LTS 14.04 and LTS 16.04 installed but no grub menu to choose which version

[mseymour31]

Hello:

I upgraded my machine to have access to 16.04 LTS by creating another partition alongside of my existing 14.04 LTS system and installing 16.04.3 LTS on it.
The installation was actually pretty painless. However, I lost access to the 14.04 LTS version. When I rebooted the system it automatically went to the 16.04 partition instead of letting me select the version.
I then used boot-repair to try and reset the grub setup which now actually boots me automatically into 14.04 LTS. It seems as though the different boot records in the two different partitions are completely separate.
For those of you that might be interested, the boot-repair summary is available at http://paste.ubuntu.com/26546346/ .

Would anybody have any idea how to have the choice between the different versions ?

thanks in advance

Mike.

[yancek]

You do have separate boot files on each Ubuntu partition, that's expected. Boot repair shows you have Grub installed in the MBR of the device on which you have both 14.04 and 16.04 and that code points to the 14.04 partition. The menu file (grub.cfg) for 14.04 has entries for both 14.04 and 16.04 so you should be able to select either on boot. 14.04 of course, is the default which would boot after the 10 second timeout. Not sure what the problem is?

[ajgreeny]

I am confused as you have two separate hard disks, one of 60GB and the other 1TB, which you did not mention.

Have you tried setting first sda and then sdb as priority boot device in the BIOS?
Go into the BIOS and set sda as first device and see if that gets you where you want to be, ie, with both OSs appearing in the grub menu when you start.

You could also run command
sudo update-grub when in either OS and it should add the other OS to the grub menu.

[mseymour31]

The problem is that I don't actually see the Grub menu to choose the version.

If everything else looks okay, the problem is with the display of the menu, not the installation.

[mseymour31]

You do have separate boot files on each Ubuntu partition, that's expected. Boot repair shows you have Grub installed in the MBR of the device on which you have both 14.04 and 16.04 and that code points to the 14.04 partition. The menu file (grub.cfg) for 14.04 has entries for both 14.04 and 16.04 so you should be able to select either on boot. 14.04 of course, is the default which would boot after the 10 second timeout. Not sure what the problem is?

Well, I'm actually not seeing the Grub menu. If everything else is okay, the problem is with the Grub menu display since the configuration is okay.

Would you happen to know what would impede the display of a Grub boot menu ?

[mseymour31]

I am confused as you have two separate hard disks, one of 60GB and the other 1TB, which you did not mention.

Have you tried setting first sda and then sdb as priority boot device in the BIOS?
Go into the BIOS and set sda as first device and see if that gets you where you want to be, ie, with both OSs appearing in the grub menu when you start.

You could also run command
sudo update-grub when in either OS and it should add the other OS to the grub menu.

Hello:

The OS are installed on the 60 GByte SDD disk with space for swap etc, The 1TB disk is just for data and home directories and should not really participate in the boot process.

I'll try the update-grub command and see what happens.

[mseymour31]

Hello:

The OS are installed on the 60 GByte SDD disk with space for swap etc, The 1TB disk is just for data and home directories and should not really participate in the boot process.

I'll try the update-grub command and see what happens.

The update-grub command recognizes both versions but after rebooting still no menu. However, there is a delay that is consistent with the possibility of choosing a distribution.

[Impavidus]

I once had a computer with an invisible grub menu. The monitor showed a message about an incompatible resolution. Fixed it by uncommenting one line in /etc/default/grub:
# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
GRUB_TERMINAL=console
Then run
sudo update-grub
This happened on a very old computer after connecting a very new monitor.