Dual boot-grub2 disappears every week !

Please tell do you have installed Ubuntu from Windows using Wubi (not suggested)...?

If the answer is: "no i boot the pc entirely from Ubuntu install cd", do you have verified the md5sum of the downloaded iso image BEFORE to burn it on the cd...?

Welcome to Ubuntu

Additionally, if you are new to Ubuntu, i recommend reading through the Ubuntu Manual, it's very informative:

http://ubuntu-manual.org/

Click on the "download Button" to download the latest PDF version.

Thank you

hi,

our it guy installed mint (to learn), open suse (for specific rpm software) and then windows xp (for working ; ) ). Grub was the green mint one. Now, i wanted ubuntu 10 instead of mint (better update mnger), so put ubuntu (no specifications) on mint partition easily. Restart ok, old looking grub, but working for all systems. Going home, windows wants to instal 14 updates before closing. Next day still ok, but today no grub anymore, just endless restart... Nice week end start

can i easily put ubuntu on a 4gb usb stick to do this live cd startup ?

Thanks

greg

hi,

our it guy installed mint (to learn), open suse (for specific rpm software) and then windows xp (for working ; ) ). Grub was the green mint one. Now, i wanted ubuntu 10 instead of mint (better update mnger), so put ubuntu (no specifications) on mint partition easily. Restart ok, old looking grub, but working for all systems. Going home, windows wants to instal 14 updates before closing. Next day still ok, but today no grub anymore, just endless restart... Nice week end start

can i easily put ubuntu on a 4gb usb stick to do this live cd startup ?

Thanks

greg

hi,

our it guy installed mint (to learn), open suse (for specific rpm software) and then windows xp (for working ; ) ). Grub was the green mint one. Now, i wanted ubuntu 10 instead of mint (better update mnger), so put ubuntu (no specifications) on mint partition easily. Restart ok, old looking grub, but working for all systems. Going home, windows wants to instal 14 updates before closing. Next day still ok, but today no grub anymore, just endless restart... Nice week end start

can i easily put ubuntu on a 4gb usb stick to do this live cd startup ?

Thanks

greg

Here some general info on howto made a bootable usb stick with ubuntu on it...

Download ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso from http://releases.ubuntu.com/lucid/
please prefer the torrent protocol to download the iso image

BE SURE to put on the usb stick using unetbootin http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ a valid md5 verified iso image.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM

if the md5 of downloaded iso image doesn't match with the md5sum on this page:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/lucid/MD5SUMS

please download the iso.torrent image using the torrent protocol from here:
http://releases.ubuntu.com/lucid/

If you are using Windows, install Deluge torrent client: http://deluge-torrent.org/
if you are using Ubuntu you have already trasmission installed to manage the .torrents files (you can also install Deluge on Ubuntu).

The torrent protocol have good download errors checking, downloading using the http or ftp protocol may result with a file with errors in it.
( This is the main reason to ALWAYS check the md5sum of downloed iso images before to burn it to a cd or to tranfert on a usb stick ) .

Here a video on installing ubuntu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaqaDZZ_P0g&feature=fvw

Additionally, if you are new to Ubuntu, i recommend reading through the Ubuntu Manual, it's very informative:

http://ubuntu-manual.org/

Click on the "download Button" to download the latest PDF version.

Hi Marcobra,

thanks for all this, but ubuntu is already installed, so just need to get the grub back most likely from the live CD ?

I found many confusing things online, so would need a final easy strategy to restore the choice of systems. Does ubuntu put the grub before ubuntu partition automatically ? Or where should I try to put it back ?

thanks

http://www.ubuntu-inside.me/2009/06/howto-recover-grub2-after-windows.html

Ok, marcobra, believe it or not I managed to get a grub back through bootable usb stick with ubuntu on it, but weird enough its the mint one and mint is there again, but no ubuntu ! Ok for now, as I can use windows again.... pfiew

But I need to learn ubuntu !

How can I see easily which OS is on wich partition (fdisk just tells me I have 4 linux partitions...). I think I put thr grub before mint partition (as I thought it was completely replaced by ubuntu)

Weird system this linux.... But already thanks fro the help !

Greg

The trick is to somehow start the ubuntu you have installed on your hard disk. I don't currently own a live CD nor can easily make one, but I seem to remember the live CD did contain a boot menu entry that allowed you to boot a Ubuntu system that is already installed on the hard disk.

...As soon as you are there you just have to open a terminal (Accessoires/terminal) and type in the command
sudo update-grub;sudo grub-install

...and everything is set.

Only if it interests you:
On a PC the BIOS after initializing the hardware does load the first 512 byte from the hard disk - which contain the partition table and 256 bytes of program code.
Since 256 bytes is extremely not really much all this program code can archeive is to load the next chunk of program code - containing the code that loads the actual boot loader that is then intelligent enough to load the operating system.

Common problems that are unavoidable on PCs are therefore:
 - 256 byte is enough to hold code that loads a small program. But they are not enough to make this code intelligent enough to search for the rest of the boot loader if this rest of the bootloader has moved. But this almost never is a problem: This rest of the boot loader is kept in the linux partition - and linux knows that it has to reinstall grub if it moves this file.
 - and every time another operating system is updating its boot loader it is overwriting the first 256 bytes of grub.

Found a WIKI page that might help you:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2

1) "How can I definitively get this GRUB to work ? Where should it be installed instead of the Linux Ubuntu (SDA11) partition ?"
sda11! In a terminal, could you type command:
    sudo parted -l
where "-l" is lowercase "-L".
After each printed partition, could you add what it contains (Ubuntu, Mint, "/boot").
2) "However, now every week my GRUB disappears again !"
What do you mean ?
a) There is a seldom bug in which Windows XP reinstalled itself in boot. Is this bug ?
b) Grub failed to boot after restart. In this case, could you describe precisely errors.

If you want to manage many Linux OS, perhaps it should be best to make a dedicated partition for "/boot", and to install Grub in it. You will have less problem if you remove or add Linux distros. Another solution (which is one I used) is using virtual machines. It's a little less efficient (if you don't use 3D) and avoid complex multi boot.

To summarize, I need a global view of your situation to help you.

 I would opt for item 2a) in the post above: If grub is working once there is no reason why it should ever break:
The only ways to break it in the way described in the bug description I know about would be
 - moving the contents of the /boot directory to another place on the hard disk (a hard disk defragmentation utility that is unaware of grub might be able to do that, but since such an utility is normally unnecessary using linux I never have heard of anybody even trying to install one)
 - manually moving the /boot directory to another place in the filesystem
 - or having installed another operating system that for some reason at all overwrites things it does not even own.

In this case locking the windows system inside a virtual machine that hinders it from changing anything it should not access might be an option if finding out what triggers the bug isn't successful.

@PeterPall: Problem is not to opt for an option, problem is to gather data to identify which is Gregory's problem.