how do i isntall grub from scratch?

[Meow27]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1282057
continueing from this thread, after executing a couple of terminal commands, i got ubuntu installed on one of my harddisk partitions, except i didnt install grub (the guide in that thread was using lilo)

my /boot folder has no stage1 file for grub. it only has 4 files and no grub folder.


how do i go about installing grub on my external harddisc's mbr?

how do i make sure this grub only activates when i select my harddisk from the bios boot menu?

thanks in advance

[Meow27]

im looking at grub4dos, but im not sure whether this grub option is looking realistic. as i want the harddisk's MBR to activate a boot loader on every computer it boots with.

would GAG work for this sort of thing? I find it difficult handling Gag because the way to figure out what boots where is confusing, and doesnt always work (for linux OSes at least)

[lindsay7]

Take a look at SuperGrub and download it from their web site. They have good documentation and this could fix you problem.

[Meow27]

the problem with supergrub disk is that most of the features expect you to have grub installed one way or another..... though it would be great if somebody could direct me to a specific case in thier website

thanks for the reply though

[lindsay7]

You can install grub from synaptic or try

sudo apt-get install grub


Also see,

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GrubHowto

[Meow27]

again it requires a stage1 file... something i dont have.... should i download grub and just shove a stage1.S file in there?

[lindsay7]

See if this helps,

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Installing-GRUB-using-grub_002dinstall.html

[Meow27]

yeah... im starting to think that grub isnt my solution.. it says grub needs ot adjust for the bios of whatever im installing grub in, but does grub do that automatically or is it configured to do it for a specific bios setting?


in any case, my traveling external harddisk cant use this sort of solution.

should i try lilo? or will that give me the same problem?

will i have any problems with the bios if grub is installed in my ubuntu partition as opposed to the mbr?

i was planning to have a couple of livecd's booted in other partitions as well, does that mean my dream of a triple bootable external harddisk is an impossible dream?

edit-------
after reading a bit on lilo it seems that that is also an impossible dream......
.....

[oldfred]

I do not know what you mean by grub adjust for the bios setting? It would only be important for settings using the older root (hdx,y) style, since that may change if your portable is not the same x every time. You would have to use (hdx,y) for windows. But if you set it as first and in BIOS boot your USB drive first it will always be first.

But with grub you can use UUID or label partitions and use the labels to boot. UUID are not supposed to ever change and not to be duplicated but some partition copy programs also copy the UUID so it is a true copy. If you set labels you control if they are unique.

[Meow27]

how do i label partitions?

and is the uuid of my harddisk equivalent ot its serial number?

[lindsay7]

Type blkid in the terminal to get your uuids

You can use Gparted to label your partitions.

[Meow27]

gparted isnt detecting anything in my harddisk for some reason, tested on my desktop as well, i dont remember having this problem..

fdisk works though...

sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sdf: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x515ccb5e

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdf1 1 33387 268181046 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdf2 33388 38913 44387595 5 Extended
/dev/sdf5 33388 34024 5116671 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sdf6 34025 34828 6458098+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdf7 34829 35089 2096451 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdf8 35090 38913 30716280 83 Linux

[Meow27]

i tried this command

its a reiserfs fs


tune2fs -L Nomad /dev/sdg8
tune2fs 1.41.4 (27-Jan-2009)
tune2fs: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sdg8
Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock.

(in this case sdg and sdf are the same)

[mechro]

my /boot folder has no stage1 file for grub. it only has 4 files and no grub folder.


how do i go about installing grub on my external harddisc's mbr?



I think that the grub-install command would install a stage1 file. Try instructions here...

http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/p15.html#Re-install_Grub_with_Live_CD

[Meow27]

thanks for the reply


sudo grub-install /dev/sdg
/dev/sdg does not have any corresponding BIOS drive.

[oldfred]

Herman's site says this:

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/disc /dev/sdf

[Meow27]

Herman's site says this:

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/disc /dev/sdf

am i supposed to substitute anything in that code?

thanks

edit----

what is /media/disc?

[mechro]

am i supposed to substitute anything in that code?

thanks

edit----

what is /media/disc?

Yeah, it's not clear. you have to substitute /media/disc with the path of your root directory. I'll go and have a read of the official Grub manual and see if I can work out what's required.

[mechro]

I assume you're trying to do this from a LiveCD so using Nautilus can you navigate to the folder where your / (root) or /boot folder that you want to set up is located. From the LiveCD it's probably in the /media folder. When you find it tell me the full path to the location.

[Meow27]

i have 4 drives in that harddisk.......

but the issue here isn't much of which partition, but the mbr first.......

it differs since i have two linux filesystems......

but it would either be disk, disk-1

/media/disk/boot
/media/disk/root

[mechro]

Yes the /dev/sdf part is sorting out the MBR but you need to identify the location of where the Grub stuff is going

[Meow27]

i have 4 drives in that harddisk.......

but the issue here isn't much of which partition, but the mbr first.......

it differs since i have two linux filesystems......

but it would either be disk, disk-1

/media/disk/boot
/media/disk/root



Yes the /dev/sdf part is sorting out the MBR but you need to identify the location of where the Grub stuff is going
i edited the post immediatly after posting...

[mechro]

i edited the post immediatly after posting...

What is in disk and disk-1? We're trying to find your Ubuntu installation (I think:confused:)

[Meow27]

one has my installation, the other im planning to use unetbootin to frequently inject different livecds, DVDs into.

i know which drive to refer to.

[mechro]

i know which drive to refer to.

Yes, but we're trying to establish how Grub wants you to refer to it.

