Grub2 information & Links.

[Weaver]

Always nice to register for a forum and find the answer to the problem already there.
Thanks.

Weaver.

[rijnsma]

You're welcome sir!


Even ext4 is bootable in a Grub1 ext3/MBR config (for example made by PCLOS 'redo MBR').

I do explore LMDE too on this machine (LMDE has becoming better and better) on ext4 and Grub2 -> pointing to the boot
in the partition of LMDE.

And the bootloader (of PCLOS does not have a problem with it after a 'redo MBR'.
The menu.lst (and after that the reset MBR) comes when needed even from the livecd.

So when some-one has a problem in a multibootsystem with this Grub/Grub2/ext3/ext4 I advice at least
a livecd or USB or whatever of PCLinuxOS.

When something should go wrong and your system does boot no more:
http://developer.berlios.de/project/sho ... p_id=10921 Super-Grub-hybrid 1.98 so you can start raw what
you like with this bootloader from the livecd and work without sorrow when you have PCLOS etc.
You can also do it with Grub or Grub2 itself of course. But it's not easy. Pick your manuals...

Now I'm waiting for a same quality redo-MBR2 so the opposite way from... Mint? Or will that also come from Houston?
And a simple program what does all what is necessary would be a great releave for many. But I'm happy for now.

Btw. this can also be a help:
http://www.thpc.info/how/restore_bootsector.html

[breaker]

Official Manual out now!

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/

[rijnsma]

Thanks for the links!
But much better would it be when there is no need for a 'manual'.
'(Multi-)bootloader and MBR very simple' = very important I think.

Years ago I proposed on some forums to have a kind of install and switch-application on Grub
(and so on Grub2 now) which makes a sort of abc-klick application of the whole Grub-story.
Now it is just the other way it looks like. This Grub2 has a rather high like tooth-extracting factor
in my opinion. And that makes Linux less attractive for a lot of people.

[rijnsma]

Official Manual out now!

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/
rtfm = read the fine manual...
grub2 https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2

Great!!
When you're waiting for something interesting to read. And all that for nothing, gratuit...

[danny1987]

Will this help me? I am a new Linux user and I set up Julia as a dual boot with windows 7 on the other side. Some how when i installed Linux I did not partition enough space and i was trying to install xp in a virtual box and ran out of space. Linux after that didn't seem to be running very well, so i went into windows to look at the partition and just decided to format the partition that had Linux. After that i restarted and my boot menu was gone COMPLETELY no Linux or Windows. So I reinstalled Linux, but i don't know how to bring back my boot menu that still has windows installed on the computer where i have a bunch of files i would like to access. If anyone has any experience with this you help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Danny

[Weaver]

Will this help me? I am a new Linux user and I set up Julia as a dual boot with windows 7 on the other side. Some how when i installed Linux I did not partition enough space and i was trying to install xp in a virtual box and ran out of space.

Keep things simple!
Any linux derivative will happily give you a dual boot environment.
Install samba to access your windows files from within the linux environment and you won't even need to boot windows.
But grub legacy will quite happily add windows to your boot menu.
Grub2 is for people that like to play with new things.
It's not necessary to transition yet.

Linux after that didn't seem to be running very well, so i went into windows to look at the partition and just decided to format the partition that had Linux. After that i restarted and my boot menu was gone COMPLETELY no Linux or Windows. So I reinstalled Linux, but i don't know how to bring back my boot menu that still has windows installed on the computer where i have a bunch of files i would like to access. If anyone has any experience with this you help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Danny

I never bother but it's a good policy to back up your data before installing a new operating system.
Take a while to read your documentation - even print it out - on the installation process you're using, because you can't access it during the install process otherwise.
If you haven't actually damaged your windows partition, the linux install process should still pick it up and be able to boot it for you.
If you find the situation is completely irretrievable - welcome to the wild side!

Weaver.

[progone]

Will this help me? I am a new Linux user and I set up Julia as a dual boot with windows 7 on the other side. Some how when i installed Linux I did not partition enough space and i was trying to install xp in a virtual box and ran out of space.

Keep things simple!
Any linux derivative will happily give you a dual boot environment.
Install samba to access your windows files from within the linux environment and you won't even need to boot windows.
But grub legacy will quite happily add windows to your boot menu.
Grub2 is for people that like to play with new things.
It's not necessary to transition yet.

Linux after that didn't seem to be running very well, so i went into windows to look at the partition and just decided to format the partition that had Linux. After that i restarted and my boot menu was gone COMPLETELY no Linux or Windows. So I reinstalled Linux, but i don't know how to bring back my boot menu that still has windows installed on the computer where i have a bunch of files i would like to access. If anyone has any experience with this you help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Danny

I never bother but it's a good policy to back up your data before installing a new operating system.
Take a while to read your documentation - even print it out - on the installation process you're using, because you can't access it during the install process otherwise.
If you haven't actually damaged your windows partition, the linux install process should still pick it up and be able to boot it for you.
If you find the situation is completely irretrievable - welcome to the wild side!

