[Boot-Repair] Graphical tool to repair the PC boot in one click

[RogerDavis]

I couldn't use Synaptic at first, too full. I had to use Xfe to delete one kernel set from boot first (deleted all I could find with the oldest kernel number). BTW, why can't this be done without all the drama? Does it miss things? If so, how do I clean this up?

After that I could select the kernels marked as installed for complete deletion (except the other top two) in Synaptic.

Surely there is (Or should be!) an automatic feature to do this, or at the very least a one line terminal command or tool ?!?

Either way, thanks!

[mörgæs]

Just run

sudo apt-get autoremove

to get rid of everthing but the latest two kernels.

df -h

gives an overview of how much space is used.

If there are more questions of this kind it's better to open a new thread.

[Girolamous]

I have a dual-boot system that was running Ubuntu 14.04 and Windows 8.1 off a single hard drive. The hardware is a Lenovo Y510p with a 32GB SSD cache drive and a 1 TB spinning disk, and dual Nvidia GEforce graphics cards (one in SLI slot). This was working successfully for about 1-1/2 years, and then I decided to try changing to the gnome desktop. After going through the install (which requested I remove some nvidia drivers, libcurl, and many other things), I rebooted and cannot get to a desktop without going through a "gray box" notice saying that my display is going to operate in low-resolution mode. I can get to a command line from there and log in then issue a startx command and everything seems fine, but the other options in the gray box just lead me to blank screens. I've installed nvidia-346 from proprietary sources and that hasn't fixed it. I then tried boot-repair, thinking that a nomodeset option might be available. That hasn't worked, either, and it has created a whole bunch of new entries in my grub boot menu, which used to have only three entries.
I know there is a simple edit of the grub configuration that will fix this startup issue, and I don't like the boot menu now, so should I uninstall boot-repair and try to roll back my grup configuration or should I let boot-repair try to fix all of this? How to do either would be appreciated.
My boot-repair output is located here:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/12206722/

Thanks

[oldfred]

If you can boot to grub menu, then you are past the issues Boot-Repair can fix. You can manually add nomodeset and that should only be used until you install nVidia drivers.

You can turn off the execute bit on 25_custom which is the new entries that Boot-Repair added.
sudo chmod a-x /etc/grub.d/25_custom

You may want to house clean old kernels.

Check current kernel I also keep one older just in case:
#Current kernel:
uname -a

Check current kernel I also keep one older just in case:
#Current kernel:
uname -a

Start a new thread on nVidia issues. I always only install nVidia from Ubuntu repository to avoid issues. But if a very new card/chip you may need newer drivers, and then should only use a ppa.
And you cannot install a different nVidia driver without totally purging all traces of previous.

[dalesd]

Long time Ubuntu user, dating back to 2008, Hardy Heron. I haven't had Windows on a computer of mine since then.

Here's my Boot Info Summary: http://paste2.org/XcGYK8BB

My system is Ubuntu 14.04 on a 256GB SSD and a 3TB HDD. They are combined into one big crypto LUKS LVM. (I had to do that the hard way, not using the Ubuntu installer.) That's all been absolutely fine since November.

Recently, I ran into the need to dual boot Windows 7 (a VM won't work for the software I need to use). I wanted to prevent the Windows 7 installation from overwriting my Ubuntu bootloader. I disconnected both my Ubuntu drives (sda and sdb), then installed Windows on an entirely separate 2TB HDD, sdc. I figured I could just select the boot device through the BIOS at system startup.

The Windows installation went okay. After that was done, I reconnected my Ubuntu drives. At that point, Windows wouldn't boot. (The Windows bootloader seemed to be confused by the other two drives in the system.) However, If I disconnected the Ubuntu drives, Windows would boot just fine.

At this point, I had to mess around in the BIOS boot menu quite a bit while trying to get different drives to boot. (Honestly, I don't understand this UEFI vs Legacy BIOS stuff.) Ubuntu would boot, but after I entered my password to decrypt the drives, I just got a plain text login prompt, not my Ubuntu desktop. Then before I could even log in to that, the screen would go black and nothing more.

So I downloaded the boot-repair iso, wrote it to a USB drive (looks like it's sdd in the Boot-Info summary). I ran boot-repair and did the recommended repair with all the drives plugged in. Again, this is the boot info summary: http://paste2.org/XcGYK8BB
From inside the boot-repair OS, I could see my Ubuntu drives, and even mount and decrypt them. That's a good sign. However, I could not read the files because I didn't have the correct permission(?).

Anyway, I ran boot-repair. Now Windows won't boot either. It says there's no media, or no OS on the media. Something like that.

I need advice on what to do next. I'm fine with deleting my Windows installation and starting that over. (There's nothing of value there except the time it took to install all the Windows updates.) However, I really don't want to delete or reinstall my Ubuntu unless I'm totally hosed and there are no other ways out.

tl;dr I tried to outsmart the Windows installer but things still got messed up.

