Ubuntu Installation :: Cannot Use Separate /boot Partition With Grub 2
Aug 25, 2010
While installing with a separate /boot partition I cannot get two distinct copies of ubu installed on one machine and be able to choose between them. Each is installed on a different hard drive. x64 versions. I've had this issue both ways:
Stepsinstall mythbuntu
install ubuntu
Result
Two entries in grub. Both cause ubuntu to boot
Stepsinstall ubuntu
install mythbuntu
Result
Two entries in grub. Both cause mythbuntu to boot Grub 2 is so unfriendly for fixing these things. I don't know where to make changes. Ok, Grub 2 is very powerful, maybe it's the lagging documentation, or lack of tutorials that is the problem. But I don't know how to fix this. Do I start over without the /boot partition? Do I bail on ubu?
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Mar 27, 2010
Noobish question on multibooting multiple Linux distros. I have four of the current major Linux distributions. Each has been installed and run individually (no other Linux distribution installed) in a dual-boot configuration with Windoze. No problem.
What I want to do is install all four Linux distributions and multiboot them. Reading the internet it would seem this is a simple task with GRUB. The short version being - install a Linux distro with a separate /boot partition for GRUB and use GRUB to boot the other Linux distros from the GRUB boot menu.
So I installed one of the Linux distros with a separate partition for /boot. The distro installer installed GRUB in /boot and correctly setup a dual-boot configuration with Windoze. GRUB was installed to the MBR. Next I installed a second Linux distro in its own root partition and told the distros installer NOT to install GRUB to the MBR, but rather, to the boot sector of the root partion of the second Linux distro. Installation was uneventful (and I could access the second Linux partition from the first installed Linux distro, things looked ok). Then I added to following to the installed (MBR - /boot) GRUB's menu.lst:
Code: title lixux distro 2
root (hd0,7)
chainloader +1 After which I rebooted the system and the new entry for the second Linux distro now appears in the GRUB boot menu. I selected the second Linux distro from the boot menu and got the following GRUB error: Error 5 : Partition table invalid or corrupt
[Code]....
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Nov 20, 2009
Where can I install grub? I know it can be installed to the mbr of a hard drive. I also know it can be installed to a /boot partition. Can I install it to a lvm partition? Does it have to be /boot? grub-install --root-directory=/boot /dev/hda Does this command install grub to a partition and link it to a separate /boot? I have fedora, but this is a live cd. I need to learn where I can install grub2 to boot
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Feb 14, 2010
GNU GRUB 0.97
Ubuntu 8.04.4
2.6.24-26
Added an SSD (dev/sdc) and decided to move some less often changed directories there. Started with /usr and /boot, leaving / on a primary in the first drive, for now. All started ok, and my changed fstab mounted the right ones, and the system works.
However, grub is actually using the original /boot on / on sda1. I cannot see any way to change this. (Which makes it sorta hard to update the kernel
From grub:
Okay, since it has two choices, I tried to tell it which one to use. But, grub> root (hd2,5) does nothing.
Disk /dev/sda:
what I seem to recall, grub doesn't care about the boot flag on the disk. Nor does it care about primary vs. logical (except GNU doc says "makeactive" only works on a primary?).
The GNU doc also indicates that it looks for a directory /boot on the partition, so if you're mounting a partition as /boot, it also needs to contain a /boot directory under it. Tried that, but no change.
Is my problem the logical partition? Does that prevent "grub> root" from changing it? I'm afraid to wipe out the old /boot and find that I can't start up.
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Jan 6, 2010
I have been a happy little GRUB user for a while now, but now I want to use GRUB to boot a physically separate WinXP hard drive, and I can't seem to do that. Normally GRUB is easy, (I even have a nice splash screen of my own making). Its a champion solution for booting into Ubuntu Linux on /dev/sda5 or Win XP on /dev/sda1.
My second HD which Linux recognizes as /dev/sdb, has a Win XP boot sector and Win XP in one partition.
Normally I boot off /dev/sda using GRUB, and from Linux I can mount and have access to /dev/sdb - that works well. Occasionally however, I need to boot the separate Win XP system on the second HD, and to do that I switch the boot drive in the BIOS, but lately that is getting to be a bit tedious.
