Why GNU/Linux Rocks

[sgreger1]

Alright, I'm just gonna go with it. I'm not backing this up with any web information, so do it at your own risk. Your data partitions should be fine, and the absolute worst thing that'll happen is you lose boot to both O/Ss. That can be fixed, but you have to be prepared to do it. Boot to the LiveCD, and check the partition you have Ubuntu on. There should be a folder in there called boot. If that's the case, open the terminal, and do the fdisk -l deal just to confirm the device Ubuntu is on(/dev/sdb). I believe shikitohno's right, but it always pays to check first. Assuming that's right, do the commands above...

sudo grub-install /dev/sdb
update-grub

then reboot. hopefully it'll put you at the GRUB boot menu, but I'm not 100% sure that it will :^/

Jesus Christ. I don't have a Win7 OS CD so if I lose both of them I am completely screwed. Oh well, here goes nothing.

Edit: Wait, why am I installing to dev/sdb if it is on the first drive, can you confirm that I should be doing it on the sdb?


Here is a breakdown of my partitions btw:




It seems to have shrunk it, see the larger version here: http://i817.photobucket.com/albums/z...Partitions.jpg

[lxskllr]

Do it from the terminal in the liveCD fdisk -l will show where everything is, and you can be sure you're speaking the same language since that's where you'll be doing the work.

Edit:
/dev/sdb is assuming that's where Ubuntu is. Use fdisk to determine that, and use whatever it gives you, but omit any numbers at the end.

[shikitohno]

The ArchWiki might look like Arabic now, but learning how to read technical instructions is part of becoming proficient and self-sufficient with linux. For grub2 installation, start here and you can stop at visual configuration, unless you want to do some extra tweaking. All the commands will work for you, save the pacman -S ones. For those, you can replace pacman -S with 'sudo apt-get install whatever.' You can also skip the "Create a GRUB2 Standalone UEFI Application" section. Otherwise, that's the way to get things going again that doesn't involve reinstalling everything. It may look like quite a bit, but it's not as hard as it seems. And the chroot article is pretty much exactly what you'd need to do in order to successfully use chroot, though you don't have to use /mnt/arch, you could make it /mnt/pr0n if you really wanted. Anyway, that's just how I would do it. I'd also recommend this because I'm pretty sure reinstalling won't pull down grub2-uefi by default, so you'll wind up unable to boot again unless you can select grub2-uefi as a package to install during the installation and have it configured then.

Also lx, on both my Arch machine and my Fedora box using GRUB2, update-grub or update-grub2 return command not found. Same goes for grub-update or grub2-update, in case you mixed it up. Perhaps it's one of those patches I hear Debian likes applying in order to keep things working just as they used to. Don't know.

[lxskllr]

Also lx, on both my Arch machine and my Fedora box using GRUB2, update-grub or update-grub2 return command not found. Same goes for grub-update or grub2-update, in case you mixed it up. Perhaps it's one of those patches I hear Debian likes applying in order to keep things working just as they used to. Don't know.

That could be. I've only used it on Debian based systems.

[sgreger1]

Okay posting from my phone now.

I loaded Ubuntu install disc.
Chose "try without installing"

Ubuntu loads up.

Screen turns black a few times, system freezes. I retry.


I need to clarify here if I should be choosing to "try Ubuntu without installing" or of I should press c which takes me to the command line and says "grub>"

If I choose try without installing:

I go to the file explorer and it lists the following:

Data drive: this seems to hold the contents of my second hard drive

SYSTEM: This has the folders "boot" And some log files. another folder labeled "system volume information"

OS: this seems to be all my widows c: drive

/boot: folders grub and lost+found

/ root: Has many folders, one of which is "boot" but unlike the one under "system" it's contents are empty.

/Home: this one has lost+found and my computers username


Is it normal that I can access the files on my c: drive from here? Have I done something wrong? And should I have two boot folders? The one in "system" is filled with lots of folders but the one in /root is empty.

