when Windows destroys GRUB
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A friend of mine had a bad experience after an upgrade of a Microsoft Windows system, which was installed along Trisquel in the same machine, which was sharing and entry in GRUB, as usual.
When he rebooted his machine, there was no more grub and, as he told me, Windows booted automatically and said something like "bad software removed". I couldn't believe that, but effectively, grub had disappeared.
It was a months ago, so I can forget some step, but the solution I found and worked was something like:
* Enter in a live session with a Trisquel CD or USB stick (such as in a standard installation)
* Choose the "Try without installing"-mode
* Mount the filesystem where Trisquel is installed, if it is hda3 then
mount /dev/hda3 /mnt
* Reinstall grub on the correct disk (for example /dev/hda (notice it has no number),selecting the correct place where files will be installed (so you are in a live session and the system doesn't know which /boot partition are you trying to recover). In our example it should be as:
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/hda
It should be reported that nothing wrong seemed to happen, and next time you reboot, you should find grub in first place again.
Please, improve this info and make a manual entry dealing with this problem (I think it may affect to a lot of users). There is a lot of info about this issue in Ubuntu forums.
I am a member!
Not to sound too rude but I can't imagine a community like Trisquel hosting such an article. I get the feeling that the typical consensus in the community is that the best solution to this problem is to remove the problem-causing software (i.e. Windows).
Also IMHO such an article, which more or less helps users run Windows alongside Trisquel, is dangerously close to providing support for non-free software, which we typically avoid doing.
Actually under the guidelines for a free distro (http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html) this sort of documentation is allowed.
If you read their "documentation" section it says "In general, something that helps people who already use nonfree software to use the free software better with it is acceptable, but something that encourages users of the free software to install nonfree software is harmful." It then goes on to say how to setup a dual boot system is ok as well.
So a manual saying how to fix a messed up grub installation when non-free software messes it up should be ok because it would be encouraging people to go back to free software.
As far as Daniel's comment "Please, improve this info and make a manual entry dealing with this problem (I think it may affect to a lot of users). There is a lot of info about this issue in Ubuntu forums."
Currently I am the only active member of the documentation team and I have a lot to get through so I don't know when/if I'll get a chance to do this. The documentation is wikistyle so you can feel free to add it yourself if you want.
> Currently I am the only active member of the documentation team and I have a
> lot to get through so I don't know when/if I'll get a chance to do this. The
> documentation is wikistyle so you can feel free to add it yourself if you
> want.
>
I think that I have no permission for creating a new manual, so if anyone create the entry I could write on it.
Also yes the article/manual would have to be recommending non-free software but encourage users to move to free software.
That is why documentation such as this is allowed (http://trisquel.info/en/wiki/Burn_Trisquel_CD_images)
El 21/06/11 19:09, name at domain escribió:
> A friend of mine had a bad experience after an upgrade of a
> Microsoft Windows system, which was installed along Trisquel in the
> same machine, which was sharing and entry in GRUB, as usual.
>
> When he rebooted his machine, there was no more grub and, as he told
> me, Windows booted automatically and said something like "bad
> software removed". I couldn't believe that, but effectively, grub had
> disappeared.
>
> It was a months ago, so I can forget some step, but the solution I
> found and worked was something like:
>
> [...]
>
> Please, improve this info and make a manual entry dealing with this
> problem (I think it may affect to a lot of users). There is a lot of
> info about this issue in Ubuntu forums.
Hello, <name at domain>:
I found a solution in the Official Ubuntu Documentation [1] that
might help you. Good luck!
[1] http://ur1.ca/nbyt
--
Allan Aguilar
https://gn126.wordpress.com
name at domain
+506 8738 0397
>I found a solution in the Official Ubuntu Documentation [1] that
> might help you. Good luck!
>
> [1] http://ur1.ca/nbyt
Yes, that was the manual I followed months ago.
Maybe our title for our maual entry could have a more generic name such as "Recovering Grub if it brakes" and only dedicate a pair of lines for explaining that it may happen after an upgrade of Windows, reinstallation or other matters.
> Maybe our title for our maual entry could have a more generic name
> such as "Recovering Grub if it brakes" and only dedicate a pair of
> lines for explaining that it may happen after an upgrade of Windows,
> reinstallation or other matters.
"Reinstalling GRUB" would be shorter and probably no one recovers it if
it's not broken. GRUB breaks also after some partition changes,
installing other GNU/Linux distros, etc.
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