I am trying to install 10.04 to an external HD (not flash). I ran the live CD, installed to it and all seemed to work fine, but I don't want to use GRUB. I ran 7 repair and did a bootrec /fixmbr and it's booting normal, but I can't boot to USB.I want it to boot normal, unless I hit F12 to boot to removable device. Not much of a Linux person, but I am trying to be.
View 7 RepliesThe default (graphical) installer did not work on my PC (i7 quadcore 8 GB DDR3). I have installed Ubuntu using the alternative installer (Desktop, 64 bit) on my external USB drive. I installed grub on the MBR of the second drive (/dev/sdb) as I did not want to touch my (first) Windows disk. After reboot (chosing the USB drive as boot device, else Windows is booted) grub reports an error and enters the rescue mode. I tried all possible combinations of "root=(hdX,Y)" in grub.cfg to no avail.
I repeated the whole procedure but now disconnected the internal HD with Windows. Installation went smooth again (Windows disk was not seen this time), but after reboot (the internal drive connected or not) I again get (slightly different this time) grub error: can not find file.
After installing ubuntu 9.10 on external HDD I cannot boot vista if external usb is unplugged(where ubuntu is installed). it says grub loading and after that recover grub ( i think that is what is says ... not certain in this moment ) anyway hope you get my dilemma. If you need more information I'll be glad to provide it.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI have a laptop with dual boot Windowz 7 64 bit and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 64 bit using windows MBR and EasyBCD. I have no issues booting into either. I also have a 500 GB external HDD which has a NTFS partition for backup data and Linux root and swap partitions at the end. I have GRUB installed on the external HDD MBR and can boot into Ubuntu on the external HDD via bios options. I recently bought a larger external HDD 1TB. Now so far I have made same partitions as old external HDD namely NTFS for bakup followed by Linux root and swap partitions. Linux partitions were cloned using disk cloning while on NTFS partition I only copied data. How do I copy the GRUB from old external HDD to new one so that I can boot into my linux on the new external HDD? BTW the new HDD is Western Digital Passport Essential SE, which also has some factory installed image at the start of drive.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI'm using a Toshiba Tecra Laptop through a dock station with attached keyboard, mouse and display. I mainly use windows but also practice with ubuntu. After update to 11.04 I cannot select which system starts with the external keyboard and I must open the laptop and use its keyboard only for this task, once started everything works as usual.
As a partial solution I've tried to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and force windows as default system. But on boot grub still shows Linux (the first line) as preferred system. Do you now what's wrong?
By the way, now I find a lot of files in /boot/grub. If I'm not wrong they weren't there with 10.10, do you know their purpose?
I have windows 7 64bit on an internal harddrive, a larger internal harddrive for storage and a 1tb mybook external for storage. I have an ubuntu 9.10 iso burned to a cd that i got from the ubuntu site and I had previously installed dual boot successfully on my other computer, a laptop.
I went to install it on my desktop as well and when i was selecting how much space to allocate i noticed it was using the mybook and not the internal. I couldn't see an option to change which harddrive it used so in my ignorance i allocated 50gigs to ubuntu on my 1tb external mybook. This was obviously the wrong decision as after restarting the grub bootloader would not open and grub rescue came up everytime after that.
I have tried booting from the cd, reinstalling from the cd, and using a windows 7 repair cd. I can't even get into non installed version of ubuntu to try and use terminal. I have spent the 5 hours on the internet trying to figure out what to do and i have no clue. I want to get ubuntu off the mybook and get back on windows 7 where i can then reinstall ubuntu properly on one of my internal harddrives.
I've been running Debian Lenny kernel 2.6.26 w/ desktop kde3.5 on my laptop for a while, and im going to take a trip in which i will be unable to take wmy laptop with me. However, where i am going contains computers and i figured if i could install debian onto my external harddrive, i could just boot onto the other computers. I install it using the debianlenny-i386 dvd image. However whenever I try to boot it from a computer. Grub returns
Code:
Grub Loading...
Error 21
and then the blinkng cursor. On one site i found something saying "you may need to activat the drive" and some command-line instructions on how to do it. However the commands have faded from memory and i am now unable to find that site again. Could anyone offer insight on how to fix this "grub error 21" or how to activate it. I run primarily debian but i have a windows partition on one of my relative's computers.
Thank you in advance for the help!!!
btw I'm installing on a western digital 500gb "passport" external hard drive with ext3 and swap partitions.
I looked around on these forums and google and came to no solution so, I decided to make this thread. I'm using Windows XP and after I downloaded and tested out Ubuntu 9.10, I decided I'd like it as a second OS, can I install Ubuntu on my external hard drive (1TB)? would installing on an external hard drive take away the risks of losing data etc? If I installed Ubuntu on my external hard drive would it delete any files already on my hard drive?
