched and can't find any clues. All other OS's boot ok.
Hardware: AMD64 4GB, 2 internal IDE drives (hda and hdb), 1 internal SATA (hdc WinXP), various USB and Firewire Drives (no bootable systems).
I've installed 11.04 on my laptop (dual boot with Win7). It goes through the grub boot menu and boots in ubuntu but displays ~inch wide band near the top, nothing else. I assume it is a display issue (it has an ATI mobile Radeon HD 3870 X2 card) but can't seem to resolve problem. I can boot into Windows via the menu. In the grub menu I can boot into the command line (grub>) but can't seem to make progress beyond that. Within this grub interface, it won't take terminal commands.
I installed on my system "window xp" and "rhel4 update 2" but due to some problem I removed my windows xp O/S and installed that again after that grub boot menu is not coming so I can't log in properly in linux system.C
I have Lenny, and Jaunty Jackaope installed on the same hdd. Jaunty Jackaope was installed 2nd so it has control of grub (I don't know if that is the correct expression) I want to remove Jaunty Jackalope however I know from past experience that after I do this I will no longer be able to boot into Lenny as I will get a grub error at startup. How to I give boot/grub to Lenny so that I can remove the other operating system?
It would be nice to get a sticky thread up for dual boot installation issues. It seems like this is a very common problem with the upgrade from 9.10 to 10.04.
I was finally able to solve my issue dual booting 10.04 and Windows XP Home at this thread.
[URL]
I had to reinstall Grub2 and run update-grub.
Then I had to run Rescue on my XP disk. Once to the DOS command line I ran the following command:
C:Windows>fixboot c:
I rebooted and now all is well. I can boot to Ubuntu 10.04 or Windows XP from my Grub menu.
I used to be a pro at editing Grub's menu.lst file so I could have my menu look clean, simple, and easy to read. Now that I have set up 10.04 (Working beautifully now after a couple setbacks) the menu.lst file is no longer where it used to be (/boot/grub/menu.lst)
I have Windows XP SP3 running on my Desktop PC and wish to dual boot it with Ubuntu 10.10. This isn't the issue as I can do this and it gives me the GRUB menu but selecting Windows XP won't do anything - or so it seems How long should it take to boot into Windows from the GRUB menu?
I've got an old Dell Precision 670 which has a SCSI disk. I installed 10.04 and everything worked fine - I could boot into 10.04 from the GRUB menu. I later added an IDE disk and installed WinXP Pro on it.
When I ran 'sudo update-grub', Lucid discovered the IDE disk and added a WinXP Pro entry to the GRUB menu. Now, though I can still boot 10.04 from the GRUB menu, I can't boot WinXP - the screen goes blank, and I have to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart.
For what it's worth, here are the results of using boot_info_script055.sh:
Code: Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== => Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb and looks on the same drive in partition #1 for /boot/grub.
I have installed BackTrack 5 and I have set GRUB up:
Code: root (hd1,4) setup (hd1)
However, the GRUB prompt appears at boot instead of the GRUB menu. However, when I boot from the Live USB, the GRUB menu works fine. Here are the contents of the grub.cfg:
Code: # # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # # It is automatically generated by /usr/sbin/grub-mkconfig using templates # from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub # .....
The reason I want the GRUB menu to show up of because I would like to dual-boot BackTrack 5 with Windows 7.
I installed F14 from my usb according to the wiki page using unetbootin. The usb boots perfectly and i get a working F14 system. I partitioned my HD with gparted and got a /,/home and swap partition, then used the installer to install the system using them. The installer finishes without a problem and ask me to reboot. When I reboot , there is a blank black screen. No grub menu , no fedora loading. I reboot with the usb and the partitions are full with the files from F14 , there is no xorg.log in the /var/log/ so f14 doesn't even start so the problem seems to be with grub.
I check the grub.conf in /boot/ , i set the timeout to 5 secs , i check that the kernel is using nomodeset (according to this wiki page there is a problem with ati), xorg.conf is using vesa as a driver and I reinstall grub with grub-install with no problems.My notebook is a acer aspire 5552 , i don't think is a hardware problem because I've used arch and opensuse with no problems in it. Fedora seems a nice distro , but this error is preventing me from using it.
I seem to have determined a few other things about my "only gets as far as a GRUB command line" problem:To recap, sda3 (GRUB hd0,2) is the main Linux partition; sda9 (GRUB hd0,8) is the boot partition.GRUB is 0.92.Installation was from an 8.04LTS live CD (at least, that's what the envelope says it is)/"/boot/grub" (i.e., "/grub" on sd9/hd0,8) contains a "menu.lst" file. I modified it (had to do a "sudo gedit" from a command line!) to (1) comment out the line that hides the boot menu, (2) change the timeout from 3 seconds to 90, and (3) add a menu line based on my succesful manual IPL of DOS.
