Hi,
After a lot of hesitation I decided to install Mint 11 on my Sony VGN-SR520G laptop. Every thing went as designed and at restart, the laptop starts up in windows. A quick gParted check tells me that Mint is installed. Going back to the live DVD and gparted I noticed that this harddisk has three partions for windows 7: /dev/sda1/ Recovery, /dev/sda2/ System Reserved, /dev/sda3/ main windows partition. I also see that the /dev/sda2/ is the boot sector.
Does this mean that the MBR is on sda2 and that the grub start menu should go there also? How do I make sure that this will happen?
Thanks
mint 11 installed OK but I don't see the GRUB menu
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ouwe-man
mint 11 installed OK but I don't see the GRUB menu
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.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
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conslie
Re: mint 11 installed OK but I don't see the GRUB menu
Don't take this as authoritative, but I see it's been a while with no replies. Consider it a bump.
The MBR is a first-read reserved sector on every hard drive where booting instructions can be stored. It is tiny, but usually points to and describes the partitions and where all the other info needed to begin starting the OS (s). In Mint 11, and the few other Linuxes I've played with, writing to the MBR is accomplished with the default setting of sda, not sda1, or sda2... My guess is that it now points only to that reserved partition, but it should point to where the rest of the Grub2 code is stored, which would then offer pointers to that Windows boot info and to Mint (and others) booters.
Double check any of that at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record
You might explore by using some of the commands here from the LiveCD at http://members.iinet.net/~herman546/p20 ... mands.html .
In case you are unfamiliar with using commands in Linux, start the terminal and copy the ones you need into it. I don't think this will happen from a LiveCD, but some might needa to be prefaced by sudo , which means "do this with supervisor privileges." If that happens the default PW in the LiveCD is just hitting the "Enter" key.
Again. consider this a kick, not expert advice, but explore on your own and share what you learn.
Above all, have some fun!
The MBR is a first-read reserved sector on every hard drive where booting instructions can be stored. It is tiny, but usually points to and describes the partitions and where all the other info needed to begin starting the OS (s). In Mint 11, and the few other Linuxes I've played with, writing to the MBR is accomplished with the default setting of sda, not sda1, or sda2... My guess is that it now points only to that reserved partition, but it should point to where the rest of the Grub2 code is stored, which would then offer pointers to that Windows boot info and to Mint (and others) booters.
Double check any of that at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record
You might explore by using some of the commands here from the LiveCD at http://members.iinet.net/~herman546/p20 ... mands.html .
In case you are unfamiliar with using commands in Linux, start the terminal and copy the ones you need into it. I don't think this will happen from a LiveCD, but some might needa to be prefaced by sudo , which means "do this with supervisor privileges." If that happens the default PW in the LiveCD is just hitting the "Enter" key.
Again. consider this a kick, not expert advice, but explore on your own and share what you learn.
Above all, have some fun!
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ouwe-man
Re: mint 11 installed OK but I don't see the GRUB menu
Thanks for taking the time to answer.
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breaker
Re: mint 11 installed OK but I don't see the GRUB menu
If you don't see a GRUB menu at boot it could be hidden, which is normal. Just try holding down "SHIFT" while booting to hopefully reveal the menu.
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SimonTS
Re: mint 11 installed OK but I don't see the GRUB menu
Hi there,
You say about the three partitions for Windows - that is not abnormal the way things are built nowadays. However you do not mention the Linux partition at all. I would assume that it is sda4 - but 'assume' normally makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me', so verify anything I say here based on your own install.
Firstly, I do not believe that the default setting is to hide the GRUB menu - I have installed Mint 11 many times before going back to 10 as my main system and was always presented with the GRUB menu post-install. Also, when you install Mint (as per every other distro I have ever used) it automatically sets itself to be the default option, so even if the GRUB menu was hidden it should still boot into Mint. This suggests to me that the install did not complete correctly, which is no surprise to me at all.
If you want to try and solve this then you need to boot into your Mint Live Desktop again. Then open a terminal window and type the following commands (I reiterate that I am ASSUMING your Mint is installed on sda4);-
$ sudo mount /dev/sda4 /mnt
$ sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda
Then reboot the PC and you should be able to boot into Mint. Once you have done so, open another terminal window and type;-
$ sudo update-grub
Then reboot once more and test out the GRUB menu to make sure you can run both Windows and Mint happily.
If you are not certain about which partition your Mint is on, then do not do the above - post the following information from a terminal window first so we can check for you;-
$ sudo fdisk -l
Hope this helps a little...
You say about the three partitions for Windows - that is not abnormal the way things are built nowadays. However you do not mention the Linux partition at all. I would assume that it is sda4 - but 'assume' normally makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me', so verify anything I say here based on your own install.
Firstly, I do not believe that the default setting is to hide the GRUB menu - I have installed Mint 11 many times before going back to 10 as my main system and was always presented with the GRUB menu post-install. Also, when you install Mint (as per every other distro I have ever used) it automatically sets itself to be the default option, so even if the GRUB menu was hidden it should still boot into Mint. This suggests to me that the install did not complete correctly, which is no surprise to me at all.
If you want to try and solve this then you need to boot into your Mint Live Desktop again. Then open a terminal window and type the following commands (I reiterate that I am ASSUMING your Mint is installed on sda4);-
$ sudo mount /dev/sda4 /mnt
$ sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda
Then reboot the PC and you should be able to boot into Mint. Once you have done so, open another terminal window and type;-
$ sudo update-grub
Then reboot once more and test out the GRUB menu to make sure you can run both Windows and Mint happily.
If you are not certain about which partition your Mint is on, then do not do the above - post the following information from a terminal window first so we can check for you;-
$ sudo fdisk -l
Hope this helps a little...
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breaker
Re: mint 11 installed OK but I don't see the GRUB menu
Well, to really figure out what your layout is, launch the Live DVD and run the "Boot Info Script" and you can post the contents of the RESULTS.TXT to this thread to enlighten us. Here's how to use it and where to get it - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1291280