Initially I though to give the additional boot choice to GRUB, I simply had to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and point to the second HD (where /dev/sdb = hd1 in GRUB speak). Unfortunately, when I select the new choice, it simply boots Win XP off the first HD.
I'm confident GRUB does look at the first partion on hd1 as expected as I can induce an error by having hd1 disconnected, or write silly partion numbers into menu.lst. So if it does in fact find the first partion on hd1, why doesn't it boot? Why does it default to WinXP on hd0?
I have diligently tried physically swapping SATA drive cables and playing with bios switching and have messed about a fair bit with menu.lst to make sure I have drive and partition numbers right, but all to no avail. I have also tried changing rdisk(0) in boot.ini to rdisk(1) on the second drive when it is not the boot drive.
I'm afraid the only other thing I can think of is that the second hard drive requires a Linux boot sector if I am going to boot it up from GRUB, but somehow that doesn't make sense. Surely GRUB can work across physically separate drives, so I'm open to other ideas first.
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Nov 14, 2010
I have a 320gb USB hard drive, one partition for my files, one for playing Wii games, and one which I would like to use for an Ubuntu instillation.
To do this, I partitioned my disk accordingly using Windows, then booted from the Ubuntu CD to install the OS to my external hard drive partition. It asked me where I wanted to install the boot loader, so I selected the hard drive itself, rather than the specific partition, reasoning that it would scan the hard drive for a boot record.
However, when I booted it (with USB boot selected) it simply said "No Operating System found, replace system disk and press enter" or something similar.
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Nov 14, 2010
I have a 320gb USB hard drive, one partition for my files, one for playing Wii games, and one which I would like to use for an Ubuntu instillation.o do this, I partitioned my disk accordingly using Windows, then booted from the Ubuntu CD to install the OS to my external hard drive partition. It asked me where I wanted to install the boot loader, so I selected the hard drive itself, rather than the specific partition, reasoning that it would scan the hard drive for a boot record.However, when I booted it (with USB boot selected) it simply said "No Operating System found, replace system disk and press en
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Apr 23, 2009
Trying to dual-boot OpenSolaris and FC10 is difficult because Solaris grub doesn't know about ext3 and Fedora grub doesn't know about ZFS. I was able to rescue my FC10 installation by creating a new FAT16 partition and restoring /boot to it from a dump, and then doing a grub setup to it. A complication is that anaconda doesn't seem to be able to find /dev/md0 (both the Solaris and FC10 installs use mirrored disks).
This process moved the FC10 ext3 partition from /dev/sda3 to /dev/sda4, but the other half of the mirror is still /dev/sdb3.
When I boot FC10 I get a "can't load image" error from grub, but it still loads FC10 successfully. It makes no difference if menu.1st/grub.conf has "root (hd0,1)" (the FAT16 partition) or "root (hd0,3)" (the FC10 ext3 partition).
If a future yum update were to try to install a new kernel, my FAT16 partition would not be updated. It seems to me both these problems might be solved if I could move /boot from /dev/md0 to /dev/sda2 (/dev/sda2 is the FAT16 partition).
Rather than go through yet another install, would the following work?
from FC10, move /boot to (say) /boot.0
mkdir /boot
edit fstab to include "mount /dev/sda2 /boot"
If I try this and it doesn't work, I can't see any way to undo it since anaconda doesn't seem to be able to mount /dev/md0. If a grub guru sees this, perhaps they could suggest a better alternative, or if not, whether this will work or not.
Additionally, although there are two alternatives in menu.1st/grub.conf, grub doesn't display a menu - it goes directly to boot. Any idea why? I suppose this might be a Solaris stage1 grub problem...
Since FAT16 doesn't support links, it isn't possible to link grub.conf to menu.1st. Are they both required?
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May 29, 2010
I am triple booting
Windows xp
UBUNTU 10.04
Fedora 13
Everything works fine, the setup went very well. But I got to thinking (A dangerous thing for me). In Ubuntu I am using separate partitions for / (root) and /home. I was wondering, during install of Fedora, could I use the separate partition I am using now for both root and /home for just / (root) and use the Ubuntu /home partition for Fedora (set the mount point for /home to the same partition as I did for Ubuntu and not format the drive)? This would allow me to seamlessly use the /home partition and not require duplication of files. I can mount the Ubuntu /home dir while in Fedora.I can share the /home partition with two different installs of Ubuntu (been there).
