atomicV1sion Posted December 25, 2009 Share Posted December 25, 2009 I have an ASUS F6A-X2 and I boot Ubuntu 9.10 with GRUB and three partitions. I recently booted from an OSX CD and reformatted My windows NTFS partition to the journaled mac filesystem (I don't use windows anymore). After doing that, GRUB returns an error "unknown file system" or something to that effect. All I can now type are GRUB rescue commands, and I don't know how to boot. I'm thinking that GRUB is messed up because it isn't compatible with the new filesystem I formatted too, but I don't know too much about bootloaders. Will installing one of the OSX bootloaders included in the customized options of the install menu fix this problem? Can I possibly type some sort of GRUB rescue command so I can temporarily boot into Ubuntu until I get this straightened out? Does GRUB even work with a mac filesystem? Any help is most certainly appreciated. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shakster Posted December 25, 2009 Share Posted December 25, 2009 I have an ASUS F6A-X2 and I boot Ubuntu 9.10 with GRUB and three partitions. I recently booted from an OSX CD and reformatted My windows NTFS partition to the journaled mac filesystem (I don't use windows anymore). After doing that, GRUB returns an error "unknown file system" or something to that effect. All I can now type are GRUB rescue commands, and I don't know how to boot. I'm thinking that GRUB is messed up because it isn't compatible with the new filesystem I formatted too, but I don't know too much about bootloaders. Will installing one of the OSX bootloaders included in the customized options of the install menu fix this problem? Can I possibly type some sort of GRUB rescue command so I can temporarily boot into Ubuntu until I get this straightened out? Does GRUB even work with a mac filesystem? Any help is most certainly appreciated. Thanks! reformat the whole disk and install the included bootloader boot form the disk and you will be fine =] good luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atomicV1sion Posted December 25, 2009 Author Share Posted December 25, 2009 reformat the whole disk and install the included bootloader boot form the disk and you will be fine =] good luck There are a ton of alternative bootloaders on the OSX disk. Will ubuntu load from any of those? The WHOLE disk? With all my partitions gone? Is there any other more time efficient way to have GRUB recognize my new partition setup? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alessandro17 Posted December 25, 2009 Share Posted December 25, 2009 There are well known, serious bugs, with Ubuntu 9.10 installing GRUB. Probably it messed up your MBR (I am assuming you are using a MBR partition table). You could try he following: 1)Fix your MBR with a Windows install CD/DVD. The procedure depends on which Windows version. 2)Use Acronis OS Selector in order to boot all your operating systems. You'll need a Fat32 or NTFS (small) partition if you don't have any. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atomicV1sion Posted December 26, 2009 Author Share Posted December 26, 2009 Will Acronis OS Selector override GRUB so that I'll be able to dual boot OSX and Ubuntu. Will I have to get rid of GRUB somehow? Again, I don't know to much about bootloaders or the MBR. How am I supposed to install this thing if I can't even boot, let alone boot from a windows partition? Are you saying I need a small windows partition to boot from so I can install the OS Selector? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John1232 Posted December 27, 2009 Share Posted December 27, 2009 Ubuntu 9.10 comes with GRUB2 which is the "next generation" boot manager. It seems like many people are having this problem too. I do not run OS X on my computer but a friend of mine does and he had to install Chameleon Boot Loader as the primary boot loader. Chameleon runs when he starts his computer and it gives him two options 1.) runs grub if he wants to boot into Ubuntu or Windows or 2.) just boot into OS X. Might try these pages for help because I've never done it myself, sorry. Hope this helps. Chameleon with ubuntu. The first one looks most promising. http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/dual-booti...-chameleon.html http://www.dailyblogged.com/1028/booting-u...eon-bootloader/ And here is a GRUB2 page http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1195275 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alessandro17 Posted December 27, 2009 Share Posted December 27, 2009 Will Acronis OS Selector override GRUB so that I'll be able to dual boot OSX and Ubuntu. You can try, but it won't really "override" GRUB. Will I have to get rid of GRUB somehow? Probably yes, that is why I suggested you use a Windows install CD/DVD, with a command like "fixmbr" (tell me which Windows version are you going to use). Are you saying I need a small windows partition to boot from so I can install the OS Selector? What I am saying is that Acronis OS Selector needs a Fat32 or NTFS partition in order to install. That, provided you already have a boot CD. Else you need a Windows OS in order to create one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
