Boot menu uprooted...Grub got snubbed...

English Install/Boot/Login
1

My boot menu is missing.

I had the machine set up to multiboot between WinXP, Ubuntu, and openSUSE. This was the case for months until just this week when the system started skipping the grub/stage2 boot menu entirely. Now it boots directly into WinXP and there’s no sign of the bootloader or its menus.

I haven’t done any repartitioning or hardware changes in that time period. Recently, I’ve had CloneZilla in the CD tray which boots up its own boot menu, but I never got around to using it.

How do I get that menu back using the Live CD? And what snuffed it in the first place?!?

2

No idea what snuffed it. This post may help.

SERIOUS HELP WANTED! - LOST ACCESS TO IMPORTANT DATA. - Page 3 - openSUSE Forums

3

I guess I’ll look into that. I don’t know how to get a reinstall to recognize all three OS’s though. Will probably back up the disk first while I look at my options.

4

If you haven’t removed the menu files, then chances are they’re still there, as are any other grubs you were chainloading; restoring grub will probably restore the menu with all three options.

If it doesn’t, it isn’t hard to fix.

5

And what snuffed it in the first place?!?
sometimes follows an online update in Ubuntu or openSUSE

How do I get that menu back using the Live CD?

Here’s what I do/did:

Boot off the openSUSE live cd and open a console/terminal window. Enter the command su to become root (or in Ubuntu preface commands with sudo).

First find the openSUSE installation:

You enter this ---------------- grub
Computer returns like this ---- grub>
You enter this ---------------- find /boot/grub/menu.lst
Computer returns like this ---- (hd1,6)

Your commands will return two values, one for the Ubuntu partition and one for the openSUSE partition. Choose the one you were using last.

Here, (hd1,6) is Grub’s pointer to my openSUSE installation on drive number 2, partition number 7. Your pointer will be different from my example (hd1,6). Substitute your correct values for my example (hd1,6). Now that you have your pointer, proceed like this:

You enter this ---------------- root (hd1,6)
Computer returns like this ---- Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
You enter this ---------------- setup (hd0)
You see 4-5 lines like this --- Checking if /boot/grub/stage1 exists ... yes
Computer finally returns this-- Succeeded.......Done
You enter this ---------------- quit
You enter this ---------------- reboot

The computer should reboot and present you with the Grub boot menu, from which you can boot into windows, Ubuntu or openSUSE.

I took that from the third method here: HowTo Boot into openSUSE when it won’t Boot from the Grub Code on the Hard Drive

Another way is to boot openSUSE using the supergrub boot cd and reinstall the bootloader using the appendix in the linked tutorial just above, method five in the tutorial.

PS / Edit: I just looked at Confuseling’s link – advocates the same thing too. Give it a whirl rather than reinstall.

6

Yep, that last procedure fixed it. Well…I setup the wrong grub menu apparently, but that seems easy enough to correct.