How to reinstall grub 2 in an old pc which is MBR not uefi.

rupeshforu3 · February 25, 2018, 6:06pm

Hi I am Rupesh from India and I have an old pc which is MBR not uefi and I want to reinstall grub 2 boot loader on this pc.

First I have installed opensuse leap 42.3 on sata hard-disk and due to some reasons I have installed windows 8.1 on the same hard-disk on other partitions. At present I am trying to reinstall grub 2 boot loader but unable to do.

I have two hard-disks one which is sata and another is ide and the interesting fact is that the two hard-disks are damaged. When I try to boot from sata hard-disk I am able to hear some sounds from sata hard-disk but when I connect ide hard drive along with sata and try to boot from sata hard-disk I am able to boot properly. You can suggest that throw those disk’s in dustbin and yes you may be correct but I am using those disk’s temporarily. I think that ide hard drive is acting as master and sata is acting as slave.

I have created an opensuse installation usb pen drive and I have booted into rescue mode and after that I have issued the following commands and succeeded

mount /dev/sdb9 /mnt
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
chroot /mnt

After that I have issued the following command but failed

mount /proc

Upon issuing the above command I am getting error as " /proc not found in /etc/fstab".

After that I have stopped trying.

I have followed the above procedure given in opensuse official website. One of the document from that site suggested to boot into boot Linux from installation media and after that try to reinstall grub from yast.

I have done as suggested but unable to launch yast even after half an hour. During the process I got message as " select /dev/sdb9 as root". It means that Linux is installed on /dev/sdb9.

Please suggest how to reinstall grub 2.

nrickert · February 25, 2018, 6:45pm

That doesn’t work, because there is no longer an “fstab” entry fpr “/proc”.

Here’s what I suggest, and what has been working for me:


mount /dev/sdb9 /mnt   ### check if correct device
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
##### and now you should be ready for:
chroot /mnt

I hope that helps.

peteh100 · February 25, 2018, 6:47pm

If you don’t already have it, download a net install version of opensuse, set it up on usb or cd and boot from it. When you get to the install screen choose upgrade intead of install and make sure you install grub. That works for me and saves doing a complete reinstall.

john_hudson · February 25, 2018, 11:34pm

There is also https://www.supergrubdisk.org/ which may solve your problem.

Fraser_Bell · February 26, 2018, 2:17am

nrickert:

That doesn’t work, because there is no longer an “fstab” entry fpr “/proc”.

Here’s what I suggest, and what has been working for me:
mount /dev/sdb9 /mnt   ### check if correct device
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
##### and now you should be ready for:
chroot /mnt
I hope that helps.

Same here, same advice I give out and follow successfully.

rupeshforu3 · February 26, 2018, 3:06am

nrickert:

That doesn’t work, because there is no longer an “fstab” entry fpr “/proc”.

Here’s what I suggest, and what has been working for me:
mount /dev/sdb9 /mnt   ### check if correct device
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
##### and now you should be ready for:
chroot /mnt
I hope that helps.

Thanks the issue has been resolved.