Everything got screwed when i installed pclinuxos

[Zireth ZH]

Hey guys.. i had 3 OS installed before i decided to install pclinuxos...

I had ubuntu, mint and win 7... now i cant boot non of em having pclinuxos installed in a newly created partition... grub only shows pclinuxos and nothing else... please help.. i cant even see my other partitions .. installed pclinuxos as root ... sorry im a nub..

please help

[wojox]

Try Reinstalling from LiveCD (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#Reinstalling%20from%20LiveCD)

[Zireth ZH]

Try Reinstalling from LiveCD (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#Reinstalling%20from%20LiveCD)

i only got pclinuxos live usb .. will this work ? im lost lol

[ajgreeny]

No, I don't think that will help as PCLinuxOS has legacy grub, as far as I can make out. You really need a live CD with grub2 on it, so Mint or Ubuntu would be fine. However if you can find all the details of the partitions of ubuntu and mint using PCLinuxOS, it should be possible to add the entries for them into the PCLinuxOS menu.lst file.

In PCLinuxOS run
fdisk -l as root, and also
blkidagain as root. I know very little about that distro, so will have to leave you to deal with running commands as root, but I suspect it needs "su" to get root privileges, then run the commands, and report back here the output of those.

You can change the OS that supplies grub once you have booted to either Mint or Ubuntu by running
sudo grub-install /dev/sda assuming that grub is on the MBR of your first disk.

[Zireth ZH]

No, I don't think that will help as PCLinuxOS has legacy grub, as far as I can make out. You really need a live CD with grub2 on it, so Mint or Ubuntu would be fine. However if you can find all the details of the partitions of ubuntu and mint using PCLinuxOS, it should be possible to add the entries for them into the PCLinuxOS menu.lst file.

In PCLinuxOS run
fdisk -l as root, and also
blkidagain as root. I know very little about that distro, so will have to leave you to deal with running commands as root, but I suspect it needs "su" to get root privileges, then run the commands, and report back here the output of those.

You can change the OS that supplies grub once you have booted to either Mint or Ubuntu by running
sudo grub-install /dev/sda assuming that grub is on the MBR of your first disk.

heres the output .. what now? thx :D

[root@localhost /]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x7987739d

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 15200 122092544 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 15200 30400 122093568 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 30402 60802 244190527+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 30402 40759 83200603+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 45635 60180 116837376 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 60180 60802 4993024 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8 40760 45634 39158406 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order
[root@localhost /]# blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="21b3c1e2-b521-43d8-9756-649e0bb32f5b" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda5: UUID="6CDCBAE2DCBAA5AC" LABEL="Backup Disk" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda6: LABEL="Xfce" UUID="5990120b-ca88-43f7-9cf5-4ec61982606e" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda8: UUID="620cc8ea-6d1b-4968-8c14-00e103c79214" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda7: UUID="691e8fba-6934-4b8b-a971-674e217d2bdb" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda2: UUID="8E2090CC2090BD21" LABEL="Windows 7" TYPE="ntfs"

[Zireth ZH]

You can change the OS that supplies grub once you have booted to either Mint or Ubuntu by running
sudo grub-install /dev/sda assuming that grub is on the MBR of your first disk.

im not sure about that MBR thing.. only thing i know is.. that i installed win 7 first.. then ubuntu .. then mint... does this helps?

[ajgreeny]

I have had a bit of a re-think, and now I suspect the easiest way to proceed is to use PCLinuxOS to download supergrub, burn it to a CD as an image as you would an iso of ubuntu or mint. When you boot from that CD it should allow you to boot from any OS on your machine, so try out what it finds, and when you get to ubuntu or mint run

sudo grub-install /dev/sda
sudo update grub
and grub should then run from ubuntu or mint, and should include PCLinuxOS in the menu.
http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wiki/Main_Page

[Zireth ZH]

I have had a bit of a re-think, and now I suspect the easiest way to proceed is to use PCLinuxOS to download supergrub, burn it to a CD as an image as you would an iso of ubuntu or mint. When you boot from that CD it should allow you to boot from any OS on your machine, so try out what it finds, and when you get to ubuntu or mint run

sudo grub-install /dev/sda
sudo update grub
and grub should then run from ubuntu or mint, and should include PCLinuxOS in the menu.
http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wiki/Main_Page

first ... thanks alot for ur help!

Before u replied i posted the same topic in pclinuxos forums.. they told me to boot pclinuxos livecd .. then go to restore MRB, RMB i dun remember what it was.. it worked.. it seems that it replaced grub 2 for previous version of grub maybe? i can now see both ubuntu and mint in the grub menu.. except win 7 .. got any ideas on how to fix this?



i can go try what u suggested if that fixes my prob..

the last thing is.. i can see my drives in both ubuntu and mint but not in the case of pclinuxos.. what went wrong ?

thanks thanks alot

[Zireth ZH]

OK i solved the problem by using PCC (pc linux control center) `Setup boot system`

Wow so easy... well the grub thing looks awful but at least i can boot all my OS ... ubuntu should get a control center like that and specially that feature in next release, if they dun have a feature lika this... it is good for newbies..

thanks for the help guys

[ajgreeny]

I'm glad you got there in the end.

I know so little about PCLinuxOS that I had no way to know that you could do what you have managed. It seems PCLinuxOS is a good distro to look at again; I last looked about 4 or 5 years ago.

In spite of the many complaints about grub2 in this forum, I find it extremely good, and it has the advantage of finding all OSs after it has been re-installed, simply by running
sudo update-grubLegacy grub does not, or did not do that for you and needed manual edits to add any non detected OSs after installation or re-installation.