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Aug 16, 2009
install fedora 11 on Vista I want to keep the windows boot loader and also install on a usb drive or a seperate partition that has 10GB free "install doesn't see partition's". Recently I installed ubuntu and had a major problem with booting, without having the usb drive connected I couldn't boot windows so uninstalled it. I'm trying to install now but install does'nt give me any option to select partitions from my drives one 320GB "portable, 3 partitions" and 80GB "main os 2 partitions one partition has 10GB free"
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Nov 27, 2010
So I need to become the root user in order to edit a grub file in a seperate partition, so I can get back into this partition. How can I become and stay as root user in the desktop environment? (I know you shouldn't do this, but I need it.)
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Nov 25, 2010
is their a boot partiton that need to be kept seperate in ubuntu? Screenshot.png those are my partitons in the pic above am i okay to merge them all into the dev/sda2 or is it like windows and i need to keep a small section back for the boot?
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Aug 9, 2011
I have been working in my spare time over the last few days, Had problems with the whole grub2 not installing on RAID 1. Then I found out that I had to have a separate non raid Ext4 partition on one drive with "/Boot" as mount point and install went though fine.
My question is, will the developers FIX this. I mean if I only have 2 x 2tb drives in teh pc as RAID 1, and the one fails with the boot partition the whole machine goes down. Kinda defeats the whole RAID feature huh.
I USED to run a windows network with RAID 5 servers, and windows never had a problem installing everything on the RAID. Or even setting up RAID 1 in the bios on the PC and installing XP or NT4 on the RAID 1. There was never a need for a separate non raid boot partition.
Do we need a separate RAID friendly/enabled Grub? I guess for now I will get a 250gb drive and install the Server OS to it, and setup RAID1 manually after the server OS boots. Then will make a ghost type image of the server in case that drive fails so I can quickly install a new drive and restore the image and get it back up and running again.
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Jan 26, 2010
P4 2.4gHZ 2.0GB Ram I have tried to do some reading on this by googling and such, but it is all a bit overwhelming and so many posts/articles want to deal with dual booting which I am not planning to do on this machine. I am trying to find some info on whether it is better to have a separate boot partition. As in, separate from root partition. I have read that a separate boot partition makes for a quicker start and better recovery if system crashes. I will shortly be installing openSuse 11.2(KDE) [currently on 11.0] and I want to optimise the partition scheme so that it is the most efficient. I have a 160GB HDD that will be housing this new installation, so space is not a problem. I am only user on this machine. Currently, it is just partitioned as such:
2.0GB - swap [because I read it should equal Ram]
32.0GB - /
40.0GB - /home
76.8GB - extra storage [Not really necessary as I have 2 other HDD on system 1 - 320GB and 1 - 200GB]
Also, is it recommended to have separate partitions for /tmp /var or any other /nnn ?
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Nov 14, 2010
I have a 320gb USB hard drive, one partition for my files, one for playing Wii games, and one which I would like to use for an Ubuntu instillation. To do this, I partitioned my disk accordingly using Windows, then booted from the Ubuntu CD to install the OS to my external hard drive partition. It asked me where I wanted to install the boot loader, so I selected the hard drive itself, rather than the specific partition, reasoning that it would scan the hard drive for a boot record. However, when I booted it (with USB boot selected) it simply said "No Operating System found, replace system disk and press enter" or something similar.
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Feb 3, 2010
I originally had my full hard drive as a full Ubuntu partition but I then re-sized that and installed Windows on a new partition. Now I guess the boot sector got overwritten and I don't have a choice to boot either Windows or Ubuntu. I know I have to reconfigure GRUB or another boot loader to allow the choice but I am not sure of how to go about that.
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Apr 10, 2010
I had a dual boot system(WinXP and Ubuntu). But something happened and I was not able to boot into my Ubuntu partition. It gave GRUB missing error. I tried reformatting the dedicated 40 GB ubuntu partition to NTFS and again try to reinstall ubuntu. But now, when I install ubuntu through boot time install, it shows that my whole hard disk is empty( but I have windows XP on whole hdd at the moment) and do not give any other option but to use whole hdd.