It still boots to a GRUB command line. If I do a "configfile /grub/menu.lst," a boot menu comes up. DOS will successfully IPL, but Linux still gets a "no setup signature found," (ditto for "recovery mode"), which suggests either a bad kernel, or a kernel that's too big for the GRUB to handle.Why would it be finding its way to grub, but not finding the boot menu file?Why would the live CD come up just fine, yet the GRUB and kernel it installs fail?
i have ubuntu 10.04 and xp installed in two different hard disc partitions. everything was fine until i came from vacation and found that after turning on my pc it gets hang as soon as the grub menu with duel boot option appears. i cant do anything at that stage, just nothing.keyboard doesn't work also. here one thing to be mentioned that for last few days my pc used to hang frequently in ubuntu 10.04 and then i had no option left but to restart my pc.
i am trying to change the boot order on the GRUB menu so that the countdown automatically starts on an older kernel. From what i can see all the solutions on the web want me to edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file. The problem is that i don't have one. Someone also mentioned that if i don't have a menu.lst file then i should look for the grub.conf file. I don't have on of those either. The closest thing in /boot/grub is grub.cfg but that looks nothing like the descriptions i have heard of /boot/grub/menu.lst file
I'm a very new Linux user, so speak slowly and don't use big words. I installed Karmic from the Live CD. It is the only OS in use on this system. I then upgraded to Ubuntu Studio using the instructions found on the wiki.
On bootup, I get a brief message stating "GRUB loading" and then the system automatically boots to the generic kernel. No GRUB menu is ever displayed. I would like the option to boot to the real-time kernel, but I have no idea how to edit the appropriate files. I've done a fair amount of reading on the subject, but I find very little information relating directly to the real-time kernel, and so I still feel like I'm too green to do it without messing something up.
I learn from a BSD magazine and installed PCBSD on my Dell notebok a single harddisk with a hope to have a triple boot. I have all the three OS, but could not find the menu.lst from /boot/grub/.... All I can find is a grub.cfg which is not editable. Someone from this forum said that menu.lst = grub.cfg.
I did a clean installation of Ubuntu 10.04 and I found that after the computer booted, the GRUB stopped by waiting for entering command -- "grub >". The GRUB version is 1.98. I want to go directly to the GRUB boot menu after computer booted.
I installed Ubuntu netbook remix 9.10 and it ran fine. However, the boot menu is hidden and by default it always boots into Ubuntu (I don't know.. maybe the timeout was 0). I wanted to switch to a different kernel so I compiled a new kernel and installed it. But upon reboot it would always boot into the old kernel. So I updated grub and made the new kernel the default.
Now the new kernel is givine me a kernel panic and I can't access my system because the grub boot menu doesn't show anything (just boots into the newly compiled kernel and gives me a panic message). I don't have a recovery cd/usb. Is there a way for me to somehow slow grub down or show a menu? Pressing esc at boot doesn't help.
I just got a Zino HD from Dell, and was planning to use it connected to my TV, dual booting Xubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7. I did, however, run into some issues. I suspect I'm just going to have to burn a restore disc and start over, but I'd like to fix this if possible. Here's what I had to start with:
Because the restore partition was a bloody 20 GB, and I could always get the restore done via disc, I reformatted it as ext4 and used it as "/". I then shrunk the Windows partition and allocated a home partition and some swap space. Note that immediately after the installer, I reformatted the home partition manually with an inode size of 128 to use with the Windows ext2 driver, but that shouldn't have really changed anything. End result file system order:
1 vfat 1 ext4 mounted as "/" 1 Windows 1 Swap 1 ext3 mounted as "/home"
I now have two problems:
1) I do not get any GRUB menu at all! It just boots directly into Xubuntu with no choices (not even memory test or restore mode). 2) I, obviously, can no longer boot Windows.
Keep in mind that this a fresh install on a brand new machine; I can't think of any reason GRUB wouldn't even show me a menu.
When I first boot up. I get the GRUB command line. What happened to the boot menu? And I can boot up into my Windows partition just fine. But when I try the other partitions i get "Unknown file system" or when I try to boot into the other ntfs drive, I get "BOOTMBR missing", but yet it does not mean Windows, because i can boot that just fine. I can't find my Ubuntu partition. How can I get the GRUB boot menu back?
There are lots of OSs and Linux dists to install on your netbook, and I want to make it as easy as possible to install, remove and switch between them.
Just installing a dist and then another one after it will replace the GRUB boot screen every time, and some dists might override previous GRUB menus entirely.
On a previous machine I created a GRUB partition which chain-loads GRUB for each dist, but now I can't remember how I did it.
The hard drive is currently empty, since I started playing around with repartitioning. What is the easiest way to install GRUB to a partition? Links are welcome, but please no generic "install GRUB" guides because the ones I've found haven't been relevant to my particular situation (empty hard drive, multi boot environment, no CD/floppy)..
