Removing dual boot ?

[lucasart]

Hello everyone,

I have installed Ubuntu 10.04 first. Then I installed another distribution, to play with it and see if I liked it: Lubuntu 10.04. That means my hard drive looks like this now



lucas@lucas-desktop:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 358G 6.3G 333G 2% /
none 2.0G 296K 2.0G 1% /dev
none 2.0G 116K 2.0G 1% /dev/shm
none 2.0G 84K 2.0G 1% /var/run
none 2.0G 0 2.0G 0% /var/lock
none 2.0G 0 2.0G 0% /lib/init/rw
/dev/sda6 89G 1.6G 83G 2% /media/9a57ce41-9d60-43be-a9ba-519fc6f331a4


In green is my Ubuntu that I wish to keep. In red is Lubuntu that I want to remove. And in blue, I imagine is the part called "swap" when I installed Ubuntu, that would remain unchanged. So what I want to do precisely is as follows:

1/ Delete the partition /dev/sda6
2/ resize the partition /dev/sda1 to take the space that it freed
3/ reconfigure the GRUB so that I don't get asked to dual boot and it goes back directly in Ubuntu as it would prior to installing Lubuntu.

Any idea how to do all this ?

[thahir1986]

I also installed dual boot (ubuntu 9.04 and 8.04). First i had the ubuntu 9.04 and after that i installed the ubuntu 8.04 for some specific reason. After i had removed the ubuntu 8.04 i can't boot into the ubuntu 9.04. and then i reconfigure the grub thru 9.04 live cd...

So u r correct.....

[lucasart]

I also installed dual boot (ubuntu 9.04 and 8.04). First i had the ubuntu 9.04 and after that i installed the ubuntu 8.04 for some specific reason. After i had removed the ubuntu 8.04 i can't boot into the ubuntu 9.04. and then i reconfigure the grub thru 9.04 live cd...

So u r correct.....

Erm... So how do you first remove a partition ? is there a simple command to do it ?
I've looked at the manual page of the fdisk command, and it's typically written by geeks for geeks, and incomprehensible to humans...

Anf then resize ?

[varunendra]

I've looked at the manual page of the fdisk command, and it's typically written by geeks for geeks, and incomprehensible to humans...
Soooo... funny ! :lol:

The easiest way to do what you want is to use GParted. Boot from CD, goto System>Administration>GParted.
Delete sda6 (make sure it is the one where Lubuntu is installed). Creating a new partition would be better than shifting/resizing the existing ones.

Now reboot into installed Ubuntu 10.04 and run:

sudo update-grub
Be careful while using gparted. While it is very easy to use, making a wrong selection can ruin both your installations. If you have any doubts or want to play safe, run and post the output of the following script:
http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net/
(courtesy of Forum member Meierfra)


EDIT: Oh well.... the output of the above script is quite comprehensible to humans - be assured!! :D

[lucasart]

Soooo... funny ! :lol:

The easiest way to do what you want is to use GParted. Boot from CD, goto System>Administration>GParted.
Delete sda6 (make sure it is the one where Lubuntu is installed). Creating a new partition would be better than shifting/resizing the existing ones.

Now reboot into installed Ubuntu 10.04 and run:

sudo update-grubBe careful while using gparted. While it is very easy to use, making a wrong selection can ruin both your installations. If you have any doubts or want to play safe, run and post the output of the following script:
http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net/
(courtesy of Forum member Meierfra)


EDIT: Oh well.... the output of the above script is quite comprehensible to humans - be assured!! :D

Thanks for gparted. It doesn't seem to be able to modify mounted partitions so I have to do it from a CD live boot indeed: I can't just cut the grass under my feet obviously, but neither can I resize the lawn and make it bigger ;-) - that's more like human language, lol

Unfortunately it's a bit more complicated. Once the Lubuntu sda6 is removed and the Ubuntu sda1 is resized to take that space, I reboot... and... bad luck

I end up in a grub command line mode, where all I can do is type grub commands... Obviously I don't speak grub. Do you happen to know how to say in grub language that I want the default boot to happen on sda1 instead of sda6 ? (which is dead now, explaining the crash on hd boot).

[oldfred]

Your grub in the MBR must have used the Lunbuntu to boot??

You can reinstall grub from the liveCD

How to restore the Ubuntu/XP/Vista/7 bootloader (Updated for Ubuntu 9.10)
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1014708

Install from LiveCD install on sda5 and want grub2 in drive sda's MBR:
Find linux partition, change sda5 if not correct, and/or even sda if sdb wanted:
sudo fdisk -l
sudo mkdir /mnt/sda1
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda
If that returns any errors run:
sudo grub-install --recheck --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda

I am not one to like very large system partitions. Filecheck can take forever although ext4 is quicker. Many prefer a separate /home or I prefer seperate /data partitions as I do multiple installs, so far all Ubuntu.