Ubuntu Installation :: Why GRUB Reinstall Using A Partition Instead Of MBR
Dec 28, 2010
I'm trying to re-install Grub2 on a dual boot (Win/XP & Ubuntu 10.10) system which will not boot. I am following the guide here:
Code: [URL] This guide explicitly states that the procedure will re-install GRUB to the Master Boot Record, overwritng whatever is there. However, the final step results in this warning message: "grub-setup: warn: Attempting to install GRUB to a partition instead of the MBR. This is a BAD idea....."
I guess I agree - that's not what I want to do. Where is the defect in the procedure and how do I overcome it? If I try alternative advice, available in the forums, by using the command
Code:
sudo grub-install /dev/sda
then I receive the error message
Code: grub-probe: error: cannot find a device for /boot/grub (is /dev mounted?) Looking at the mount command output, I think the required device is mounted.
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Jul 12, 2010
I need to reinstall my windows 7 partition, but I don't want to lose my ubuntu partition. Currently I just have both installed and grub is dealing with my booting options.Is there any way I can reinstall windows without messing up grub or my ubuntu partition?
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Aug 24, 2010
So I was bored yesterday, looking at some free unpartitioned space (I meant to use it as emergency space, just in case) and I thought that it'd be really nice if I could make a ~250 MB partition just for GRUB, so I decided to see if I could do it. The partition has been made as 256 MB (just to be nice ) and ext2. (I'm also running lubuntu, if you need to know)
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Jun 26, 2011
So, I'm stuck in GRUB rescue mode (stupid mistake) on a dual booted netbook (so no cd and no recovery software)
I do have a Live USB so I'm working off that.
Is there a way to reinstall the GRUB to my other partition (windows 7) or fix the MBR without recovery software?
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Dec 10, 2010
I have ubuntu 10.10 running on my HP dv5 pavilion laptop So today i tried to reinstall grub on my pc .. i removed grub-pc and grub-common using synaptic then booted up with a live cd of ubuntu 10.04 i then mounted sda11 to mnt using sudo mount /dev/sda11 /mnt sda11 being my ubuntu directory containing the /boot then i installed grub to it using sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda it reported as installation finished.No error reported then i unmounted /mnt and checked for /boot/grub/grub.cfg seems like the file is missing so are the files in /etc/grub.d/ reinstall my grub back
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Feb 4, 2011
how do I retrieve/reinstall Grub without having to reinstall Ubuntu?
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Mar 29, 2011
I have Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows 7 on my computer. After not booting into my Ubuntu partition for a while, I noticed that grub had disappeared, being replaced by the windows bootloader. I followed the steps here under "reinstalling from liveCD" and I was able to get a grub command line when I rebooted, but no boot menu. So I booted into Ubuntu and ran update-grub like the instructions say, and the output indicated that Ubuntu and Windows had both been successfully found and added to grub.cfg. But when I rebooted, I still only got the grub command line.
When the instructions had steps for if you had a separate boot partition, I used /dev/sda1 because it is marked by fdisk as being the boot partition. I thought that maybe update-grub was only seeing /boot on the Ubuntu partition and wasn't touching the boot partition, so I tried mounting /dev/sda1 as /boot, but after that grub didn't boot at all, it just goes straight to Windows and I haven't been able to reinstall grub even after following the steps again several times. How can I get grub back?
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Aug 7, 2011
I've reinstalled win 7 (dualboot). Then booted with rescuecd and tried to fix grub.
Code:
$mount /dev/sda3 /tmp/b/boot
$grub-install --root-dir=/tmp/b /dev/sda
This gave ma a grub shell on boot. The prbm was that this was grub1 - v0.97
I ran a proper 2nd time
Code:
$mount /dev/sda3 /tmp/b/boot
$grub2-install --root-dir=/tmp/b /dev/sda
Now on boot I can spot grub loading and black screen with blinking cursos on top. ubuntu 10.10, separate /boot, uncrypted /root (which is probably the cause) Also I have deleted the 2 win partitions (sda1, sda2) and made a new one (sda1). The /boot is still sda3, can this be the cause?
