GRUB always installed to MBR

Sorry for the duplicate above... I was trying to edit my original post and somehow got a duplicate instead... oh well...

I had the same issue today installing with the kubuntu Flight-7 cd.

I had the same issue with ubuntu flight7 livecd.

I bumped up the severity because it seems as per this email ( https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2006-May/000140.html ) that canonical wants the LiveCD to be the default installation CD...

and we have like 5 days until final release (RC already out)...

Not offering an option to install grub to the boot partition is a definite show stopper especially for dual booting (Linux + Linux or *BSD + Linux) users, taking into account the fact that ubuntu's grub isn't good at all at recognizing other linux distros (I tried 5-7 so far, ubuntu never saw them, it only sees Windows).

I understand that this is an awkward problem for some people, but it is just not possible to add more user interface to ubiquity before release no matter what (leaving aside translation issues, I'm not even certain I could get it done reliably in time). Chalk up another situation where you might want to use the alternate install CD instead.

Please file a separate bug on os-prober about other Linux systems not being detected, if you haven't already; attach /var/log/installer/syslog, preferably from the alternate install CD rather than the desktop CD. It works fine for me and for a number of other people.

PLEASE document this then... it bit me when I was testing Dapper Beta, os it would be nice to at least have a note on the final release page and download pages which lists needing the alternate install cd for anyone who doesn't want their MBR replaced. Maybe not in those words, but that will likely bring in some angry sentiments if it isn't addressed up front.

Further to Hezekiah's comment, I would suggest the following actions:

1. In http://releases.ubuntu.com/6.06/ under "Alternate install CD", add an item to the list of specialist installation situations:
"installing GRUB to a location other than the MBR;"

2. In the Deskop CD installer software, add a line to the summary screen displayed right before the install process is kicked off:
"The GRUB Boot Loader will be installed in the Master Boot Record of /dev/xxx."

Thanks, Mark; I've made your suggested change to the web pages on releases.ubuntu.com.

I don't know if you're interested but I had the same problem with Breezy - I used the default install option (as a newbie) - my boot manager allows primary partitions to exist on the drive which aren't in the MBR partition table so there's no way for the install to determine automatically if it's safe to put grub in the MBR. I had to use the "expert" install option before it asked this question - I didn't even know then that it would ask me until it did so!

Please note that we don't only need the ability to choose between MBR and / regarding the boot manager, but also a screen that allows us to add other OSes in the booting menu that Ubuntu does not recognize as bootable, e.g. BeOS, Zeta and all the BSDs. Right now, Ubuntu will only add to its booting menu other Linuces and Windows, but it completely ignores the rest.

> also a screen that allows us to add other OSes in the booting menu

I'm pretty sure you / someone should file a separate bug on that...

I already did, but the maintainer marked it as duplicate of this bug. :(

#47949

Please consider adding the needed screen on the GUI version of the installer. People don't want to download alternative CDs, they want the defaults. And they want the defaults (and good looking GUI installers) to do the right thing.

So, please **UNMARK** my #47949 bug as duplicate of the 41579 as I ask for two things instead of one at that bug page:
1. Offer the choice of MBR and / (this part is duplicate to 41579)
2. Allow the user to edit the suggested boot menu to add/remove OSes by clicking the /dev/hdaXX numbers and write names to each one of them (e.g. click on /dev/hda3 and let the user call it "BeOS")

My MBR too was hosed by Dapper :( ...at least I figured out that this must be reported in the bug tracker.

To anyone who wants to use a third party boot manager, the SOLUTION (or workaround) is supposed to be to download the "Alternate install CD" instead of the "Desktop CD". I'm downloading it at the moment, hopefully it will solve my problem.

Please add installing to the boot-sector in the next release, some of us really need it.

Thanks!

Prog.

At me everything works. I have only one disk, hda, and Winblows are on hda1. Ubuntu which I installed is on hda2, and I installed GRUB to MBR, eveyrthing worked fine. The problem appears when you have two disk, and if you don't have operating system on hda1 or any boot loader on hda, you only get a lots of 9's after booting. :-(
Anyway, I think that this bug is solved, this up was just a thought.