[oldfred]

Your Windows in sdc is an UEFI install, your Ubuntu is a BIOS install.
UEFI and BIOS are not compatible. Once you start booting in one mode you cannot switch. Or you cannot use grub to boot another system in different mode.
You can dual boot when in different modes only from UEFI boot menu or perhaps one time boot key. You may have to turn on/off UEFI/CSM settings to match install.

Your UEFI install in sdc shows two efi partitions. With gpt partitioning only the ESP -efi system partition can have the boot flag. Remove boot flag from sdc3. Only with BIOS do you put boot flag on Windows partition and even then only on the one with the Windows boot files.

Since you only had Windows connect, do not know if Windows needs to be sda. Ubuntu uses UUID so more tolerant of drive order changes. If you can boot Windows in UEFI mode after removing second boot flag then it is ok. If not change SATA port order of drives and make Windows drive first drive or first SATA port.

[dalesd]

Thanks, oldfred. Let me make sure I understand.

Here's what I'm going to do.
Boot into my boot-repair USB drive.
That has GParted on it, which I will use to remove the boot flag from sdc3.
Then I will see if Windows will boot. (Do I need to make sure it's booting UEFI?)
If Windows will not boot, I can switch the SATA ports so that I swap sda and sdc, to make Windows sda.

But, back to your opening comments about UEFI and legacy bios being incompatible. Can Windows be installed in Legacy BIOS mode? Then I'd be able to use grub at boot and not need to mess with the motherboard settings. That would be better, right?
I would gladly go through reinstalling Windows to get that functionality. (I think I need to put my optical drive into legacy mode instead of UEFI. Yes? And I may as well make the Windows drive sda at the same time.)

[oldfred]

You must have UEFI on, but probably not Secure boot to boot Windows.

How you boot install media, both Ubuntu & Windows is then how it installs. So see if you can boot Windows installer in BIOS/CSM/Legacy mode.
You may have to erase drive and repartition.
Windows only boots from gpt partitioned drives with UEFI.
Windows only boots from MBR partitioned drives with BIOS.
UEFI should show two boot options for flash drives (and DVD?), one UEFI: and one not.
And Windows does not correctly convert a gpt drive to BIOS and then Linux tools see both MBR & gpt backup partition table and get confused. Linux has a tool fixparts to erase the backup gpt data, or you can use gdisk.

If your hardware is the newer UEFI based, there are some minor advantages to gpt & UEFI. I started converting drives to gpt several years ago since Ubuntu will boot in either BIOS or UEFI from a gpt drive. But I added both the ESP(UEFI) & a bios_grub (BIOS) partition. So later I could convert drive to UEFI without having to do major partition restructuring.

GPT Advantages (older but still valid) see post#2 by srs5694:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1457901
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...antages_of_GPT
http://askubuntu.com/questions/62947...br-why-not-mbr
UEFI Advantages
http://askubuntu.com/questions/44696...y-vs-uefi-help
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified...ware_Interface

[dalesd]

I'm back. I successfully decrypted and mounted and backed up all my data on my Ubuntu drives (sda and sdb) but have been unable to get Ubuntu to boot.

http://paste.ubuntu.com/12311791/

sda is my small fast SSD and sdb is my big slow HDD.

(Windows is off the table. This is a single boot, Ubuntu only system.)

I've tried a shotgun approach with boot-repair. Try this, see if it will boot. No? Try something else. Repeat. I'm not making progress.

sda5 is an encrypted LUKS. The lvm calls it ubuntu-vg-root. My /home is inside there. sdb is set up similarly. It has an encrypted LUKS with an lvm bulk-bulk-storage. Within the boot-repair live environment, I can decrypt and mount both of those, then decrypt my /home with 'sudo ecryptfs-recover-private'. (My login password doesn't work to decrypt that, which is troubling, but I have the 30-something character hex key, and that works.)

boot-repair seems to have trouble figuring out what's going on with my system.

Under advanced settings, which boxes should I check? Reinstall GRUB? Restore MBR?
Where should GRUB be located? On sda or sda1?
Which MBR options should I select?

[oldfred]

Boot-Repair has trouble parsing LVM with encryption. You need to make sure you have mounted & unencrypted your LVM partitions.

You install grub to a drive's MBR or select sda. If system is otherwise working just installing to MBR fixes minor issues. But sometimes a full uninstall/reinstall of grub fixes bigger issues with grub. But it looks like Boot-Repair was trying to run fsck? Do you have partition corruption issues?

Grub will not install to sdc as it is gpt partitioned. If you wanted a grub installed to it you have to have an ESP for UEFI boot or a bios_grub partition for UEFI boot.

With encryption, you must have really good regular backup procedures. Recovery of data is difficult after file corruption or impossible if passphrase is not accepted.