View 9 Replies View RelatedI tried to do this and something went wrong, and caused so much trouble that I decided I didn't want to do it at all. Then I changed my mind today, and decided I'll try again even after all that happened.
View 4 Replies View RelatedInstructional post - medium difficulty. Installing on an older notebook (or other system) with no external bootable device available:No CD/DVD drive
No floppy
No boot to USB capability
No (usable) OS on HD
Solution went like this:Remove target HD from notebook.*
Disconnect HD from a desktop.**
[Code]...
I tried doing a search and couldn't find anything relatively recent on the topic so here is my question.
I am fairly new to the linux world and am in the process of trying out a couple different distributions. I am doing this by installing them to an external hard drive. This allows me to test them out without affecting my main system in any way. I have already tried openSUSE and it installed with no problems. I am trying to install Ubuntu, however when the installation tries to install GRUB2 it fails asking me for a different location to install it to.
When installing I unhook all drives from the computer except for the dvd drive, usb drive I'm installing from, and the external hard drive I am trying to install Ubuntu to. I'm not sure what else may be of use.
I work at a local computer shop as a computer technician and we get many computer in daily that require external virus scans (having to take out the hard drives, sticking it in another machine) just to scan (if we're lucky we can sometimes just do it in safe mode).Now what I want to know is...
1. Is it possible to install Ubuntu to an external HDD and use it virtually anywhere I plug it in? Will it pick up the network card, graphics card, etc so I can just plug and go? (Of course there are drivers for some computers).
2. Is it possible to run a Windows oriented virus scanner on Ubuntu? I know I can use WINE to run Windows applications, but will it prove to be compliant with virus scanners as well?
3. The main reason why I want it to be able to pick up on hardware and just work is because I plan on using it for schooling / travelling as well, have all my documents etc saved on it for easy access.
I've used Ubuntu in the past on an old laptop that didn't have much memory, small HDD, and a crap processor but that was 5-6 years ago (I still have the disk they sent me for free ).
I have Ubuntu/Vista dual boot desktop with Single HDD (200GB) that i cloned to an external USB HDD (320GB) using clonezilla. My intention is to use the external HDD as a backup to up running in case my 3 year old desktop HDD fails. To make sure the clone is good to use if need, i connected external HDD to USB port and tried boot from it but got "Error 18". I tried to Google got some infoDid a fdisk -lu and got the following.
Code:
Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders, total 390721968 sectors
[code]....
Months ago one of my computers died. I have bought a brand new one laptop, but I have a problem at the moment I wanted to install Ubuntu in dual boot with Windows 7: the new partition that windows 7 reserves for securing system files.
There are three partitions: Windows 7 principal, Windows 7 for securing system files (at the drive's beginning) and the recovery partition that HP puts there. Then I only have option to resize the Windows principal partition and get another principal partition. My question is if you know how to deal with this?
The other option you can help me is to advise me about some external hard drives to install ubuntu in them and don't touch the internal disk of my laptop.
i currently have lucid installed on my laptop hard drive. i took this drive out and then on a new drive in its place i have installed windows 7. reason why i couldn't put windows 7 on the same drive is that i have a BIOS based system and the hard drive is GPT based not MBR. therefore, i couldn't get windows back on it.
I figured that using an esata expresscard interface i should be able to use the Windows 7 drive externally without much speed penalty since ExpressCard in my case is implemented on PCI Express and not USB.
So i can update grub using
Code:
update-grub
and Windows 7 appears on the list. However, when i select this option during boot, it gives me errors that indicates that the external drive cannot be found (not surprising)
My guess is that when GRUB appears, the external hard drive has not been detected yet, and the modules for the expresscard may only be loaded during the boot process of lucid.
So I am wondering if there is anyway I can get this to work. meaning use lucid on my main drive and boot to Windows 7 from the external drive time to time.
In the past I have been able to succesfully install ubuntu on several external usb drives with up to 500gb in size.Now I am trying to install a copy of ubuntu 10.10 on an external usb iomega 1tb eGo drive but I am having major issues.The installer reports the total disk size as only 124 gb, instead of the 998gb that gParted reports for the same disk. Proceeding with "use the full disk" installs ok, but it doesn't boot.Grub2 reports that it cannot find the kernel.After some desperate attempts to repartition and after some googling I think that the issue may be with the sector size, which fdisk -l reports as 4096kb (all my other drivers report 512kb) and I have the impression that linux is not ready for it (or I lack the knowledge, which seems more likely).I have also tried to install fedora 14. This distribution reports the correct disk size, installs properly, but again, it cannot boot (Fedora uses grub, not grub2), with a very similar message to the grub2 installer.Because of the way I work, I need my external usb drive to be able to boot linux. And I find it difficult to believe that linux doesn't handle 4096kb sector disks, so here I am asking for help . Please note I am not a linux expert.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI've tried to be clever but as usual I didn't think before acting and missed a small detail.
