Fix Mint's gryb after Ubuntu borks it

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AK Dave

Fix Mint's gryb after Ubuntu borks it

Post by AK Dave »

Laptop has 3 bootable partitions. One has a solid stable Mint Felicia install that I don't want to mess with. The other two are fair game. I intend to scrub and reinstall on both of them HOWEVER when I do this I want to be able to restore Mint's "grub supremacy". I note from past experiences that whatever distro is installed last and installs grub last takes over and leaves everything else as a secondary install. I can very easily change the default boot order in menu.list to point Jaunty's grub at Felicia by default. But what I really want to do is have Felicia's grub be what shows up when I power up. Not Jaunty's grub.

So how do am I going to "fix" this?
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Fred

Re: Fix Mint's gryb after Ubuntu borks it

Post by Fred »

AK Dave,

I don't know if you were reading my mind or I was reading yours. :-)

I just posted in another thread to you about this very thing.

http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopi ... 3&start=30

If you can't make heads or tails out of my rambling I'll be happy to help you.

Fred
kansasnoob

Re: Fix Mint's gryb after Ubuntu borks it

Post by kansasnoob »

AK Dave wrote:Laptop has 3 bootable partitions. One has a solid stable Mint Felicia install that I don't want to mess with. The other two are fair game. I intend to scrub and reinstall on both of them HOWEVER when I do this I want to be able to restore Mint's "grub supremacy". I note from past experiences that whatever distro is installed last and installs grub last takes over and leaves everything else as a secondary install. I can very easily change the default boot order in menu.list to point Jaunty's grub at Felicia by default. But what I really want to do is have Felicia's grub be what shows up when I power up. Not Jaunty's grub.

So how do am I going to "fix" this?
Boot Felicia, then go to Administration > Partition Editor. See which partition is mounted. Let's say it's sda1, that = (hd 0,0) in GRUB because GRUB begins numbering with 0 (zero), so sda = (hd 0,?), sda1 = (hd 0,0)!

You'll want to know for sure which partition(s) are used by Felicia anyway before deleting the others.

Then to restore GRUB to Felicia just boot your Live CD and go to Terminal and run:

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sudo grub
That will drop you into grub mode "grub>".

Then just to double check yourself run:

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find /boot/grub/stage1
If you've not yet deleted the other unwanted operating systems you'll get multiple outputs, but by now you know what yours is, right? So use the proper one for Felicia:

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root (hd0,0)
Of course I'm just using (hd0,0) as an example! Then you'd run:

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setup (hd0)
Then finally run:

Code: Select all

quit
Which will drop you out of GRUB mode and back to "yourname@yourname-desktop".

Then you should be able to boot Felicia using it's own GRUB.

There is one rather glum potential caveat that I've run into. If Felicia's / partition is not a primary partition GRUB could possibly laugh at you once all Primary partitions are wiped out!

You can learn all of this stuff here:

http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/p15.htm
kansasnoob

Re: Fix Mint's gryb after Ubuntu borks it

Post by kansasnoob »

Fred wrote:AK Dave,

I don't know if you were reading my mind or I was reading yours. :-)

I just posted in another thread to you about this very thing.

http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopi ... 3&start=30

If you can't make heads or tails out of my rambling I'll be happy to help you.

Fred
I wouldn't call that rambling. You do a good job of explaining things. Better than I usually can.

Knowing how to do something and trying to explain it are two different things :)
Fred

Re: Fix Mint's gryb after Ubuntu borks it

Post by Fred »

kansasnoob,

I don't know about that. Your instructions look pretty clear to me. :-)

There you go Dave. Two solutions. One to fix the immediate problem and another to fix it long term. :-)

Fred
DataMan

Re: Fix Mint's gryb after Ubuntu borks it

Post by DataMan »

Added mud to the pie... :D

Since you're well into multiple booting options, might want to consider a dedicated grub partition. I've got an extensive writeup on my web site if you're interested. I've found that it makes adding-deleting ops and upgrades much easier to control.

DataMan
Fred

Re: Fix Mint's gryb after Ubuntu borks it

Post by Fred »

DataMan,

If you follow my link above, that is exactly what you will find. Or at least my variation of it. :-)

Fred

Edit: Hummm... I believe I like my way better. You might want to look at it a little closer. Chainloading has several advantages in a situation like this. Also, If you add LABEL to the mix instead of UUID you get some additional advantages.
Last edited by Fred on Thu Jan 15, 2009 6:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
DataMan

Re: Fix Mint's gryb after Ubuntu borks it

Post by DataMan »

Sorry Fred... It's 05:05 here and still on my second cup of coffee... :)

-Tim
Fred

Re: Fix Mint's gryb after Ubuntu borks it

Post by Fred »

No problem, same time here. I am still stumbling too. :-)

Fred
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