So the command should be...

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/disk /dev/sdf

or

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/disk-1 /dev/sdf

[Meow27]

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/disk /dev/sdbgrub-probe: error: Cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sdb8. Check your device.map.

[: 494: =: unexpected operator
Installing GRUB to /dev/sdb as (hd1)...
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /media/disk/boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdb


where do the UUIDs come into the equation here?

[mechro]

where do the UUIDs come into the equation here?

Grub uses UUID's in the /boot/grub/menu.lst file.

[Meow27]

.. i dont have a menu.lst in the drive.....

my primary disk doesnt seem to be affected though

edit:

is there a grub option to reboot? (i dont want to 'just' type sudo reboot)

[mechro]

.. i dont have a menu.lst in the drive.....

my primary disk doesnt seem to be affected though

edit:

is there a grub option to reboot? (i dont want to 'just' type sudo reboot)

OK. I surrender! What with all the confusion over your drive/partition device labels I don't really know what you're trying to achieve. :)

Try this Ubuntu Howto for repairing Grub...

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GrubHowto#Backup

Scroll down to Backup, Repairing and Reinstalling GRUB

Good Luck.

[Meow27]

thanks, but to answer your question,
please refer to the thread linked in the 1st post :3

[mechro]

thanks, but to answer your question,
please refer to the thread linked in the 1st post :3

Ahh! Right, I see. To go back to the original problem, perhaps it's because you were trying to install Karmic which is still beta. Perhaps you should have tried Jaunty.

So the manual install means Ubuntu hasn't generated a menu.lst. To generate one which fits your system is beyond my capabilities. I would go with the GUI part install solution in the Howto although that may mean you're back to the original problem.

[Meow27]

we still aren't in the same page, the commands (ill edit this post later) installed ubuntu in my drive. i seemed to have everything BUT a bootloader.

i didn't bother installing karmic in since its incomplete. but i have installed jaunty on it. this is information i haven't bothered posting.

now i have a stage1 and a stage2 file in the /boot/grub (which exists now thanks to you :3) i just have everything but a menu.lst file. i pasted my primary one to the drive, removed most things and applied the correct UUID for the partition i installed it in. i dont know if its enough though. but again, i haven't tried yet.

-meow

[mechro]

we still aren't in the same page, the commands (ill edit this post later) installed ubuntu in my drive. i seemed to have everything BUT a bootloader.

i didn't bother installing karmic in since its incomplete. but i have installed jaunty on it. this is information i haven't bothered posting.

now i have a stage1 and a stage2 file in the /boot/grub (which exists now thanks to you :3) i just have everything but a menu.lst file. i pasted my primary one to the drive, removed most things and applied the correct UUID for the partition i installed it in. i dont know if its enough though. but again, i haven't tried yet.

-meow

It sounds like you're almost there.

Have you tried booting it yet?

You may still have to tweak the menu.lst and/or do a grup setup (different from grub-install)

[Meow27]

so i loaded the disk into the drive..... AND GRUB WORKED :D

well, sort of.. grub loads but i think my menu.lst is buggy, ill post it. i get a grub 15 error (file not found)

[oldfred]

Grub error 15 is most likely a typo in menu.lst if you manually edited it,
http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/p15.html#15

Herman's site has several recommendations on how to fix.

[Meow27]

still couldnt figure out whats wrong



title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic
uuid 025b9b30-90d0-46aa-a3c3-14d6c51a6a32
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=025b9b30-90d0-46aa-a3c3-14d6c51a6a32 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic (recovery mode)
uuid 025b9b30-90d0-46aa-a3c3-14d6c51a6a32
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=025b9b30-90d0-46aa-a3c3-14d6c51a6a32 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic

title Ubuntu 9.04, memtest86+
uuid 5714963d-98d6-458c-b31a-1f12491db774
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

i just realized.. that the uuid for the memtest is wrong.... will that effect the whole thing? because the main option dont work right now...

[Meow27]

i tihnk i found the problem....

/media/disk/boot$ ls
abi-2.6.28-11-generic grub System.map-2.6.28-11-generic
config-2.6.28-11-generic memtest86+.bin vmcoreinfo-2.6.28-11-generic


is there a way i can manually insert the header files?

[oldfred]

The best way is to have the system do it itself. You have to use a liveCD and chroot or be in your system from the liveCD. You have to know what partition your system is on. Open a terminal and copy these commands. Do not copy any comments # or after # on same line.

Of course you must first know what partition you want to mount, in this example I'm using sda5:

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc/resolv.conf #(may or may not be necessary to establish an internet connection)
sudo chroot /mnt
apt-get update
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade #this updates everything
#apt-get install linux-image-generic
apt-get dist-upgrade #would upgrade you to the latest kernel in the repositories
sudo apt-get install grub #make sure grub is updated & rewrite menu.lst
#Then run whatever commands needed - no sudo needed (maybe good to run "df- H" and "cat /etc/issue" to be certain #you mounted the correct partition).
#When done:

exit
sudo umount /mnt/dev
sudo umount /mnt/proc
sudo umount /mnt

[Meow27]

my method of going about installing the OS on my harddisk apparently is flawed. i forgot that account needed to be created and time settings etc etc etc

im gonna need to find a way to install ubuntu to my harddisk that way (through the terminal only in a certain partition, see link in the 1st post).... or maybe do all of that stuff as is now........

ill need to take a 2 week break on this project. thanks for the help so far guys.
the above post worked, but ubutnu wasn't installed correctly (my fualt)

thanks for everything so far guys!