I have recently installed karmic (dual booting with Vista) on my dell xps laptop. The install went fine, I'm very happy with my new OS.
I bought a new Seagate 500GB portable external HDD. I got a bit over-excited and installed karmic on the external drive. This worked fine and I got a lovely (but slow to appear) Grub2 menu showing my vista and both ubuntu options.
My problem is that now, when I unplug the external drive, Grub fails and I get a grub rescue> prompt. So I need the external drive to be plugged in if I want to boot.
It seems I have done something to the grub configuration. I have read around the subject but I am not confident about how best to proceed.
I understand there is an 'advanced' option in the installer which will allow me to choose where to install grub. Presumably I want it on the internal drive so that I can boot without the external one plugged in.
Am I right in thinking I can just pop in my install disk and redo the installation?
If I indicate I want to install Grub on the internal drive, which partition should I aim for?
Will I get a grub option for booting to the external drive?
Will I be able to plug the external drive into a different machine and boot from it?
I haven't done anything with the fresh install on the external drive so I don't mind losing that.
I have an hp laptop and i had ubuntu on it for 3 years. my hard drive started to fail a while ago (i had ubuntu 10 on it until 1 week ago) and a then it all went black...I took the laptop to a repair shop, they told me it was the disc, so i bought a new disc, installed it on my laptop and reinstalled the new ubuntu 11. so far so good. i have now a working OS, internet connection and i can in fact type this message.
The thing is: all my files are on the old drive, which doesn't load/boot/start/read anymore. I have tested it on some friends's pc, tried a few HD disgnostic tools, they all send the same message: "fail"
I then tried to mount my old drive (with all my precious files in it) on my laptop as an external drive (usb) hoping that ubuntu 11 could read it as an external usb key: it gets read by the system, but it shows no files at all. it also shows an error message saying the drive can not be mounted, with some "sdb1" thing. i am sorry but i'm really dumb when it comes to tech language.
Then i tried to boot it on start-up but i got the grub rescue> thing and nothing else, just a sad, blinking cursor to recover my files,i have also tried testdisk but couldn't understand very well how to use it, and then photorec, from which i recovered bits and pieces of files, with no name. some of them are just parts some of them are complete.
My problem is: i have to get access to my files, as I use them for work, i couldn't do a back-up recently and i have some real important deadline to meet... for which i need those files. is there any way i could solve the grub issue and have that drive load/mount again as external usb?
I have got a hold of a extra hdd along with a hdd enclosure. I have tried looking for information on how to install linux on to one but haven't been completely successful on my search. So I turn to all of you. I was also wondering if its possible to have it were I can use it on multiple computers so I can use it for computer repair.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI've got a dual boot set up with Windows on my first hard drive and Ubuntu Lucid on my second.Recently I had to Re-install Windows and it replaced GRUB on my master boot record.On a long shot I tried to boot into Ubuntu by going into my boot options from my BIOS and booting into my secondary drive but this just brought up a GRUB command line.So I booted into a Jaunty live cd (the Lucid live disk doesn't seem to like my graphics card) and in terminal I tried to run
Code:
sudo grub
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
after running the final line I get the error: "Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition".I'm pretty certain that sda1 is my MBR so that would translate to (hd0,0) on GRUB right? here is my output of "fdisk -l";
Code:
Disk /dev/sda: 2000.3 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1aae7bbb
[code]....
I had a dual boot with windows 10 and Ubuntu 14.04, and I just decided to move from Ubuntu to Debian, but I didn't unistall Ubuntu. I just deleted it's partitions (/, /home, swap) and used the new allocatable space. When I was doing the partitions I noticed that the installer didn't allow me to choose between logical and primary partitions (not sure if this is important).
When I continued with the installation process, in the GRUB section the installer detected two Windows Vista options and later I selected /dev/sda as the disk for the GRUB (MBR). When I tried to boot, a GRUB command line screen from ubuntu appeared, when I wrote exit a message appeared "Boot succesfull" and then it sent me to the Boot selection from my laptop.
From there I can choose to boot Windows 10 normally or select a disk partition that sends me to the Debian GRUB from where I can boot Debian normally, but the Windows entries that appear (Windows 8.1 and Windows 8 recovery mode) fail to boot. So when I boot the Debian GRUB appears.
