Hello. I'm trying to install Linux Mint w/ Cinnamon, but I've tried 3 times, and everytime it fails to install grub. I'm trying to install on a partition that formerly had Fedora on it, and all of the files and folders show up for that partition using file manager. Sorry to all you Fedora users, but Fedora created a partition without asking me, and I had a heck of a time even getting both Linux and Windows 10 to recognize that partition. I've installed just about every "flavor" of Ubuntu, and also Debian, successfully. I'm really wanting to try Mint. Could it be possible that I have to re-download and reload Mint on the startup thumbdrive? Could it be that my thumbdrive is corrupted because of making a startup disk so many times?

Thanks,
PlainDave

Yes, it's possible but there could be other reasons why it's failing. You have windows 10 so, the first thing is to determine whether you are using UEFI/GPT or the older MBR. If you use UEFI and have only one drive, you will have a really difficult time booting both if they are not both installed UEFI.

Files for what? The older Fedora folders/files or the Mint files/folders? You need to post more details such as at what point does the Mint install fails? Does it complete the install but then not boot? Does the installer stop at some point? If so, do you see any error messages?

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Sorry about the "sketchy" details. I'll try to be more concise. I am using UEFI, at least that's what is selected in BIOS. I don't know if this will make any difference, but in addition to having Win10 installed, I also have Ubuntu and Ubuntu-MATE installed, and I'm given the choice of which OS to boot into (upon rebooting). I've booted into Mint without installing it (I can't remember what that's called - live desktop?), and I really like the Cinnamon desktop environment. I really think it might be the distro that I finally use permanently.

Again, sorry. I'm referring to the Mint files and folders. They show up in the partition after the install fails. And the install process goes just fine right up to when it tells me that grub failed to install.

Let me know if you still need more detail.

Possibly doesn't like the fact you already have a "Ubuntu" entry in the NVRAM - Mint also uses "Ubuntu".
Or maybe your EFI partition is already full - check it from one of the Ubuntu systems.

Please tell me how I can check if my EFI partition is already full. Is it a terminal command? Thanks.

Its been a while since I've run multiple installs, so this may not apply anymore...

I always had to rewrite grub after the second or third distro on a drive...

If you have all the details of mint's location, you can rewrite grub using a terminal, from a distro that boots, with vi and that should cure your problem...

Once you have an initial version of grub loaded on the mbr, then all additional distro's can be added, no need to reinstall..

As for the help on how to do it, others here have better memories than I...

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I believe Mint has GParted on the installation DVD. Boot it and open gparted and look for either a partition with the label name EFI or a partition with a FAT32/vfat filesystem. Then from a terminal, mount that partition and take a look in the mount point directory to see what files are there. You might also be able to see it from the file manager by navigating to the /media/username directory (substitute your actual username) and look for a vfat partition by UUID. It will be the 8 character one, uppercase letters and numbers then look in that directory. My understanding is that the major Ubuntu's use the folder or file named ubuntu under the EFI directory so I'm not sure how multiple Ubuntu's would work with EFI, I don't use EFI myself so someone else may have more details on that.

Have you tried booting Ubuntu and running: sudo update-grub?

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I don't use Ubuntu, but it should be mounted at /boot/efi - check "df -hT"

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Thanks to all. "sudo update-grub" fixed the problem.