unable to boot after adding ubuntu to Vista+openSUSE

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi,

I had a dual boot Vista+openSUSE11.1 with GRUB in MBR.
Now I installed Ubuntu(8.10). During the installation I specified grub to install in “/” partition so that openSUSE’s GRUB remains in MBR.

However now I cannot boot. GRUB doesn’t show. I’ve Live CD only. Here’s how the partitions look like:

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1        1394    11193344   27  Unknown
/dev/sda2            1394        9683    66581484    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3            9683       11901    17817600    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4   *       11902       18422    52379932+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5           11902       12163     2104483+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6           12164       14774    20972826   83  Linux
/dev/sda7           14775       15990     9767488+  83  Linux
/dev/sda8           15991       17449    11719386   83  Linux
/dev/sda9           17450       18422     7815591   83  Linux


grub> find /boot/grub/stage2
 (hd0,5)
 (hd0,7)

grub>

In “/dev/sda6” I’ve openSUSE
In “/dev/sda8” I’ve Ubuntu.

How to restore the GRUB???

#2

I had a similar problem some time ago. I used the Super Grub utility which I downloaded and burned to CD. It allowed me to boot into Suse from where I installed grub again using “grub-install” (see man page) and edited my /boot/grub/menu.lst file to be able to boot Ubuntu as well.

#3

Here’s some more terminal output:

grub> find /boot/grub/menu.lst
 (hd0,5)
 (hd0,7)

grub> root (hd0,5)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

grub> kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda6
   [Linux-bzImage, setup=0x3000, size=0x2689c0]

grub> initrd /boot/initrd

Error 16: Inconsistent filesystem structure

grub>
#4

I suggest one of these to boot back to openSUSE: Five ways to boot openSUSE when Grub is broken

Then use the method in the appendix in that tutorial to repair the bootloader, putting openSUSE code in the MBR again.

Then try the entry for Ubuntu that Yast put in openSUSE’s new loader menu – but in my experience it won’t work.

If it doesn’t work, then use this tutorial
HowTo Multiboot Ubuntu from openSUSE using the GRUB bootloader
to add an entry for Ubuntu into Suse’s menu.lst file. That should fix it.