I was thinking of trying to install Window XP in a dual boot fashion but with the purpose of trying to configure wine to use it as it base instead of its normal setup. Only thing is Ubuntu is the sole controller of my laptop here atm and as you know installing XP will remove grub as boot controller. And while I know about SuperGrub I was wondering how, if possible,do I re-install grub from Karmic's LiveCD?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have 10.10 installed on my machine. I'm trying to install 10.4 on another partition. Install completes, but when I reboot, there's no entry in the grub menu for the 10.4 install. I tried adding an entry to 40_custom in /etc/grub.d, but it still doesn't show up. I'm pasting my 40_custom below.
#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
menuentry 'Ubuntu 10.4' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
recordfail
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,msdos10)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set be888928-a477-4b31-b478-13271009c032
linux/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-24-generic root=UUID=be888928-a477-4b31-b478-13271009c032 ro quiet splash
initrd/boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-24-generic
}
I have just bought a new HDD and installed it in my Ubuntu server. The problem is that when I try to boot, I only receive the message "Grub error 17" and at that point the computer freezes.
In my troubleshooting I found that without the new drive, the computer starts and the hard drives are listed in BIOS as follows:
1. DVD-rom (ide) - Master
2. 80gb disk (with OS installed) (ide) - Master
3. 1tb disk (sata) - Master
In the new setup the disks are listed like this:
1. DVD-rom (ide) - Master
2. 80gb disk (with OS installed) (ide) - Slave
3. 1tb disk (sata) - Master
4. 2tb disk (sata) - Master
May this different listing in BIOS lead to the Grub error?
I recently installed Ubuntu Studio on my PC, dual-booting it with Vista. Once the installation had finished, and I had rebooted, Grub showed the two Vista options:
Windows Vista (loader)
Windows Recovery Environment (loader)
When I load up "Windows Vista (loader)" it opens my Acer eRecovery Management, but when I load "Windows Recovery Environment (loader)" it opens what looks like a normal version of Vista. Is it possible that on installation, Grub accidentally swapped the two around, or have I probably mucked up my computer?
After install of Ubuntu 10.04 I cant boot WIN7 from the Grub menu.
root@asus:~# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 32.0 GB, 32017047552 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3892 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xcb5bd2b2
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 3890 31245312 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 3890 3892 16154 ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
Disk /dev/sdb: 31.9 GB, 31914983424 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3880 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0002ac5b
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 3391 27230840+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sdb2 3391 3881 3931137 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 3391 3852 3701760 83 Linux
/dev/sdb6 3852 3881 228352 82 Linux swap / Solaris
I am currently installing the Ubuntu 10.04 Alternative, as I am having problem with video card. What I know is that I need to edit the Grub file in /etc/default/grub and add i915.modeset=1 for my video card. What I don't know is how to do that in the command line, what application should I use and how to save it? Also, if everything works well, I want to boot to gnome automatically. What I am looking for is a step by step instructions (as I can get lost).
View 8 Replies View RelatedGot Ubuntu 10.10 amd64 installed.. I've been using Fedora 13 64bit for some time now dual boot with WinXP.. Ubuntu installation to a free Hard drive went well till i rebooted, my Fedora installation was gone , and i thought Ubuntu is much installer friendly than fedora.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have windows 7 installed on my copmuter and I ran the alternate disc cause the live disc didn't work for me. So installing was smmoth and I did everything right excpet for the grub part. It asked to be a master loader or something and I said yes. After restarting I see the grub menu but I only see two ubuntus(recovery mode) on the list and 2 test thingys ( memory test) So I go to the ubuntu tab and I get kubuntu ( as ecpected). Right now I am using kubuntu and it is fine but?
View 9 Replies View RelatedI have a raid 0 setup with 2 x 1TB drives. I have an ASUS P8P67 LE motherboard and am using Interl RST for the Raid setup. I'm utterly ignorant of raid and therefore forgive any mistakes... I already had windows 7 installed and was attempting to dual boot ubuntu.
I installed Ubuntu from CD. The raid was picked up properly as only one drive by ubuntu. So it picked up the windows MBR and the main windows partition. I resized the main partition and used the "install ubuntu and windows 7 side by side" option. Installation went fine but once I restarted the PC I was welcomed by a grub rescue screen with the message: "error: no such device e196.....". Edit: I used the Windows 7 disc to repair the windows bootloader so I can now boot into Windows 7.
Before doing so I used gparted on the live cd to check the partitions on the drives. The only ones present were the MBR and windows one. So ubuntu seemingly didn't install... Although GRUB did... I was advised by someone on the ubuntu IRC chat to avoid trying to reinstall ubuntu at that point just in case there was an error in the partitioning process. I've since checked the state of the partitions from within windows and there's the MBR partiton, the windows partiton AND the partition that I created for ubuntu... 965MB of the partition that I created is listed as used space as well...