grub not installed properly

[dougleduck]

I've tried to install intrepid dual booting with vista. As I wanted to try few more distros I wanted to have a seperate /boot/grub/ partition. (Also have seperate /home and / partitions).

Install seems to have gone fine, but got errors after trying to install grub. Means that although ubuntu seems to be on / grub isnt the boot manager and just goes straight into vista.

Tried to install it using the terminal but no luck. Can anyone walk me through installing it?

Tried to put /boot/grub/ on sda5 (size is about 300 MB), but don't quite know what I'm doing yet.

This is all fresh install, no files to be lost.

[caljohnsmith]

In order to get a clearer picture of your setup, how about booting your Ubuntu Live CD (the Ubuntu install CD), download the Boot Info Script (https://sourceforge.net/projects/bootinfoscript/) to the Live CD desktop, open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and do:
sudo bash ~/Desktop/boot_info_script*.sh
That will create a "RESULTS.txt" file in the same directory from where the script is run, namely your desktop; please copy/paste the contents of the RESULTS.txt file to your next post, highlight the copied text, and click the pound/hash sign # graphic in the Ubuntu forum message box so that the text will get "code" tags put around it. The results of that script will help clarify your setup.

[dougleduck]

============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================

=> Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda

sda1: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: vfat
Boot sector type: Dell Utility: Fat16
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System:
Boot files/dirs:

sda2: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ntfs
Boot sector type: Windows Vista
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System: Windows Vista
Boot files/dirs:

sda3: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ntfs
Boot sector type: Windows Vista
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System: Windows Vista
Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /Boot/BCD

sda4: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: Extended Partition
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:

sda5: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ext3
Boot sector type: Grub
Boot sector info: Grub0.97 is installed in the boot sector of sda5 and
looks at sector 93714697 of the same hard drive for
the stage2 file. A stage2 file is at this location on
/dev/sda. Stage2 looks on partition #5 for
/grub/menu.lst.
Operating System:
Boot files/dirs:

sda6: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ext3
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System:
Boot files/dirs:

sda7: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ext3
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System: Ubuntu 8.10
Boot files/dirs: /etc/fstab

sda8: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ext3
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System:
Boot files/dirs:

sda9: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ext3
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System:
Boot files/dirs:

sda10: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ext3
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System:
Boot files/dirs:

sda11: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ext3
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System:
Boot files/dirs:

sda12: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: swap
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:

sda13: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ext3
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System:
Boot files/dirs:

=========================== Drive/Partition Info: =============================

Drive sda: __________________________________________________ ___________________

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x98000000

Partition Boot Start End Size Id System

/dev/sda1 63 257,039 256,977 de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 258,048 21,229,567 20,971,520 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 21,237,930 93,691,079 72,453,150 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 93,691,080 625,137,344 531,446,265 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 93,691,143 94,301,549 610,407 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 94,301,613 136,247,264 41,945,652 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 136,247,328 167,702,534 31,455,207 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 167,702,598 178,192,979 10,490,382 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 178,193,043 188,683,424 10,490,382 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 188,683,488 199,173,869 10,490,382 83 Linux
/dev/sda11 199,173,933 209,664,314 10,490,382 83 Linux
/dev/sda12 620,944,443 625,137,344 4,192,902 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda13 209,664,378 620,944,379 411,280,002 83 Linux


blkid -c /dev/null: __________________________________________________ __________

/dev/sda1: SEC_TYPE="msdos" LABEL="DellUtility" UUID="07D9-0204" TYPE="vfat"
/dev/sda2: UUID="BAEC98ADEC986603" LABEL="RECOVERY" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda3: UUID="E0D69B96D69B6B92" LABEL="OS" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda5: UUID="45ad75ab-c298-4017-8d75-850e50403f00" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda6: UUID="7e9ffe2a-4866-4405-975f-ea63ecadec09" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda7: UUID="40b4d402-523e-4738-86b8-992cfd8fd20b" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda8: UUID="6f9e07ec-252b-412d-ae09-725aac8f227e" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda9: UUID="281cf2e2-3b9c-4c0f-9145-20d7a5616cf5" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda10: UUID="b390f299-3791-4dcc-b01c-a4e96c21ffc6" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda11: UUID="2514c9f8-53ee-41b3-a239-dcc4acf9646e" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda12: UUID="aadda235-9cc5-461c-a33d-9ae821176a21" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda13: UUID="362faf1d-9237-4ae5-b3b2-21a83e12a4fc" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs"

=============================== "mount" output: ===============================

/proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
tmpfs on /lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620)
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
/dev/scd0 on /cdrom type iso9660 (ro,noatime)
/dev/loop0 on /rofs type squashfs (ro,noatime)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/ubuntu/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=ubuntu)
/dev/sda7 on /media/disk type ext3 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal)
/dev/sda5 on /mnt/root type ext3 (rw)
none on /mnt/root/proc type proc (rw)
/dev on /mnt/root/dev type none (rw,bind)

=================== sda5: Location of files loaded by Grub: ===================


47.9GB: grub/stage2

=============================== sda7/etc/fstab: ===============================

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda7
UUID=40b4d402-523e-4738-86b8-992cfd8fd20b / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=45ad75ab-c298-4017-8d75-850e50403f00 /boot/grub ext3 relatime 0 2
# /dev/sda6
UUID=7e9ffe2a-4866-4405-975f-ea63ecadec09 /home ext3 relatime 0 2
# /dev/sda12
UUID=aadda235-9cc5-461c-a33d-9ae821176a21 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

=================== sda7: Location of files loaded by Grub: ===================


83.1GB: boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic
83.1GB: boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic
83.1GB: initrd.img
83.1GB: vmlinuz

[caljohnsmith]

So when you installed Ubuntu, did you click the "Advanced" button near the end of the installation and specify to not have Grub installed? It looks like that is what you did, and that means you'll need a menu.lst for your dedicated Grub partition. Also, you'll need to install Grub to the MBR in order to have a multi-boot setup with sda5 as your dedicated Grub partition. How about doing the following from your Live CD:
sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda --recheck
Then save the the attached "menu.lst.txt" to your desktop, and do:
sudo mv ~/Desktop/menu.lst.txt /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst

After that, reboot, and let me know how far you get. We can work from there if necessary.

[dougleduck]

Brilliant! Thanks a lot.

I did that the first time, but re-installed and went with the default second time. Maybe when I tried to install it, managed that much.

Now onto some more distros :D.

[caljohnsmith]

Glad that worked OK; cheers and have fun trying different distros. :)