No boot after Boot-Repair-Disk

[fbr]

Hi eveyone, installed v. 2.2 as sda11 on multiboot with winXP, 2xMints and 2xUbuntus and all is fine. But after running Boot-Repair-Disk to change boot order I get 'error: filename expected. Press any key to continue' but no booting. Enter brings back the boot menu. The other OS'es boot as normal. PC is 4 core HP Z400. What to do?, I am no expert. Thanks in advance.

[N4RPS]

Hello!

How did you run boot-repair? Did you burn a boot-repair CD, and boot from THAT? I ask because *I* also tried using the boot-repair CD, and it didn't work for ME, EITHER.

To use boot-repair, I have to boot with a Linux Lite Live CD/DVD, add the boot-repair PPA, do a sudo apt-get update, then do a sudo apt-get install. After all that, I can THEN successfully run boot-repair.

Hope this helps...

73 DE N4RPS
Rob

[gold_finger]

Sounds like Boot-Repair may have ended up putting boot control with one of the other distros.  LL's grub needs to be the one in control to have all of them boot properly without having to jump through hoops.

You can try Boot-Repair again from live LL as recommended by N4RPS.  That may work (but I'm not sure).  If it doesn't work, then an easy way to get everything working is as follows:

1.  Figure out ahead of time which partition is the LL root partition and write that down (eg. /dev/sda5, sda10, whatever).

2.  Boot with LL live DVD/USB.

3.  Open a terminal and enter this command to mount the LL root partition to the live environment.  (Substitute the correct LL partition number in place of "X".  If you have more than one drive and the LL root is on a different drive, make sure the drive letter is correct too.  Eg. sda, sdb, sdc.)

Code:

sudo mount /dev/sdaX /mnt

4.  Now install grub using the following command.  (Make sure the drive letter is correct if its not /dev/sda.  There is no partition number at the end of this command.)

Code:

sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sda

5.  Unmount the root partition.  (Substitute your correct one again.)

Code:

sudo umount /dev/sdaX

6.  Shutdown and reboot without the live DVD/USB.


It should boot into LL now, but may not list all of the other boot choices.  If you don't see the other boot choices after restart, open a terminal (while booted into your installed LL) and enter this command to update grub and add them to the menu:

Code:

sudo update-grub

Next reboot will show all choices.

[N4RPS]

Hello!

Once they get the bootloader sorted out (I always put it in the MBR of the drive I'm booting from), they can install and use Grub Customizer to set the default OS to boot to. If grub-customizer is installed, boot-repair will remove it, but if grub2-splashimages has also been installed (GRUB backgrounds), they remain in /usr/share/images/grub...

73 DE N4RPS
Rob

[gold_finger]

Once they get the bootloader sorted out (I always put it in the MBR of the drive I'm booting from), ....

Just to clear up any possible confusion for fbr -- this is generally what happens during boot up:

• Push power button to turn computer on
  
• Code residing on motherboard carries out an initial check of components, then points to the MBR of hard drive to continue boot process.
  
• MBR of drive contains only initial files needed to continue booting, then points to somewhere on the disk where the rest of needed files are to finish booting into the OS.
  
• The rest of boot files will either be on a special boot partition, or on the root partition of the OS.
  

Both Boot-Repair (that you tried before) and method I outlined above install code to the MBR.  The difference is that Boot-Repair seems to have pointed from the MBR to the root partition of a different distro to finish booting vs. my method explicitly tells it to point to the root partition for Linux Lite.

Because of some customization done to grub files in Linux Lite, ability to boot into LL won't work properly if a different distro's root partition finishes the install.  You'll end up getting the message you got.  If LL's root is the one in charge of booting you won't have any problems.  So easiest fix is to make sure LL is the one in charge of booting.

[N4RPS]

Hello!

I guess that LL, like Windows, wants to 'rule the roost'. My bad.

I don't always pick the best way to do something. I only try to share, to the best of my ability, what has worked for me in the past.

Like anyone else, I am ALWAYS 'game' on learning better ways to do things...

73 DE N4RPS
Rob

[fbr]

N4RPS and gold_finger, thanks a lot for your  prompt help.

Running Boot-Repair from a live session did not help, whereas the recipe of gold_finger has brought back the boot menu from before I ran Boot-Repair and allows me to boot into LL.

