Grub customizer writes to Win10 drive

Jim_HiTek

2/2/24, 1:00 AM

Ubuntu 22.10, using Mate 1.26.0 as desktop Two OS's on two HDDs, Ubuntu & Win10. Typically boot to the Linux drive. I like to have Grub show Win10 in the boot list so I can boot to it when I wish, but...

Used the Grub Customizer in Mate to try to make Grub splash screen look better and doing that somehow loaded it over on the Windows 10 boot disk and made permanent changes that caused the Win10 drive to fail to boot. That disk has been my 2nd boot disk for years and normally, when I upgrade Ubuntu, grub will often recognize it's there and add it to the boot list.

After I did the recent customizing though, it no longer shows up in the listing, even though that function, 'look for other operating systems' is ticked. I do have a low res cartoon field background now so I know it took the new selected background when I told it to 'Save' and 'install to MBR' (which I assumed would only apply to the Ubuntu HDD not the Win10 HDD).

But I guess telling it to apply/save to the MBR also puts it on the Win10 drive. That surprised me as I couldn't boot to the Win10 because of an error message that GRUB couldn't find an operating system, even with ONLY the Win10 HDD installed. (Using a Boot-Repair Live CD I was able to recover and repair the MBR and Win10 drive now boots when called for).

I read that even Linux HDDs have a MBR so why did the customizer put it onto the Win10 drive instead of the Linux drive? Is this common? Is there a setting that would prevent it? Is it SOP to disconnect all drives except the target drive when editing Grub?

Trying to fix the grub situation resulted in a No OS FOUND on this HDD. Only way I can boot the 22.10 HDD is if the 22.04 drive is also connected to SATA. Both will boot in that setup when set in BIOS. If I remove the 22.04 drive, then I get the No OS error trying to boot solely to the 22.10 drive. AND in addition, when I did finally get booted into 22.10, it does not find any of my Wifi adapters. Have to use a wired connection to the router for internet. So now I'm off to find a way to get this drive to actually boot without the other backup drive there.

Just trying to prevent another problem like this as I do want to customize Grub.

0 + 9

grub2

guiverc

2/2/24, 1:02 AM

You might want to check your details; are you really using Ubuntu 22.10? as the version of MATE you mention was used by [Ubuntu MATE 21.10](https://ubuntu-mate.org/blog/ubuntu-mate-impish-indri-final-release/) which is EOL now, and wasn't the version used in later releases.

guiverc

2/2/24, 1:06 AM

FYI: The MBR is a reserved sector of the drive; it's been a standard since 1982 and exists on all IBM PC compatible drives; even GPT partition tables comply with the MBR outside of the partitioning area so as to be compliant with pre-existing standards (*and bootable on x86 hardware*).. It's not just a Linux standard; but pre-dates both of Linux & Windows, as is still the standard for *amd64* or x86-64 hardware (inc windows 10, 11 & coming 12)

guiverc

2/2/24, 1:09 AM

Ubuntu 21.10 (along with all flavors) is *End-of-Life* and thus unsupported on this site (https://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic), and many other Ubuntu sites, unless your question is specific to moving to a supported release of Ubuntu. https://fridge.ubuntu.com/2022/07/19/ubuntu-21-10-impish-indri-end-of-life-reached-on-july-14-2022/

oldfred

2/2/24, 3:39 AM

Grub Customizer overwrites the standard grub files & uses proxy files. It should have a backup folder with the original grub files in the script folder. Often better to learn a bit about grub and manually customize it.

Jim_HiTek

2/2/24, 4:29 PM

AGAIN...I have Ubuntu 22.10 and I updated, upgraded Mate and now shows V1.26.0. According to a Google search, updating to Ubuntu 22.10 should have carried Mate with it? Many of the posts I see about Mate and upgrading Mate just point to upgrading from 21.10 to 22.04 or to 22.10. I can't find any Mate specific instructions for upgrade. Wikipedia says that the Mate V1.26.1 is the current version used on Ubuntu 22.10. So I'm not off by much. BUT, this isn't a tread about Mate version it's about Grub Customizer that I find by reading that it's terrible. How do I remove it from 22.10?

oldfred

2/2/24, 7:24 PM

Make sure Internet is working, totally uninstall customizer & grub & then reinstall grub. When grub uninstalled, do not attempt to reboot as it will not work, it must be reinstalled. If UEFI and ESP mount in fstab is correct you just need `sudo grub-install`. That is using a lot of defaults, so if not correct then extra parameters are required. Make sure you have working live installer to make repairs, just in case of issues.

Jim_HiTek

2/2/24, 7:45 PM

Too late, oldfred...I tried to repair grub using Boot-Repair CD (and USB stick, and SD card) and nothing worked. After the first attempt at repair, I got this dreaded error when trying to boot: "Kernel Panic-not syncing! Attempted to kill init! Exit code=0x00000009". None of the online posts covering this error are very new and they don't apply to my setup. So I dropped back to my 22.04 LTS HDD and now I'm trying to move my /home from that driver over to it, then do a full upgrade to 22.10.

Jim_HiTek

2/5/24, 4:17 PM

Installed my 22.04 backup drive into the computer and set it up to copy the 22.10 /home directory over and it said 6 hours. Grrr. Back to google and found this really nifty app, "FreeFileSync". It did the job of copying over the newer or changed files in under 30 minutes. Wow. I'm sure there's some way to do that from Terminal but the app works so well, no reason to learn those newer to me commands now. Anyway, I then erased the old 22.10 drive, upgraded the 22.04 drive to 22.10. That went well. Then last night, I duplicated (cloned) the drive so I have a full backup. Fixed.

Jim_HiTek

2/5/24, 4:31 PM

But...though I'm back up an running, I wanted a way to prevent inadvertently using Grub Customizer (this has happened twice now where the customizer has trashed my setup (I have had it happen twice now, forgot the last time it happened but it was in my notes). I'm not the only one it's happened to either...and some have difficulties removing it fully. Anyway, I want to avoid using it in the future, but don't want 'removing' it to cause problems either, so I edited it in the Mate Menu to "Grub Custom-DO NOT USE!" as a reminder to myself to avoid using it. Same with BleachBit.

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