Weaver.

Very true, however if you have set your Windows, Mint, and Ubuntu up the way you like it, its very important to 'READ' before installing Solaris. Solaris uses Grub 0.98 and didn't reconize my Mint 10 or Ubuntu 10.10

[niuginibenz]

Hi everyone!
Bit of a noob and I have read everything in this thread, which is absolutely GREAT. A LOT of knowledge in the Mint community and I love the way everyone helps out. I wish I knew enough to put something back!!

My problem is a little different. How Do You Get rid of GRUB ??

I am running an Eee PC 901 and I have installed different flavours of Mint on SD cards, external drives and stuff like that. I just want to choose which drive to start from using the BIOS. I am not Dual booting from the same drive.

Now I am stuck with having my SD card in because that's where GRUB ended up with me not knowing the importance of where to put it. If I take my SD card out I am lost at boot time. No way to boot into Mint 9 which resides on my SSDs....I have to boot to my SD card and THEN select my boot drive under the GRUB menu. Without the SD card in I have a very unhappy GRUB problem.

I have read a LOT of manuals but must have missed the bit about how to Un-Install.

Probably an easy solution but I haven't worked it out yet.

Cheers
Tom

[capricornus]

niuginibenz
I recently got to use "Customize GRUB" (http://digitizor.com/2011/01/20/customi ... er-ubuntu/). Finally a GUI As I wished for some time ago and was answered on this forum.

You can check/uncheck whatever you want, and you want to keep 1 OS on the HD. I think you can determine where MBR is written (in your case: the HD), save the configuration, and then overwrite it (command is somewhere in the menu).
succes!

[niuginibenz]

Capricornus !

Thanks! That was absolutely perfect! Now everything is working like a charm.

This tool is a MUST if you mess around with installations of different flavors on different drives.

[linfidel]

When I first started using Linux regularly a few years ago(Ubuntu), and learned the basics of grub, I loved the fact that I understood grub well, and could easily install, configure, or fix it. I have a couple of drives in my system, with a lot of partitions, and I often like to try out new distros. There was always this hassle because every distro likes to change grub to point to itself as the primary boot option, and when grub2 came out, I hoped it might make it easier to handle this somehow. Silly me.

But, even though I could never remember the magic incantations, and had to sort out the many different methods posted online, with the errors in most of them, I was usually able to do it and it seemed like maybe it was easier, but I wasn't doing it as often, so I never really got down a good method.

Then, recently, I tried out a new Ubuntu release to see if it was usable by me (it wasn't), and I forgot to fix grub to look in the right place. I then deleted that partition in preparation for installing Mint, downloaded Mint, and rebooted. Oops, silly me, I forgot to actually burn the disc, and my system would not boot. No problem, I thought, I had the rescue prompt, and full instructions for booting from the Ubuntu site. But it would not work due to some kind of invalid license or something. Besides that, it reversed the drives from normal, and didn't display the partitions the way the docs said - eg, instead of (hd0,1), it said (hd0, msdos1), making me think something was terribly wrong. I guess there was an update to grub for the newest distro I deleted, and the old distro used an older version of grub2 that was incompatible.

I couldn't locate my grub2 boot disk, so I booted the live CD, and tried to burn a new boot CD, which of course would not work off the live CD, it seems. The instructions for recovering grub2 from the live CD were unclear and obscure, and I finally got as far as a grub prompt instead of the rescue prompt, but was too worn out to continue from there. I used another computer to burn the Mint disc, and was able to install Mint, which is what I wanted to do anyway.

So, to summarize, I hate grub2 so far. There needs to be better ways to fix common problems like this. Or maybe Linux needs a better installer that will ask whether to change your boot partition. Meanwhile, I'll try to make sure I have bootable disks available to fix problems in the future. The customize grub program sounds nice, but if you can't boot, it's not much use.

[rijnsma]

The same story here.
I use an old PCLOS with MBR and Grub1 to switch 5 partitions. And I'm happy with it like it is. Simple and o.k..

Grub2 has been a show-stopper here and ext4 too.
Gnome3 almost, but I believe Clem has MGSE, an extension which I'm very curious about. 'Mate' too.
I have Ubuntu with Unity for testing on a partition, it is usable when one doesn't have something else,
but am I happy with it? Not really. Etc.

Alle these 'better' things can chase people away from Linux and from 'open computers'. And that is a shame and
not necessary in this way.