[sgreger1]

I tried pressing "C" when it first booted which took me to the command line where it says "GRUB>" I tried typing fdisk -| but it said invalid syntax.

[lxskllr]

Is it normal that I can access the files on my c: drive from here? Have I done something wrong?

Yea, that's normal. What does fdisk -l give you?

Edit:
from the liveCD terminal

Edit2:
You can likely rescue grub from your prompt above, but I've never done that. Google should help.

[sgreger1]

Yea, that's normal. What does fdisk -l give you?

Edit:
from the liveCD terminal

Edit2:
You can likely rescue grub from your prompt above, but I've never done that. Google should help.

Okay explain real quick what you mean by "liveCD terminal". The only terminal I can get to is by pressing "C" which takes me to the grub command prompt.

Should I first load ubuntu from the disc or go straight to the grub command prompt by pressing "C"?

Note: I may be AFK for about an hour and will return then. Thank you so much for all of your help guys.

[lxskllr]

From the "Try Ubuntu" selection when you boot to the cd. Get into the live environment, and open up your terminal. It'll be in accessories, wherever that is in Unity, and it'll look like my screenshot above.

[sgreger1]

Fdisk -| does nothing. I entered it into the terminal and it just starts on a new line. "> "

[lxskllr]

That's fdisk -L except lower case, and from the live environment, not the limited grub console you get when trying to boot.

[sgreger1]

Oh okay. That doesn't work either but it works if I put "sudo" before it.

Here is what it says. Looks like maye it's on /sdb?

[sgreger1]

Also it says "the fdisk tool has detected a GPT partition on the drive and says that it does not support GPT". What should I do about this? And why does sda6 and sda9 both say "Linux Swap / Solaris"? Did it somehow make two different swap partitions? So it looks like all the partitions at least are on sda, not sure how to tell if ubuntu is on them or not but the partitions are definately on sda (it can't even read my second hard drive, sdb). Edit: Tried this:

sudo grub-install /dev/sdb

Get this error:

/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: Cannot find a device for /boot/grub (is /dev mounted?)

I get the same error if I try /dev/sda.

[lxskllr]

Ok. You'd have to write grub to sda, and it would overwrite the Windows bootloader. The problem is if you want the Windows loader back, you don't have an install disc to do it. I /think/ you can do it from the Windows recovery console when you start up, but I never have.

I'm not confident enough with YOUR machine to tell you to go ahead and do it(write to sda). Shikitohno is more experienced. I wouldn't mind hearing his input.

Regarding the gpt partition... That's the format needed to deal with disks of that size. The old standby was mbr, but it's only good up to 2tb. If you were booting from sdb it would make a difference, but it doesn't for your purposes.

[shikitohno]

It's on /dev/sda. I can guarantee you that you didn't manage to install to an NTFS partition. Ubuntu is on /dev/sda5-9. Try running df -h /dev/sda5 in order to figure out which partition's are which. Just do df -h for each of those linux partitions, and it'll tell you your size so you can figure out which are which.

Also, you're not going to be able to install grub to the disks without mounting them. That was part of the purpose of the chroot I suggested to you earlier. When you chroot, you'll be mounting the necessary parts of the partitions you installed to, and then changing to those partitions as your new root, rather than the liveCD. Also, since your install is on /dev/sda, that's probably where you wan to install grub to. Still, like I said before, a typical grub install will NOT work with a UEFI boot. One way or another, you're going to need to grab the grub2-uefi package and get it installed on your system if you want to be able to boot to Ubuntu. lx should be able to confirm this for me.

And no, not every user has to do this. You're getting extra fun because you've got all sorts of things with your system that are relatively new. UEFI boots have only been implemented since last spring, so this is pretty much the first wave of efforts to work with it in linux. Also, you may as well use grub2-uefi rather than the corresponding grub-uefi package, if such a package even exists. Grub will be deprecated sooner or later, and it'll be easier to just set GRUB2 up once now.