srs5694 Posted December 27, 2009 Share Posted December 27, 2009 To the best of my knowledge, no OSx86 boot loader (Chameleon, Boot Think, PC-EFI, etc.) will boot Linux directly. They simply lack the support to read a Linux filesystem to load a Linux kernel into memory. Therefore, if you expect to boot Linux, you must have a Linux-capable boot loader installed. At the moment, GRUB and GRUB2 are the common ones in this realm, but LILO is also available, as are one or two more exotic ones. Note that it is possible to use an OSx86 boot loader as the primary boot loader to load GRUB, GRUB2, LILO, etc., which in turn loads the Linux kernel. Depending on the GRUB/GRUB2/LILO configuration, you might not even see that boot loader's menu, but it is installed and doing something in this case. My suspicion is that atomicV1sion's problem was caused by GRUB installing its critical files to the Windows NTFS partition. This seems like a bizarre choice if it was done by the Ubuntu installer, but it's conceivable it was set up this way, either because of a really weird Ubuntu choice or because of user error during a manual GRUB installation. If I'm right, then reformatting the partition to HFS+ wiped out the GRUB files, but the core GRUB code remains in place in the MBR, and it was unable to read HFS+ to find its files. (If it could read HFS+, the files would be missing, too.) The simplest solution to the problem is to re-install GRUB using an emergency disk system, such as System Rescue CD or Parted Magic. This approach will require you to learn more about how GRUB works and how to repair it, though. I note that the System Rescue CD site has a page entitled How to Repair GRUB. I've just skimmed it, but it seems like a good place to start. Going forward, there are two ways to handle dual-booting Linux and OS X: Put GRUB's main code in the MBR or put an OSx86 boot loader in the MBR. Whichever boot loader goes in the MBR becomes the system's primary boot loader; the other boot loader will then boot only its associated OS. (The secondary boot loader might have an entry for the other OS, but that entry might not work.) If you use an OSx86 boot loader as the primary boot loader, you should install GRUB in a Linux partition's boot sector. Some boot loaders, including those for Windows and some OSx86 boot loaders, automatically install themselves to the MBR, so putting GRUB in the Linux partition's boot sector can make it more resilient against problems caused by other boot loaders being rude about this. If you re-install GRUB this way, though, it's possible that it won't immediately work until you install either a standard boot loader or an OSx86 boot loader in the MBR. You could also re-install GRUB both to the MBR and to the Linux boot partition to get Linux booting, then when you install OS X, its boot loader can override the MBR copy of GRUB and it should give you an option that will chain-load GRUB from the Linux boot partition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atomicV1sion Posted December 28, 2009 Author Share Posted December 28, 2009 Success! I used System Rescue CD to successfully boot 9.10. I think I did, indeed, overwrite GRUB when I reformatted my Windows partition. Now all I need to to do is reinstall GRUB. Obviously, in the interest of setting up my computer to dual boot OSX and Ubuntu, I'm going to want to reinstall GRUB on a different partition. That leads me to my final question: My partition setup/strategy for dual boot: 250GB /dev/sda | | -OS 64GB /dev/sda1 FAT <--- I want to reformat to the Mac Filesystem and install Chameleon here, right? | | -186 GB Extended /dev/sda2 <---- I want to install GRUB here, right? | | |- 69 GB Linux Filesystem /dev/sda5 Ext4 | |- 3GB Swap Space /dev/sda6 | |- 114 GB DATA /dev/sda7 Remember, I intend to install GRUB first. Will that great big hunk of FAT space that comes before the extended partition interfere with my computer booting? Or will it just skip over that? Also, one more question. When I'm installing OSX I pick a bootloader to install with it in the customization panel, correct? Is chameleon one of the options available in most distros? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
srs5694 Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 No, do not install GRUB to the extended partition; that's just a placeholder for the real logical partitions. Instead, install GRUB either to a partition with a Linux filesystem -- /dev/sda5 in your scheme or to the MBR (/dev/sda). If you do it to the former but not the latter, the system will remain unbootable until you've replaced the MBR boot loader with something else (an OSx86 boot loader, a standard MBR boot loader via DOS's FDISK utility, etc.). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atomicV1sion Posted December 29, 2009 Author Share Posted December 29, 2009 Alright! I installed GRUB on my Ubuntu filesystem and got Chameleon RC4 working. I can boot into OSX. The only problem is, my Ubuntu partition doesn't show up on the Chameleon RC4 bootloader! So I can't boot into Ubuntu. Any ideas? I'm stumped. Side Note: My trackpad and keyboard don't work now that I've installed OSX, but they worked when I booted from the CD during the installation. Do I just need to install the generic OSX drivers? Do I need to install extra .kexts? How would I go about doing either of those things? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NissanSkylineN1 Posted May 17, 2010 Share Posted May 17, 2010 Why don't you use Ubuntu 10.04? Its newer and GRUB loads faster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtopman Posted June 4, 2010 Share Posted June 4, 2010 Why don't you use Ubuntu 10.04? Its newer and GRUB loads faster. The OP was made before 10.04 (was released). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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