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Dec 4, 2010
In drs305's standout article HOWTO: Purge and Reinstall Grub 2 from the Live CD, in the section where it says:
Quote: From the Live CD:
* If the Ubuntu OS cannot be accessed through the normal boot process (see above), boot a compatible installation CD/Live CD. The Grub 2 files are by default installed in the partition's /boot/grub folder and will be placed in this folder if the commands are run as instructed. (emphasis mine)
I'm not certain what precisely means "compatible" here? Is it using the same desktop (K/X)Ubuntu what is installed on the hard drive? Or the same release number (such as, in my case 9.10) or both or just ---well, you get the idea I'm sure.
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Dec 11, 2010
I have Ubuntu 10.04 with file system EXT4 and dual booting with Vista The problem is I am about to reinstall Vista which will overwrite Grub 2 I know how to restore Grub2 with the Live CD I currently I only have a Live CD of Ubuntu 8.04 which doesnt support EXT4 neither Grub2 I am on a very limited INTERNET so I cant download the Live CD. A solution would be the minimal cd image but the download stall at 96%
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Sep 18, 2010
I am having lots of problems with fresh install of ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS (dual boot with Win7) and would like to reinstall, however if i just insert the ubuntu CD and boot off of that, when i go to install it wants to create another partition that uses space from my partition for win7. How can i reinstall on my current ubuntu partition?
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Aug 17, 2010
I had Kubuntu 9.04 and Windows XP on a Dual Boot. I upgraded using the update manager to 9.10. (I know, I'm a fool.) The Kubuntu install stated freezing hard on startup, just after the GRUB OS selection screen, at a blinking cursor and otherwise blank screen. I'm pretty sure 9.10 will work great from a fresh install, but the live cd freezes after main Kubuntu boot screen and even Windows live cd only shows Windows partition. fixmb, fixboot, bootcfg etc. do NOT replace the grub as desired.
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Jun 11, 2011
After installing Windows 7 on my laptop, which was already running Natty, I am having issues reinstalling grub. I tried to do this using the method from this tutorial: [URL]... when I enter:
[Code]...
I also tried using --root-directory instead of --boot-directory, and I tried --recheck on both of them without any luck.
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Apr 15, 2010
I installed Mint 8 on my sister's laptop (after her existing Vista, and I did so on a separate partition created during the normal setup process in Gparted) and she now wants to try out another distro and take off Mint, so how would I go about this? Would I boot from the distro's live CD, determine the correct partition, (I'm thinking of Gparted here) and then... what?
- Would I have to mark the partition to be deleted, delete it, then ask it to install on a similar-sized partition?
- Or would I not delete it, just mark to format it as ext4 or some other file system and it would then just install the OS of that live CD over the existing partition?
- What about the swap partition - does that need any changes at all?
- Will Grub/Grub2 et al normally be updated to reflect the replaced OS?
- I may do this on my own desktop machine in the future: I may want to consolidate all my existing partitions into one easy to manage massive partition. Is this also easy to do?
- How can I determine which OSs are on which partitions?
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Sep 19, 2010
I have two partitions: one for / and the other for /home ; now how do I reinstall ubuntu in the '/' partition so that I can reuse /home as it is?
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Dec 17, 2010
I'm wiping out / on an Ubuntu box but want to keep everything in /home/, which is mounted on a different partition. Using Code: ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase ~/.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase I have unwrapped the passphrase, resulting in a ~25 character alphanumeric string. Is it possible for me to install from a disk and give the installer the (current) passphrase so that it will automatically mount my home directory?
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Apr 23, 2011
I am using an old username which I have been tied to since my first install, any time I have tried to change it in the past lead to problems such as duplication of files and permission access.
