Restoring grub while having separate / and /boot partitions!?

[TheChaos0]

Ok, so I was in need to install XP on top of my Seven and Ubuntu installs, afterwards as expected I lost grub.

Now I tried to get it back using the obvious method of using live cd and grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda

The only problem is / and /boot are actually 2 separate partitions. Here are my partitions, where sda5 is /boot and sda6 is /. I don't actually know what to do now :lolflag: Help. :)


Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2613 20988891 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 2614 3952 10755517+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 3953 8796 38909430 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 5292 8796 28153881 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 3953 3965 104359+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 3966 5291 10651063+ 83 Linux

[oldfred]

You also have to mount the /boot partition as part of the grub reinstall. Many posts do not include that as having a separate /boot for standard desktops is not required nor preferred. Some just have it as a foot note like this one:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#Reinstalling%20GRUB%202

If separate /boot
sudo mount /dev/sda6 /mnt
sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/boot
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda

[TheChaos0]

That makes total sense. I actually needed to mount /home too. But now that I done it, all I get is a black screen with a flickering _ ,instead of a grub menu.

Any ideas?

[oldfred]

Sometimes the simple reinstall does not work but the full chroot does.

Lets see what is where to see if something is missing:
Boot Info Script courtesy of forum member meierfra
Page with instructions and download:
http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net/
Paste results.txt, then highlight entire file and click on # in edit panel(code tags) to make it easier to read.
Or You can generate the tags first by pressing the # icon in the post's menu and then paste the contents between the generated [ code] here [ /code] tags.

Grub Rescue Prompt Megathread - drs305
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1594052
chroot & grub uninstall & reinstall
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1581099

[TheChaos0]

Well, I figured out what the problem was. It seems that XP when installing decided to delete one of the partitions, I guess it all messed everything else.

I simply recovered the partition and then reinstalled Linux completely, seemed like the best and fastest solution at the time.

Once again thanks for the help.