I am having fits getting ubuntu 6.10 installed, and bootable. Having cleaned up my machine, gotten my MBR back, and done some partition changes to allow for Ubuntu, I want to know if v61.0, the advanced CD, not the live one, will offer me the option to put grub onto a floppy, and boot from there, rather than in the MBR.

I confess, I did not pay much attention, as I assumed the MBR was the best way to go for me, but as of now, I very much want to install ubuntu, but I do not want to touch the mbr.

Will I get that choice during the install. I don't want to get all the way done, and find out I haven't the choice for using a boot floppy.

Thanks a lot,

John

Personally can't remember if it gives you the opportunity during the install (normally every gnu/linux does), but I can assure you that you can just run "grub-floppy" afterwards (or even "grub-install fd0") to create a boot floppy using the content of your /boot/grub/menu.lst
Don't be afraid; backup and restore.

Thanks.

Its not fear, :-) its major league disgust at having to keep doing it over and over. I need my machine to earn a some of my living, and don't wish to keep hacking on the MBR. If any linux distro would simply install, and actually work, well, that would be worth hammering my system for, but until I see one install, come up working, and keep working, I am not apt to want to beat up on that which makes money for me.

That is why I want to use the floppy first, and if it all works out, then I can install into the MBR.

Thanks,

John

If the risk is hosing a system that makes you money, you might want to look at other options. Partitioning the hard drive, the subject of so many posts/problems here. What are the chances of picking up an extra hard drive on clearance and putting your Ubuntu install there? This is how I've always installed Linux, after I hosed a Windows install while trying to install Mandrake 9.0 several years ago. 40-80gig IDE drives can be found quite cheap and are easy to install.

This was how I shared Windows/Linux PC's for several years, before I finally hosed Windows off my system, and I never had a prob with it.

IGF

Its a good thing that I did..... Ran the text install, and it thought that it was writing to the floppy, but it hung at 50%, and by the time I escaped out, backed up, chose floppy install and it tried again, and had it totally hang, the system, the mbr was history. "No bootable device found"

Being nothing short of a sadist, I blew away what had been installed, fixed the mbr, and did it all over again. This time, it made it past the 'grub on the floppy' part, and I watched the floppy lite flash so I figured it was good. Finished up, booted the floppy, and got to see the word GRUB in the upper left of the monitor, and nothing more than that.

I used to get this crap all the time on my older PC, when the OS was beyond the 1024 cyl limit, and the int13 stuff was not in the bios, but I have a nice new Intel MB with a 3G P4, and not even the words Int13h in the BIOS, so it must be there.

Any idea what happened, or how to fix it? I think I have a nice unbuntu install on hda7, but no way to boot it, and not overly fluent in the 'under the hood' nuances of linux and grub....

I have to use a floppy, as win2K gets reinstalled rather regular for reasons I don't think need to be explained, and I don't want to keep rebuilding grub each time I reinstall win2K. I just want to boot from the floppy.

Thanks,

John

Excuse my delay, please, I'm on intermittent vacations (!).
Boot from your installation CD, select "Rescue a broken system" option. When it asks you what root partition to mount, select hda7, insert your floppy, execute "grub-floppy /dev/fd0", it will use your options of /boot/grub/menu.lst. If you want your grub in your hd too, surely you know how to, i repeat, "grub-install hd0" for the first hd, check your /boot/grub/device.map
If the option doesn't exists in your cd/dvd, "boot: rescue" might help, or an alternate cd.
This is a very useful wiki: http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edgy
Surely I'm repeating something obvious here, but for any other person who reads: to backup your mbr, when everything works OK: dd if=/dev/XXX of=MBR-backup bs=512 count=1
To restore it: dd if=MBR-backup of=/dev/XXX bs=512 count=1
The MBR-backup file will be stored in your actual dir. Obviously a live-cd can be used. Replace the XXX with your IDE or SCSI partition id, .

EDIT: I've seen many GNU/Linux versions not copying the menu.lst file into the boot floppy, to make sure you create a right boot floppy, you can follow a procedure, running five commands in Ubuntu:
sudo mkfs.ext2 /dev/fd0
sudo mount /media/floppy
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/floppy fd0
sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /media/floppy/boot/grub
sudo umount /media/floppy
(Create fs, mount, create grub into floppy, copy menu.lst, unmount).
Cheers.

>Excuse my delay, please, I'm on intermittent vacations (!).


Shoot, I appreciate any and all useful advice. Hope you enjoy your intermittent vacations!

>Boot from your installation CD, select "Rescue a broken system" option. When it asks you what root partition to mount, select hda7, insert your floppy, execute "grub-floppy /dev/fd0", it will use your options of /boot/grub/menu.lst.


No go. It seems to be writing to the floppy, but when I boot it, all I get is GRUB in the upper left corner, just like before.... <shrug>


>EDIT: I've seen many GNU/Linux versions not copying the menu.lst file into the boot floppy, to make sure you create a right boot floppy, you can follow a procedure, running five commands in Ubuntu:
sudo mkfs.ext2 /dev/fd0

I am not understanding how I can do this in ubuntu, when I cannot boot ubuntu.... Sorry, I am just frustrated beyond belief...... Two weeks off and on, and I still don't even know what ubuntu looks like....

That looks like a great ubuntu wiky page. It does not address this issue, but it is surely bookmarked, and ought to come in real handy.

Thanks.

If Grub is hidden press ESC to unhide. If that doesn't work, surely your floppy doesn't includes the menu.lst file in /boot/grub/ So you have to go for the procedure. Read next.
Believe me something, it's a pretty easy thing:
1º) You need an ubuntu cd that presents you the "Rescue a broken system" option at boot time, to use a rescue environment. I know for sure Edubuntu and Ubuntu Server has it, I've heard from people that the Ubuntu Alternate CD includes it. So boot one of those CD's. "boot: rescue" doesn't work for *my* edgy eft dvd, may be i'm a complete moron.
2º) It will ask you for your language, keyboard, network etc., reply fast, no network needed here.
3º) It will ask your root partition: your is hda7? So you have to select /dev/disks/disc0/part7 (first disk, seventh partition).
4º) At the "Rescue Operations" you might choose for "Reinstall Grub Boot Loader" to see if that fix the problem, or go for the 5º & 6º points.
5º) If the 4º didn't reinstalled the grub successfully: choose "Execute a shell in /dev/disks/disc0/part7", go for 6º.
6º) Run the five commands I gave you in my last post, I paste:
That's it.
It's easy, don't feel bad, if you need more help or better specifics, just ask.

Adding something. No-one mentioned (in this thread) the live-cd option; this is it.
Boot using any live-cd, like knoppix, then:
$ su
# fdisk -l
# mkdir /mnt/temp
# mount -t ext3 -o rw /dev/hda7 /mnt/temp (watchout, I'm assuming it is ext3 fs)
# chroot /mnt/temp
# grub-install hd0 (optional, for installing grub in the hd)
# grub-install fd0 (to a floppy, or, better, use that procedure I mentioned in the previous post)

If none of (all the posts) above is helping, post your /boot/grub/menu.lst file.
Cheers.

Yet another suggestion.

During install create a /boot partition. Install GRUB there instead of writing to the MBR. Issue a Transfer linux.mbr to your "C:\" drive. Edit boot.ini and add a line pointing to That should then start GRUB...

If you fancy fallbacks you might add a stanza to grub.menu to point back to ntldr .

Just save boot.ini before any reinstall of Windows .