The reason I ran Boot-Repair in the first place was that it puts sda5 at the top of the list and also defaults to that. I now have LL in sda11 on top, but that is a minor thing.

Apparently LL is different from many other distros when it comes to booting.

Thank you both
Frits

[gold_finger]

I guess that LL, like Windows, wants to 'rule the roost'. My bad.

Yes, LL does like to "rule the roost" -- not "your bad" though.  Here is Jerry's post explaining why he tweaked grub that way:  https://www.freecinema2022.gq/forums/index...31#msg2431.

I don't always pick the best way to do something. I only try to share, to the best of my ability, what has worked for me in the past.

There was nothing wrong with your post.  I just didn't want fbr to think that only one of the two ways installs code to the MBR.  Also, since Boot-Repair runs the fix automatically and he has more than one distro installed, I had a feeling that it might not pick the correct Root partition to point to when repairing.  (I don't know what it does in that situation -- maybe it just picks the first Root partition it finds?)

Running Boot-Repair from a live session did not help, ....

The reason I ran Boot-Repair in the first place was that it puts sda5 at the top of the list and also defaults to that. I now have LL in sda11 on top, but that is a minor thing.

If you want to change boot order, easiest way would probably be to follow N4RPS's recommendation and install Grub Customizer to your LL installation.

Just out of curiosity, can you post back with the output of this command to show your partition structure on the HDD?

Code:

sudo parted -l

(Command ends with a lowercase letter "L", not a number 1.)

I'm wondering if your sda5 is the first Linux root partition on the drive like I speculated above (regarding Boot-Repair behavior).

Apparently LL is different from many other distros when it comes to booting.

Yes, see link above for explanation.


P.s.  Stupid me just realized (after the fact) that I had the mount line in step #3 wrong.  Had "sudo mount /dev/sdX /mnt" when it should have been "sudo mount /dev/sdaX /mnt".  Obviously fbr was smart enough to catch that on his own -- good job fbr!

[fbr]

Model: ATA ST3500418AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start  End    Size    Type      File system    Flags
1      32.3kB  36.1GB  36.1GB  primary  ntfs            boot                  winXP system
3      36.1GB  116GB  80.2GB  primary  ntfs                                    data
4      116GB  490GB  374GB  extended
5      116GB  148GB  31.5GB  logical  ext4                                      Mint Mate
10      179GB  200GB  21.2GB  logical  ext4                                    Lubuntu Mate
7      200GB  228GB  28.3GB  logical  ext4                                      Mint XFCE
9      228GB  248GB  20.0GB  logical  ext4                                      Lubuntu
11      248GB  269GB  21.0GB  logical  ext4                                    Lite
12      269GB  290GB  21.0GB  logical  ext4                                    Lite - to be removed
8      386GB  484GB  97.8GB  logical  ntfs                                      temporary data
6      484GB  490GB  6424MB  logical  linux-swap(v1)
2      490GB  500GB  9708MB  primary  ext4                                  win restore

Mint Mate is what I normally use, but I check out other distros from time to time to see which is the more responsive.

I will have to study the Grub Optimizer thing more closely sometime to be sure I understand it. For now I live with the boot order at hand.

And I did catch the missing 'a' in step 3. That was an easy one even for an amateur like me.

Thanks again
Frits

[gold_finger]

Thanks for the output.  Mint Mate is the first root partition, so it looks like that is what Boot-Repair uses when faced with multiple distro systems.

Just for future reference, if you ever decide to eliminate LL and want booting to be controlled by Mint again, boot into Mint before deleting LL and enter this in a terminal to take back control of booting:

Code:

sudo grub-install /dev/sda

That way you switch control back beforehand instead of having to use a "live" DVD (or Boot-Repair) after the fact.

Also, if you install other distros to the drive and don't want to mess up LL's control of booting, just make sure you point the installation of boot loader for the new distro to the new distro's Root partition instead of /dev/sda.  After install, just boot into LL again and use following terminal command to update the grub menu to include the newly installed distro:

Code:

sudo update-grub

I don't use Grub Customizer, so can't give any guidance on how it works.  Maybe N4RPS or others can give pointers for its use.