Alternatively when I try to install it inside windows, then after rebooting it shows, no root file system defined error and neither gives any option to do so also ( this method worked earlier o my PC). At the moment, It still shows ubuntu and windowsXP at OS choice menu at boot time but when booting in ubuntu, it shows GRUB missing. (I don't have any ubuntu installation on my hard disk at the moment).
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Feb 3, 2011
I'm dual boot with Vista(TM) and UBUNTU(tm) and ran out of space on Ubuntu partition:I booted Ubuntu 10.04LTS live CD and shrank the VISTA. It would NOT let me grow the extended partition? So now I have:
sda1 ntfs /media/TOSHIBA_SYSTEM_VOLUME 1.46GB
sda2 ntfs /media/SQ004588V03 88GB
sda4 ext3 THIS IS MY NEW PARTITION 15GB
[code].....
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Jun 19, 2012
I am new to Debian but have some basic experience with Linux and am currently trying to triple boot Windows 7, Fedora 16, and Debian on an HP Pavilion dv7. I have the Windows Boot Loader on my MBR because I've heard that Windows updates can cause boot issues if GRUB is installed there. This means that I've been installing GRUB in the /boot partition for each Linux distro and creating corresponding entries in the Windows boot menu.
This has worked in the past with both Fedora and Ubuntu, but I have not been able to work around it with Debian. When I choose my Debian option in the Windows boot loader, it loads GRUB but hangs after it prints "Welcome to GRUB!", and I have to restart the computer. I would like to hear what more experienced Linux users have to say both about why this isn't working for Debian and about if keeping the WIndows boot loader is the right way to go.
Also, here is my partition layout:
Partition 1: SYSTEM (HP pre-installed) (209 MB)
Partition 2: Windows Partition (472 GB)
Partition 3: Extended (160 GB)
1: /boot for Fedora (524 MB)
2: Physical Volume for other Fedora partitions (79 GB)
3: /boot for Debian (749 MB)
4: Physical Volume for other Debian partitions (80 GB)
118 GB free space
Partition 4: HP_TOOLS (HP pre-installed) (108 MB)
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Mar 16, 2011
I have PC with following specs:
Intel E7500 CPU / Intel G31 Motherboard
Kingston 800MHz 2GB RAM
Hitachi 500 GB SATA HDD + Seagate 160 GB SATA HDD
I initially had only 500 GB HDD. I installed two installations of Windows 7 Ultimate - one 32-bit and one 64-bit installations. Both working fine.
Later on I installed the 160 GB HDD and installed Fedora 13 in it in a partition. The rest space of the 160GB I am using with Windows for storing data.
Now, the boot entries of both Windows installations are in the Grub Loader of F13. Means, if I remove the 160GB HDD, I cannot boot into my Windows installations.
Now I want to remove the 160 GB HDD and install a new 2TB hard-drive. That way, I cannot log into my Windows. And I do not want to lose the Linux installation also.
How can I remove the 160 GB HDD and install a new one without sacrificing my Windows installations?
OR...Is it possible that I can copy complete image of F13 on to the new HDD, so that things are same for the Windows installations?
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Jan 17, 2011
I set up my Dell Inspiron Laptop as Dual Boot -> Xp / Ubuntu 10.04. - all worked well. I had 2 installations of XP on this machine and I removed one - all worked well. I then went into XP and deleted the partion (4) that the old XP had resided on (using Easeus Partition Master) All NOT working well !! Now when booting the machine I get grub rescue> I did ls and got ....
[Code]...
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Jan 21, 2011
Here's what I want to do. I have two separate HDD
HDD 1 : 160 GB (dedicated to windows, already working)
HDD 2 : 500 GB Will be using dedicated to ubuntu (not partitioned yet)
I want to use the HDD two only for linux and this HDD is not partitioned yet. What I want to do is
- A dedicated Grub partition (/boot) on HDD 2 (Do I really need it when I am using just two os? Will it work on second HDD?)
- / root partition
- /home partition
- /swap partition
- /fat32 partition (do I need it to share files with win?)
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Feb 7, 2010
I was surprised not to find an existing thread on this anywhere, as I would expect this to be a common problem: I have the following partitions on my eee PC 100HE:
10GB Windows XP
5GB Linux Mint 8
5GB Ubuntu 9.10 NBR (awesome distro by the way!)