I have a small / partition and a larger /home partition where I store media etc, and on freshly reinstalling Ubuntu 10.10 on / today I was tempted to use a preferred more accurate username and change the computer name - would there still have been consequences to this, if so can they be addressed post install, or can I some how simply just change my username and computer name without confusing my system from here without reinstalling?
*I carried out the re installation using my old usual username and computer name.
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Jul 23, 2011
This is partly a note to myself for the future and a guide to anyone who experiences similar issues.
So, I had to reinstall Windows XP since my previous installation gave me a blue screen error due to reasons unfathomable. Naturally, this deleted the GNU Grub and I could not login to my Fedora.
I read that apparently booting from a DVD installation offers an option to enter the rescue mode. I did not have a DVD, I only had the LiveCD so I had to figure out a way to reinstall Grub from the LiveCD. The following method seemed to do the trick.
Run the LiveCD and open Terminal.
1. Find the partition where the Grub Stage1 is code...
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Jan 9, 2010
Some days ago I decided to reinstall windows, of course windows wiped Grub of the MBR. No problem. I booted of the live CD (9.10) and tried to reinstall grub, I had Ubuntu 9.10 installed before windows wiped grub. I tried the following tutorial: [URL] My fdisk -l output is the following: root@ubuntu:~# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000f2962
[Code]....
sda3 is my root partition, sda2 is the partition where all my media files are located. I mounted /dev/sda3 to /media/root and then I tried to reinstall grub with: sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/root /dev/sda It came out with no errors, and then I restarted my computer. Grub started, but with a command line. It was the 1,97 beta-4 version. Since I'm quite unfamiliar with GRUB (or really technical linux stuff)
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Jun 19, 2010
I dual-boot ubuntu 9.04 and windows 7. I recently reinstalled windows, and it wiped grub-legacy off of my MBR. Reinstalling grub shouldn't be tough, right, especially with clear instructions? Anyway, I can't get anywhere with the official instructions here: [URL]. The first issue is that the current live CD has no program "grub" in terminal. I dug up an old live cd, but I couldn't get anything with the directions:
Find where Grub is. If this gives a few different answers then you will need to find the correct one, perhaps by trial-and-error.
find /boot/grub/stage1
That command didn't find anything, nor did some similar commands found on google.
So I'm really at a loss. What should I do?
-Can I install Grub 2 on my MBR? Will that work with 9.04?
-Can I access my 9.04 install, copy files to Windows, and then just format the partition and clean install 10.04?
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Dec 4, 2010
Had a working WinXp/Karmic dual boot system. Tried to upgrade Karmic to Lucid and my daughter rebooted the system during the upgrade. I decided to do a fresh install of ubuntu, leaving Windows in place and it succeeded until the end when it said it could install the bootloader, so I proceeded without. I meant to say "it said it couldn't install the bootloader, so I proceeded without.
On booting, Grub drops to the command line.
I get grub>, not grub-rescue>
I did ls in grub and it showed the partitions I expected
/sda5 is /boot
/sda6 is /swap
/sda7 is /
/sda8 is /home
I tried to follow the grub2 command line manual by entering
Code:
set root=(hd0,7) (success)
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-24-generic root=/dev/sda7 ro (failed - couldn't find file)
so I'm now a bit stuck.
Here are my bootinfo_script results (by the way, sdb is just an e-SATA hard disc with nothing installed on it, I don't know why bootinfo thinks Windows is there. Windows is on /sda2 with some sort of backup/recovery partition on /sda1)
Code:
Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010
Boot Info Summary:
=> Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in
partition #7 for /boot/grub.
=> Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb .....
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Jun 9, 2010
How do I ensure that my home partition does not get deleted the next time I reinstall Ubuntu, as I can see there is a choice between formatting the whole drive and manually partition it, but if I reinstall won't I delete the home partition as well?