> At me everything works. I have only one disk, hda, and Winblows are on hda1. Ubuntu
> which I installed is on hda2, and I installed GRUB to MBR, eveyrthing worked fine.

As you say, you installed grub to the mbr, so this bug wasn't a problem for you... If however you wanted to install grub to boot of let's say hda2, that would bump you into this bug...

I think in the next live CD and installer release there should be atleast a warning that the user will have NO option but installer will write to MBR.

Lets make it more professional...

ubiquity (1.1.12) edgy; urgency=low

  * Install apt-setup cdrom generator.
  * Send all log messages to syslog rather than stderr. Use log-output from
    di-utils for external processes where necessary.
  * Remove several obsolete functions from ubiquity.misc.
  * Fix misc.ex to use subprocess.call properly rather than smashing
    arguments together and invoking them via the shell.
  * Remove duplicate logging from Install.chrex.
  * Remove /var/log/installer/syslog from all error messages etc., as
    everything goes to /var/log/syslog now. /var/log/syslog is now copied to
    /var/log/installer/syslog on the target system.
  * Automatically set UBIQUITY_NO_GTK or UBIQUITY_NO_KDE to disable building
    frontends as appropriate if tools are missing (pygtk-codegen-2.0 for the
    GTK frontend, kdepyuic for the KDE frontend). This should never happen
    in normal builds, but saves typing when building test versions.
  * Teach DebconfFilter to send escaped replies when CAPB escape is set.
  * Fix substitution variable for full name in ubiquity/summary.
  * I never really understood the whole control flow around the summary
    page, and I wrote it! Take advantage of the partman-commit script added
    in partman-base 90ubuntu4, so that instead we shut down partman, run the
    summary page, and then start it back up to commit changes. The
    PartmanCommit component is now used for both automatic and manual
    partitioning, and is simply called directly from progress_loop; and the
    Summary component no longer needs to be run with a temporary debconf
    database.
  * Configure locales and the user account before running target-config
    hooks (closes: Malone #50319).
  * GTK frontend: Put a button on the summary page to allow the user to
    install GRUB to somewhere other than the MBR of the first hard disk
    (closes: Malone #41579).
  * Install list-devices, since a fair bit of backend code now uses it.
  * Automatic update of included source packages: debian-installer-utils
    1.35ubuntu2, partman-base 90ubuntu5, partman-target 45ubuntu1.

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Mon, 4 Sep 2006 22:54:02 +0100

When it comes to programming I am a total newbie. Have done a lot of experimenting with Linux.

I have only 1 suggestion. Please look at the installation of Grub in debian based Puppy Linux. The options offered are very clear & precise.

I will not be installing Ubuntu on my machine simply because.....

1. I don't have a floppy drive in my machine to create a boot floppy &
2. I don't have a choice of bootloader or its installation location in default installation process.

Does the fix to bug #41579 ("Put a button on the summary page to allow the user to install GRUB to somewhere other ...") also fix bug #32357 ("Installer doesn't recognise SATA disks as primary.")? The latter is about GRUB installing MBR on the wrong drive and thus leaving the system in an unbootable state.

problems:
-more then 1 OS installing to a PC (ubuntu is the first!!!, ubuntu is not he last!!)
-problems with installing more ubuntu to a PC!! (for example: testing)
-booting
-IPL not updated in MBR
-overwrite boot managers, install ...

[wishlist] an optional boot manager compatible booting mechanism,
like Extended Operating system loader
http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm

[wishlist] an optional question from installer: to reinstall the IPL when no program in the MBR
(just zeroes and the partition table)

[wishlist] an optional question from installer: to reinstall the IPL when he found an UNKNOWN
TYPE IPL in the MBR

[wishlist] an option to install media to restoration of booting an installed Ubuntu.
(for example: FDISK /MBR overvrites the GRUB on the MBR...)

My comments for this topic:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/baltix/+bug/1/comments/429
https://bugs.launchpad.net/baltix/+bug/1/comments/431
https://bugs.launchpad.net/gst/+bug/11325/comments/3 (sorry this is almost a flame)