UEFI with 'M$ secure boot' could also be something like it... Glad I don't want to use M$ unless I'm forced to.

[linfidel]

The same story here.
...

I'm all for progress, and I once looked forward to Gnome 3, but so far, it's not there for me. Forget Unity, I don't like it at all. To me, Linux is all about choices, and Unity took away most of them for me. It might be good for beginners, but everyone needs a path for progressing to a higher level.

I've been reading the grub2 manual. It's interesting reading, but right now there is a problem with compatibility with grub 1.98 and the latest 1.99 used by Mint/Ubuntu. It bit my butt pretty badly.

[rijnsma]

Did it destroy something?

[linfidel]

Did it destroy something?

Just my sanity and a few hours of my time trying to get it to boot again.

I've adopted the motto of an old-time usenet person from ba.internet whose signature said "Learn by destroying".

[rijnsma]

That's better than all data lost of something like it.
I now, I did fight a lot of battles with those machines and the software. I know...

linfidel wrote:

I've adopted the motto of an old-time usenet person from ba.internet whose signature said "Learn by destroying".

Ooow, he's not right in my opinion or is he?

Smooth is better with a good backup of the system (LiveCD/DVD or Clonezilla etx.).
Better for the nerves and it does not divert people from Linux.
So you go experiment a lot and restore the system if needed. Maybe he's thinking of this.
That's why I like so much Mint (or PCLOS) and a simple Grub1 bootloader (especially with multiboot).
But when I have time I'll study Grub2.

[wayne128]

Read this

Re: Grub2 information & Links.

New postby linfidel » Sat Nov 12, 2011 4:35 am

rijnsma wrote:The same story here.
...


I'm all for progress, and I once looked forward to Gnome 3, but so far, it's not there for me. Forget Unity, I don't like it at all. To me, Linux is all about choices, and Unity took away most of them for me. It might be good for beginners, but everyone needs a path for progressing to a higher level.

I've been reading the grub2 manual. It's interesting reading, but right now there is a problem with compatibility with grub 1.98 and the latest 1.99 used by Mint/Ubuntu. It bit my butt pretty badly.

and this

That's better than all data lost of something like it.
I now, I did fight a lot of battles with those machines and the software. I know...

linfidel wrote:

I've adopted the motto of an old-time usenet person from ba.internet whose signature said "Learn by destroying".

Ooow, he's not right in my opinion or is he?

Smooth is better with a good backup of the system (LiveCD/DVD or Clonezilla etx.).
Better for the nerves and it does not divert people from Linux.
So you go experiment a lot and restore the system if needed. Maybe he's thinking of this.
That's why I like so much Mint (or PCLOS) and a simple Grub1 bootloader (especially with multiboot).
But when I have time I'll study Grub2.

and haha, went thru all these..
the difference, may be, I found how to play with grub legacy, grub2 and EasyBCD plus one more tool ( a rescue CD in case ALL partitions are unbootable at the SAME TIME, one bootloader did it to my multiboot system wiping all 30+ partition and got all of them unbootable ).

grub legacy is simple to use, but a bit of terminal typing plus some understanding on chainloading.
once chainloading is used, it is quite simple.. but then still have to watch out dist-upgrade for those with grub2...always instruct it to root partition and not MBR.

easyBCD is even easier , all click click click... but it run on vista/win7 and not bothering on MBR

grub2, very intelligent, but then,, since most people found out already , I better not to repeat..

so, on few computers I multiboot, I have
1. EasyBCD on win7
2. Grub legacy as Master boot loader controlling MBR
3. all partitions, I have lots of them, always install onto its own root partition, so that when they go thru kernel upgrade, grub2 upgrade, dist-upgrade etc and happen to become unbootable, at least, they do not mess with the MBR ( ) and that way, if it breaks and unbootable, it is limited to that OS on that partition.

so that way I keep the sanity in check.

[rijnsma]

wayne128 wrote:

grub legacy is simple to use, but a bit of terminal typing plus some understanding on chainloading.
once chainloading is used, it is quite simple.. [..]

In PCLOS 2010 (Grub1) + MBR for the system one can do redo MBR.
Then the boot-text menu.lst is made and one can reset the MBR so everything is in it.
Automatically. It has worked fine for me for some years. No worrying.

but then still have to watch out dist-upgrade for those with grub2...always instruct it to root partition and not MBR.

Yes, I don't upgrade this old PCLOS the state it is in now. It is only a distro-switch (and can be used like a normal distro).

so that way I keep the sanity in check.

O, I love this one.

[DeanoBravo2zero]

A little How to restore Grub2, which worked for a fool like me
http://martinwebster.eu/2011/04/28/how- ... x-mint-10/