HowTo: Revert from grub2 to Legacy Grub.

[dwasifar]

For that matter I still rather like lilo for thumb drives - call me retro

Yeah, that's a stitch.

I upgraded two machines in place yesterday - one normal Ubuntu installation and one Ubuntu server. Interestingly, on those machines, grub2 was not installed. Grub is still in use on them. I was clued in because one kept prompting me what to do with menu.lst and asking me if I wanted to install the package maintainer's version, and I was thinking, why would it be installing that?

Does anyone know if upgrades were setting up grub2 when Karmic first came out in October?

[kansasnoob]

Yeah, that's a stitch.

I upgraded two machines in place yesterday - one normal Ubuntu installation and one Ubuntu server. Interestingly, on those machines, grub2 was not installed. Grub is still in use on them. I was clued in because one kept prompting me what to do with menu.lst and asking me if I wanted to install the package maintainer's version, and I was thinking, why would it be installing that?

Does anyone know if upgrades were setting up grub2 when Karmic first came out in October?

Upgrades from Jaunty w/legacy grub stay on legacy grub. Only fresh installs get grub2, but you can change to grub2 if you wish.

[mikemikemike]

Thank you sooo much for this post. My stupid Grub2 was getting stuck at the Grub menu not counting down and no auto selecting. And I had to hit enter everytime. (Yes, I am that lazy, or maybe I just like things to work the way they were designed to.)

But anyway thank you so much.

[funkwurm]

Thanks for this tutorial, I too run into Grub 2 trouble after updating my Ubuntu (even when I deselect the new kernel, which seemed to cause the problem at first).

I need a little help figuring out which harddrive to install grub to, because I have an unusual configuration.

I use Wubi to install Ubuntu, and I can't switch to a physical partition just like that because I'm using a MacBook Pro.

Before Grub2, Wubi was the ideal solution to have a triple-boot system (Mac OS, Win XP, Ubuntu) without having to replace Apple firmware with rEFIt and manually creating partitions in the terminal and what not.

So what I know is that on this Mac, sda1 is where EFI resides, sda2 is where Mac OS X is installed and sda3 is the Windows partition. So I think I don't wanna install grub to sda or sda0, because that'll screw Apple's EFI and partition-table etc.

So can I just do this?

sudo grub-install /dev/sda3

If not, how would I go about figuring out where Wubi installed Grub 2? Is it in a config-file? Is it in the load-letter?

Thanks so much for the help in advance.

[kansasnoob]

Thanks for this tutorial, I too run into Grub 2 trouble after updating my Ubuntu (even when I deselect the new kernel, which seemed to cause the problem at first).

I need a little help figuring out which harddrive to install grub to, because I have an unusual configuration.

I use Wubi to install Ubuntu, and I can't switch to a physical partition just like that because I'm using a MacBook Pro.

Before Grub2, Wubi was the ideal solution to have a triple-boot system (Mac OS, Win XP, Ubuntu) without having to replace Apple firmware with rEFIt and manually creating partitions in the terminal and what not.

So what I know is that on this Mac, sda1 is where EFI resides, sda2 is where Mac OS X is installed and sda3 is the Windows partition. So I think I don't wanna install grub to sda or sda0, because that'll screw Apple's EFI and partition-table etc.

So can I just do this?

sudo grub-install /dev/sda3

If not, how would I go about figuring out where Wubi installed Grub 2? Is it in a config-file? Is it in the load-letter?

Thanks so much for the help in advance.

You might find some helpful info in the results of the Boot Info Script:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1291280

Unfortunately I know very little about Wubi and even less about Mac.

[Gannin]

This reminds me of the old article on how to install the nVidia drivers from the nVidia site. There were 50 steps too many and it had you do a bunch of stuff you didn't need to do.

I don't like Grub 2 because it's buggy on my system and doesn't work properly. But Grub 1 works just fine.

To revert back to Grub 1, all you have to do is go to System > Administration > Synaptic, do a search for Grub, and click to install it. That'll automatically remove Grub 2. Then on the command line, issue the command "sudo update-grub", say yes to create menu.lst, then "sudo grub-install hd0" and you're done. That even leaves you with the option of chainloading into the leftover Grub 2 files from the Grub boot menu.

[kansasnoob]

This reminds me of the old article on how to install the nVidia drivers from the nVidia site. There were 50 steps too many and it had you do a bunch of stuff you didn't need to do.

I don't like Grub 2 because it's buggy on my system and doesn't work properly. But Grub 1 works just fine.

To revert back to Grub 1, all you have to do is go to System > Administration > Synaptic, do a search for Grub, and click to install it. That'll automatically remove Grub 2. Then on the command line, issue the command "sudo update-grub", say yes to create menu.lst, then "sudo grub-install hd0" and you're done. That even leaves you with the option of chainloading into the leftover Grub 2 files from the Grub boot menu.

But having "mixed" grub2 and legacy grub files in /boot/grub interferes with a few things. You'll see when kernels don't update properly, or you can't get all functions of Startup Manager to work properly, etc

OTOH you could write your own how-to.

[Gannin]

But having "mixed" grub2 and legacy grub files in /boot/grub interferes with a few things. You'll see when kernels don't update properly, or you can't get all functions of Startup Manager to work properly, etc

OTOH you could write your own how-to.

Actually, everything works just fine for me. And, as I mentioned before, because the old Grub 2 files are still there, you automatically get a new entry in the Grub boot menu titled "Chainload into Grub 2" that lets you boot into your Grub 2 configuration if you really want to. It's automatically setup to work this way.

[kansasnoob]

Actually, everything works just fine for me. And, as I mentioned before, because the old Grub 2 files are still there, you automatically get a new entry in the Grub boot menu titled "Chainload into Grub 2" that lets you boot into your Grub 2 configuration if you really want to. It's automatically setup to work this way.

Well, don't be surprised if "update-grub" fails to pick up a kernel update

[Gannin]

Well, don't be surprised if "update-grub" fails to pick up a kernel update

Actually, I've been using Grub 1 using the method I outlined above ever since 9.10 came out, and it automatically picks up every kernel update and adds it to the Grub boot menu. Similarly, if I remove an old kernel, it'll automatically remove that kernel's entries from the Grub menu too . So as I said, it works fine. It automatically gives you the option of chainloading into your old Grub 2 files, and it automatically updates the Grub boot menu with the addition and removal of kernels.