How to deal with the new Grub?

Yousuf Khan

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Feb 20, 2010, 10:26:23 PM2/20/10

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I installed a Ubuntu 9.10 on a machine recently from scratch (as opposed
to upgraded to 9.10 from updates). The fresh version has no menu.lst,
but has a bunch of stuff in /etc/grub.conf. And I think that there is
also an /etc/grub.d directory with stuff in it too. Not used to dealing
with this system.

I then had the misfortune of upgrading my Windows XP to Windows 7, and
grub got overwritten on the boot sector. Normally I would not care, as I
have the SuperGrubDisk Autoloader to rebuild the Grub, but this time it
didn't work, as it doesn't understand the new Grub either. What's the
best way to deal with Grub and Windows? I was thinking of creating a
separate /boot filesystem where I could boot directly into Linux. Is
this is the recommended way?

Yousuf Khan

andrew

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Feb 21, 2010, 1:47:44 AM2/21/10

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["Followup-To:" header set to alt.os.linux.ubuntu]

On 2010-02-21, Yousuf Khan <bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote:

> I then had the misfortune of upgrading my Windows XP to Windows 7, and
> grub got overwritten on the boot sector. Normally I would not care, as I
> have the SuperGrubDisk Autoloader to rebuild the Grub, but this time it
> didn't work, as it doesn't understand the new Grub either. What's the
> best way to deal with Grub and Windows? I was thinking of creating a
> separate /boot filesystem where I could boot directly into Linux. Is
> this is the recommended way?

Have a look at this guide:

Grub/XP/Vista Bootloader
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1014708

Andrew

--
Do you think that's air you're breathing?

J.O. Aho

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Feb 21, 2010, 3:07:29 AM2/21/10

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Yousuf Khan wrote:
> I installed a Ubuntu 9.10 on a machine recently from scratch (as opposed
> to upgraded to 9.10 from updates). The fresh version has no menu.lst,
> but has a bunch of stuff in /etc/grub.conf. And I think that there is
> also an /etc/grub.d directory with stuff in it too. Not used to dealing
> with this system.
>
> I then had the misfortune of upgrading my Windows XP to Windows 7, and
> grub got overwritten on the boot sector. Normally I would not care, as I
> have the SuperGrubDisk Autoloader to rebuild the Grub, but this time it
> didn't work, as it doesn't understand the new Grub either.

You can always boot the install CD in rescue mode, when the start up is
finished mount your file system (if it's not done automatically), then chroot
to your file system and execute the grub-installer

> What's the
> best way to deal with Grub and Windows? I was thinking of creating a
> separate /boot filesystem where I could boot directly into Linux. Is
> this is the recommended way?

The separated file system will require you have a boot loader that can load
the kernel, with other words, it won't make any difference from what you have
right now.

You can use the microsoft boot loader to load grub, but if I don't recall it
wrong, this also has problems when it comes to updates.

I would suggest you used VirtualBox and run the microsoft inside it, this way
you can make snapshots each time you install something, if it goes badly, you
can always revert back to the older version before the install.

--

//Aho