How to change the boot sequence in Grub ?

wlaw · 08-09-2013, 10:39 PM

I am running Ubuntu 12.0.4, and would like to change the boot sequence in Grub (I believe). How can this be done ? Thank you !

yancek · 08-09-2013, 11:22 PM

What do you want to change about it? They show on screen in your menu the way they are listed in the grub.cfg file. If you want to change which boots by default, change the entry in /etc/default/grub file:

Quote:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0

You will see a line like the one above. Change the 0 to whichever default you want. Counts from zero rather than one.
If that's not what you're looking for, be more specific.

wlaw · 08-10-2013, 12:10 AM

Thank you !I have two OS, one is Winxp and the other one is Ubuntu, I want to change the default OS to boot is WinXP instead of Ubuntu. But the way, any GUI apps that help ? I don't familiar with the OS and the path and the text editors.

yancek · 08-10-2013, 07:58 AM

Boot Ubuntu. Hold down the Ctrl+Alt+t keys simultaneously. This will open a terminal where you type: sudo cat /boot/grub/grub.cfg. This will open the grub.cfg file. Look at the entries which begin with 'menuentry' and count down to the one for xp. Make a note of it. At the prompt in the terminal, type: sudo gedit /etc/default/grub. This will open that file and you can edit the line I refer to above. Replace the zero (0) with whatever number you have from the xp entry. Save and close and reboot.

273 · 08-10-2013, 08:26 AM

As I understand it Ubuntu uses GRUB2 so editing grub.cfg manually isn't a good idea and won't survive an update to any packages involved in booting either. This thread on the Ubuntu forums explains how to change the default entry, amongst other things:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1302743

colorpurple21859 · 08-10-2013, 09:38 AM

Quote:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub. This will open that file and you can edit the line I refer to above. Replace the zero (0) with whatever number you have from the xp entry. Save and close and reboot

run

Code:

sudo update-grub

before rebooting for the changes to take effect.