130GB Home partition shared by Linux Mint and Ubuntu NBR
2GB Swap partition shared by Linux Mint and Ubuntu NBR
I installed Ubuntu NBR after Mint. Immediately after install, the panel layout, menus and colour scheme were slightly messed up - presumeably because they had been "adopted" from the Mint settings in the home folder. I corrected them easily, but now I have the same problem in Mint. Is there any way I can get both distros to use the same /home folder, but different settings (i.e. the /home/username/. folders)? Can I get these settings folders put on a different partition for example?
And is this problem due only to the fact that these are 2 Ubuntu-based distros? Or will I have the same problem if/when I replace Mint with another distro, such as Fedora or Moblin?
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Feb 13, 2009
I somehow recalled a rule re the location of the boot partitions with LILO being required to be in the first part of the drive (1024 cylinders, it seems) and I found it indeed in an old doc:
Boot Partition: Your boot partition ought to be a primary partition, not a logical partition. This will ease recovery in case of disaster, but it is not technically necessary. It must be of type 0x83 "Linux native". If you are using lilo, your boot partition must be contained within the first 1024 cylinders of the drive. (Typically, the boot partition need only contain the kernel image.) Is this still valid in GRUB, esp in Fedora 10?
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Nov 16, 2010
I encrypt a partition using LUKS, and store personal data on this partition. Then create a user account that solely deals with this partition and insulated from the Internet. Normally for each boot I do not even need to mount the LUKS encrypted partition, and when I mount that partition under that special user account, I can make sure that the Internet is cut off. I'm going to do the alternate installation these days, could you provide a brief sketch regarding what steps I should go through to implement the above result?
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Dec 1, 2010
Is there a way to setup a separate /home partition during a new installation of Ubuntu? If so, how. I've found guides about how to do it after installation, but it seems there ought to be a way to do it that way from the very beginning.
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Jan 11, 2010
I want to move my home directory to a separate partition so I can install the new versions of Ubuntu without losing my data. And while I'm at it, what other important directories should I move to separate partitions? And how do I do it? I'm guessing that the /boot directory should also be moved to its own partition too, yes? Because it has the GRUB in it, and if I removed Ubuntu to make way for a newer version of Ubuntu, I'll just get an error because the computer can't find the GRUB that doesn't exist anymore, right? And also, if I move those important yet-to-be-listed directories to their own separate partitions, how large should those partitions be?
I don't want to miss out on the upcoming Lucid Lynx (If it will work in the first place, of course ) By the way, I have an Ubuntu-Windows XP dual-boot system. I'll attach a screenshot of my partition table from GPartEd. You can see that I have about 300 GB. The largest partition is Ubuntu.
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May 8, 2010
Many Ubuntu users seem have their /home folder on a separate partition (better security?). I have a OK dual-boot installation (Win7+Ubuntu 10.04) - should I try to move my /home folder ? If so, how ?I DO NOT want to get into any troubles with my existing setup !I have free (unallocated) disk space both outside and inside the extended partition which is used for Ubuntu (90 GB, Ubuntu is 60 GB ext4 + 7 GB swap).
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Feb 7, 2011
I recently put ubuntu on my laptop in hope that most of my games would run through wine, some did and some didn't.
Anyway, long story short, I have ubuntu on my laptop and I want to re install windows onto a separate partition, keeping my ubuntu instillation in tact and set as my deafault OS.
I'm very new to ubuntu and the only guides i've seen are fairly complex. I was just wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction? p.s. Is there maybe a way to create an image of my current ubuntu nstillation/settings/apps etc. just in case I do something wrong and lose everything?
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Apr 11, 2011
I haven't been using Ubuntu for a couple of years. Yesterday I decided to fire up my ubuntu box and upgraded from 8.04 to 10.10.
The upgrade went fine, but when I boot it tells me that the /home dir cant be mounted. It allows me to Wait, Skip, or Manually mount it. If I skip I can log in and mount the partition that contains my /home folder so I know that nothing is corrupt. I'm sure my fstab just got overwritten during the upgrade, but, since its been so long, I don't recall how to (correctly) fix it back.
Cliffs:
--Upgraded from 8.04 to 10.10
--/home dir is on a separate partition & is not mounting properly
--How do I set it up so that my /home dir mounts on boot?
I'd just try messing around with fstab myself, but I really don't want to lose any data.
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