Unable to install grub

Elcee · 03-11-2017, 10:18 AM

Trying to instal linux mint 18.1 dual booting with Win10. Grub not installing . Tried mounting partition and load from live Dvd but get error message cannonical error cannot find path and a reference to farmyard animal! What now?

TxLonghorn · 03-11-2017, 11:00 AM

Is your Windows 10 installed in UEFI mode? (That is likely - but not always the case.)
Review these tutorials:
[TUTORIAL] Installing Mint on a Windows 8/8.1 UEFI Computer
How to configure your Windows 8 or 10 computer for dual boot with Linux - Easy Linux Tips Project

yancek · 03-11-2017, 12:58 PM

Quote:

Tried mounting partition and load from live Dvd but get error message cannonical error cannot find path and a reference to farmyard animal! What now?

Post the exact command you used. The 'cow' error message means you tried to install Grub to the DVD you are booting from which won't work. More details needed if you want help. UEFI or not? Did you download the Mint iso from the Mint site? Did you do an md5 sha checksum on the download to verify it? Did you boot Mint UEFI and install Mint UEFI?

Elcee · 03-23-2017, 06:17 AM

Firstly i am 80 years old so please don't be too technical
I tried (after mounting the partition in a terminal) entering the following commands

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda
for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i; done

Ithen get error message no BIOS in partition. Is this because WINDOWS 10 is UEFI
If so can you help with commands to use?
My live DVD - downloaded from the Linux site is Linux Mint Cinnamon 18.1 64 bit

yancek · 03-23-2017, 08:37 AM

The section below gives an example of a correct command to use to re-insall Grub2 on newer versions of Grub such as you have with Mint18. This output example would be for a system which has Mint installed on partition 'sda5' so you would have to change that to the correct entry. If you don't know what that is you can run either of the commands below from a terminal on the Mint DVD after booting it. The output from these commands should tell us whether you are using UEFI.

Quote:

sudo fdisk -l

OR

Quote:

sudo gdisk -l

That's a lower case Letter L in both commands.

Quote:

sudo mount /dev/sdXY /mnt # Example: sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sdX # Example: sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sda

The link below has detailed information on re-installing Grub2 by various methods.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Gr..._Broken_System

If you have problems understanding this, you could go to the site below and download boot repair using the Mint DVD per the instructions on the page or download it to another system and burn it as an image to a CD, then either run it from Mint or boot the computer with the CD set to first boot priority. When boot repair starts, follow the instructions on the page. I would suggest you select the option to "Create BootInfo Summary" and post the link you get after running it here at the forums as this will provide details on your system which should help someone to help you.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

Elcee · 03-25-2017, 11:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yancek

The section below gives an example of a correct command to use to re-insall Grub2 on newer versions of Grub such as you have with Mint18. This output example would be for a system which has Mint installed on partition 'sda5' so you would have to change that to the correct entry. If you don't know what that is you can run either of the commands below from a terminal on the Mint DVD after booting it. The output from these commands should tell us whether you are using UEFI.

OR

That's a lower case Letter L in both commands

The link below has detailed information on re-installing Grub2 by various methods.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Gr..._Broken_System

If you have problems understanding this, you could go to the site below and download boot repair using the Mint DVD per the instructions on the page or download it to another system and burn it as an image to a CD, then either run it from Mint or boot the computer with the CD set to first boot priority. When boot repair starts, follow the instructions on the page. I would suggest you select the option to "Create BootInfo Summary" and post the link you get after running it here at the forums as this will provide details on your system which should help someone to help you.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

Thanks for all your help. I managed to prepare a flash drive with boot repair installed using Universal USB installer. This programme solved the problem in about 2 minutes and I can now boot into Linux or Windows as required.

yancek · 03-25-2017, 11:41 AM

Quote:

I managed to prepare a flash drive with boot repair installed using Universal USB installer.

It would probably be a good idea to keep the flash drive with boot repair on it until you are familiar with the process. You could also install it on the Mint partition per the instructions at the boot repair site. Of course, if you run into some problem and you can't boot Mint, that won't help. Glad you got it working.