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Jan 13, 2009
I reinstalled windows, which wiped out my boot partition. I then booted to a live CD, to attempt to reinstall GRUB. However the usual method and directions aren't working.
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May 14, 2009
How to installs and I used gparted to create my install of fedora 10 on my laptop (which had xp on it). After a major XP crash I reinstalled with Vista business on the XP partition. Now my linux partition is definately there however I Vista boots now and the grub loader does not come up.
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Nov 8, 2009
For some applications i still have windows XP installed. Because of the fact that Windows has to be reinstalled once a year (it's only windows ) I deleted the MBR accidentely. Now I can't start Fedora again. hen I start Linux using the Installation CD of Fedora 10 my partition is not mounted automatically because I am using LVM.
[code]...
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Feb 7, 2011
I tried to install rawhide by enabling the rawhide repo and doing a yum update. Lets just say it didn't go so well. My system wont start the GUI when I start the computer. It just shows the Fedora boot animation and stays there. So anyway I need to reinstall Fedora 14. I wanted to reinstall Fedora without having to backup and restore all my data (my home directory). So I did some Googleing and found that if I had my home directory on a separate partition that I was set to go. All I had to do was format "/" and just tell it to use the "/home" partition I already had and not to format it and I that was it. So I went to try it myself and found that it was not as straight forward as it seemed. Well at least for me.
I clicked on "lv_root" assuming that was supposed to have "/" as its mount point. I clicked the edit button. I selected "/" as its mount point and told it to format it as ext4. Then I clicked on lv_home and clicked on the edit button. I made its mount point "/home" and clicked "ok". I clicked "Next" and I get this error "Bootable partitions cannot be on a logical volume". What do I need to do to fix this? I assume this has to do with the "lv_" at the beginning of the partition names.
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Jul 11, 2011
I got a system crippling virus on my windows installation. My recovery disks gave me the same problem. So I installed Win 7 enterprise using a disk my dad got from his work. The installation went smoothly. When I started my computer after it went straight to Win 7 without the GRUB bootloader (not the case with restore disks). Could somebody please help me with this issue because I cant stand using Windows for anything other than games much longer.
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Feb 1, 2010
My old-ish Dell laptop is currently running Windows 2000 and Ubuntu 9.10. I originally installed 2000 to try and squeeze a bit more performance out of the laptop for general use, but in practise Ubuntu is running great and sees far more use than the Win2K installation so I've decided to create a stripped-down (i.e. non-networked) XP installation purely to run a few favourite audio applications.
I plan to do a fresh Windows install and wipe the current C: partition. Is there anything I should be aware of in terms of the GRUB bootloader. Will it simply recognise the new XP installation? Obviously I will back up my data before I continue, but are there any other precautions to take with respect to dual-booting? I could do without having to reinstall Ubuntu too!
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Dec 6, 2010
i have ubuntu 10.04 64 bit installed and configured and working sweet. I have reinstalled windows 7 and now i can't boot ubuntu i've tried easybcd to add ubuntu to win boot loader which failed and tried to follow the instructions to reinstall grub through a live cd which i am in at the moment. i go to a terminal and type sudo grub and it brings up the grub prompt. i have mounted all discs and entered the command find /boot/grub/stage1 and it keeps spitting this back at me Error 15: File not found
my hd is a 80gb with partions like this
/dev/sda1 105mb ntfs system reserved
/dev/sda2 45gb ntfs win 7 home premium 64 bit
/dev/sda3 34gb ext4 ubuntu 10.04 64 bit
/dev/sda4 1.5gb linux swap
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Apr 4, 2010
Ok. I have a media server running debian amd64. when I installed it I made separate partitions for root (/) home (/home) var (/var) and swap.
I'm adding some new hardware (mobo and ram) and want to reinstall debian. I would like to keep my home and var partitions intact and just reinstall everything in root (/) partition.
I'm unsure of how to do this during the installation. Do i need to format? how do I tell it to use the /var and /home partitions?
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