[SOLVED] Trouble with GRUB re-installation

[antenor]

Hello all,

I have Windows on sda1 and 2, Lite /, swap and /home on sda3, 5 and 6 and left some unallocated space for experimentation! I installed
there recently a few distros to see what they got in real installation because in VB, apart from being slow, I have to use scroll bars.
In order to avoid troubles with GRUB conflicts I installed each fresh installed distro's GRUB on each one's / and over them all I tried to re-install
Lite's GRUB (please, feel free to laugh!!!). Everything was going according to plan in the terminal, up to the final command "sudo update-grub"
where instead of a glorious boot menu with all the OS listed, I found myself in front of a black screen!
I boot in the live mode trying to mount Lite's / and re-install GRUB, where I see in the terminal that everything is where it supposed to be although
unmounted and as soon as I give the commands "sudo grub-install...." and "sudo update-grub" in the end, it turns back "grub-install: error:
failed to get canonical path of '/cow'
What are the proper commands to fix this and what did I do wrong?

Thank you in advance! 

[gold_finger]

In order to avoid troubles with GRUB conflicts I installed each fresh installed distro's GRUB on each one's / and over them all I tried to re-install
Lite's GRUB

If you installed (grub) boot loader for other distros to their respective root partitions, then all you needed to do is boot back into LL afterwards and run this command to add them to LL grub's boot menu:

Code:

sudo update-grub]

Because of modifications made to LL's grub configuration, trying to boot LL from the grub of a different distro ends up being extremely difficult.  Therefore always a good idea to leave LL's grub in charge of booting the machine (which is what you were trying to do).  In your case, you didn't need to try installing LL's grub to each distro's root partition afterwards (if that's what you were doing) and that ended up just causing problems.

Now, to get LL booting again, boot from live LL disk and follow instructions below in a terminal.  Each line below needs to be entered separately and in the order shown.   [Note: anywhere you see "XY" or "X", change that to the correct drive letter ("X") and partition number ("Y") for your LL root partition.]

Code:

sudo mount /dev/sdXY /mnt
for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i; done
sudo chroot /mnt
grub-install /dev/sdX
update-grub
exit
for i in /sys /proc /dev/pts /dev; do sudo umount /mnt$i; done
sudo umount /mnt

[antenor]

Hello gold_finger,

I can't thank you enough for your immediate and complete reply! I only have to ask you
a) do I type everything you wrote me in my terminal (including "for i", "do", "done", "exit"
and b) don't I have to mount back all of the partitions one by one?

Thank you very much!!! 

[gold_finger]

a) do I type everything you wrote me in my terminal (including "for i", "do", "done", "exit"

Yes.  Do all lines (one at a time) exactly as shown.  (Just need to change /dev/sdXY to whatever your LL root partition is; and /dev/sdX to whatever correct drive letter is.  If not sure which is root partition, run sudo blkid -c /dev/null and look for it in the output.

b) don't I have to mount back all of the partitions one by one?

First command mounts the root partition to the "live" DVD/USB environment.  Last command unmounts it when you're done re-installing grub.  After that shutdown computer and remove live DVD.  Reboot and your installed LL on the hard drive should now boot properly.  If you've got other distros on the drive, they will show-up on the grub boot menu too.

No need to remount anything in live environment if that is what you were asking.  No need to mount any partitions other than the LL root partition to the live environment to repair grub booting.  Only exception to that would be if you had a separate "/boot" partition; but I'm assuming that's not the case because you didn't say you had one.  (If you didn't explicitly create one when you first installed LL, then you don't have one and the boot files are on the root partition.)

[antenor]

Thank you again for your assistance!
I am trying it right away and will send
you feedback!!! 

[antenor]

Thank you so very much dude,

I got my computer back and running extra super!!!!!
You are so excellent!!! 

[gold_finger]

Glad everything worked out.  Welcome to Linux Lite.

[antenor]

With guys like you to support and welcome me I think I will stay here forever!
One thing though is for sure : as soon as I return to Greece I am going to see
how can I send you a donation!!!

[Valtam]

With guys like you to support and welcome me I think I will stay here forever!
One thing though is for sure : as soon as I return to Greece I am going to see
how can I send you a donation!!!

Send it to gold_finger, he is awesome!

[antenor]

Could you make this a bit easier for me? (the donation thing)
I mean send me instructions or a guiding link maybe about it.
All I know is I have to get a credit card and sign in to paypal.
Sorry for asking all these but I am new to everything I guess!
Thank you!