Ubuntu has seized control of my bootup!!! (solved)

Convergence · 2005-09-06 03:16:53

Out of curiosity, I installed ubuntu on my brand new hard drive. On the new drive, I made a bootable partition sda1 and told the ubuntu installer to mount it as /boot. I assumed that it would install the bootloader there, and that I would need to switch boot priority in the bios to switch between OS's. However, at the last minute, the installer asked me if I'd rather use my existing /boot (hda1) instead, and I said yes.

Now everything just works. I don't have to switch boot priority in the BIOS to switch betwen OS's, but I regret it. Somehow Ubuntu has seized control of hda1, and actually only uses it to load sda1, and reads the menu.lst from there. Consequently, if I delete Ubuntu (I always intended to) I won't be able to load arch!

Does anybody have any idea how I can regain control of my boot process?

I hope this is not too off topic here. I couldn't make it fit easily into any of the other topics, and it is kind of kernel related.

mpie · 2005-09-06 12:39:35

what's installed on the other disk........

you would need to boot that with a floppy or cd image then re-install the bootloader from there.....

as in the wiki....

post what on the disk and let us have a look

stavrosg · 2005-09-06 14:58:35

A bit more info would surely help here, but assuming that you have
- Arch on the IDE hard disk ( /dev/hda )
- Ubuntu on the new one (/dev/sda )
and just want to get rid of ubuntu, and keep the arch installation from where it is, you just need to boot in arch, install grub or lilo from there and you're done.
You can sweep the ubuntu install away without worries after that.

Convergence · 2005-09-06 19:35:26

stavrosg wrote:

A bit more info would surely help here, but assuming that you have
- Arch on the IDE hard disk ( /dev/hda )
- Ubuntu on the new one (/dev/sda )
and just want to get rid of ubuntu, and keep the arch installation from where it is, you just need to boot in arch, install grub or lilo from there and you're done.
You can sweep the ubuntu install away without worries after that.

Yeah, sorry for leaving out all of the important stuff, I was a little tired. I should have mentioned that I already tried reinstalling the bootloader, and ubuntu still has control of the system! I may have to format hda1 to eliminate all traces of ubuntu. there IS a mysterious file "/boot/boot.0800" that I don't remember being there. Maybe it has nothing to do with ubuntu, but if it does, I want to delete it.

Convergence · 2005-09-06 20:34:33

ok, now this is really getting weird. I backed up everything in my /boot (hda1) and rm -rf /boot/*

I then copied my kernels back to /boot, reinstalled grub, copied my menu.lst back into /boot/grub and rebooted. Ubuntu STILL controlls my boot up process.

there is a file called vmlinuz (I know it's a kernel) that I didn't put there (I build my own kernels), and I might want to leave out this time. I should also look very carefully at the menu.lst to see if it was modified by ubuntu.

mpie · 2005-09-06 20:57:33

sounds like grub is mapped on hda1 but lives on sda1....

boot the arch install run grub-install and select mbr when it asks you where too write, it will then control the first sectr of the first disk (mbr)
that is where ubuntu has installed it, but then passed cortol to the boot partition on sda1, you will only cure it by rewriting the mbr:;

alterkacker · 2005-09-06 21:12:27

The boot.0800 file is a tipoff that at some point you installed LILO. If I were you I would:
Create a GRUB floppy & make sure you know how to use it to boot your Arch installation.Use the MS-DOS 'FDISK /MBR' command to overwrite the MBR.Boot to Arch & re-install the boot loader.
Take a look at:http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/199 … 00412.html

P.S. You should *always* have a GRUB floppy and know how to use it!

Convergence · 2005-09-06 21:19:33

Thanks for the responses!

ok, I popped in the install disk, reformatted /dev/hda1 and attempted to reinstall the bootloader but I got an error that was something like "please go back and edit your grub.conf and make sure it is correct." So I tried to edit the grub.conf and it was completely blank, so i thought that If i just wrote any crap in there and saved it, the bootloader install would work, but it wouldn't let me save it. there doesn't seem to be a way in the boot disk to reinstall the bootloader without reinstalling the OS. (if there is, I can't find it) I might just install arch to a partition on sda and tell it to write to hda1 for /boot. I'm not sure how, but that might help.

Convergence · 2005-09-06 21:25:58

alterkacker wrote:

The boot.0800 file is a tipoff that at some point you installed LILO. If I were you I would:
Create a GRUB floppy & make sure you know how to use it to boot your Arch installation.Use the MS-DOS 'FDISK /MBR' command to overwrite the MBR.Boot to Arch & re-install the boot loader.
Take a look at:http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/199 … 00412.html
P.S. You should *always* have a GRUB floppy and know how to use it!

interestingly enough, I haven't installed lilo (on either of these hard drives). Perhaps ubuntu installed part of lilo or something. I dunno.

Oh, maybe I didn't make this very clear either, but I have no problem booting up either operating system, whatever ubuntu did, it worked perfectly, except now I can't get rid of it.

edit: well now that I've formatted /boot, I'm sure I'll have problems! LOL I'm going to have to wait till I get back from work to fiddle with this anymore.

I will dry this FDISK /MBR command. I don't understand what it does exactly, but hopefully it will make "pacman -S grub" write to the MBR.

mpie · 2005-09-06 22:08:10

pacman -S grub will only install the program, and (please correct me if I'm wrong) assumes you have a menu.lst or grub.conf

you have to run as root grub-install to re write the mbr, regardless of what is already installed there this we re-install the mbr correctly unless there is a geometery error but if there was it would have told you by now

do you still have a valid menu.lst on your arch install?

if not you could mount youre ubuntu install from arch and copy the menu.lst over to pass control to arch.

mkdir /mnt/ubuntu
mount /dev/sda1/*your ubuntu partition number* /mnt/ubuntu
cp /mnt/ubunt/boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst

nedless to say you would need to be root

grub-install

reboot

should fix ya

Convergence · 2005-09-08 09:55:54

Thanks guys! that grub-install command was just what I needed. I DID run into a snag though. I ran "grub-install /dev/hda" and rebooted, and voila... I get a grub command line; something I've never run into. (somehow my backup of menu.lst disappeared. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to load the kernel, but I got it done. Thanks again!

mpie · 2005-09-08 10:10:24

glad to here it's sorted!!

Arch Linux

#1 2005-09-06 03:16:53

Ubuntu has seized control of my bootup!!! (solved)

#2 2005-09-06 12:39:35

Re: Ubuntu has seized control of my bootup!!! (solved)

#3 2005-09-06 14:58:35

Re: Ubuntu has seized control of my bootup!!! (solved)

#4 2005-09-06 19:35:26

Re: Ubuntu has seized control of my bootup!!! (solved)

#5 2005-09-06 20:34:33

Re: Ubuntu has seized control of my bootup!!! (solved)

#6 2005-09-06 20:57:33

Re: Ubuntu has seized control of my bootup!!! (solved)

#7 2005-09-06 21:12:27

Re: Ubuntu has seized control of my bootup!!! (solved)

#8 2005-09-06 21:19:33

Re: Ubuntu has seized control of my bootup!!! (solved)

#9 2005-09-06 21:25:58

Re: Ubuntu has seized control of my bootup!!! (solved)

#10 2005-09-06 22:08:10

Re: Ubuntu has seized control of my bootup!!! (solved)

#11 2005-09-08 09:55:54

Re: Ubuntu has seized control of my bootup!!! (solved)

#12 2005-09-08 10:10:24

Re: Ubuntu has seized control of my bootup!!! (solved)

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