GRUB2 Info

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Belair Stormwalker

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I will give a little background to what I am trying to do.

My Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS crashed when Ubuntu released .3 update. After the update, my external display no longer worked. My laptop is an HP ENVY Notebook - 17t-k200 CTO (ENERGY STAR), which has an Nvidia chipset for the external display. Due to my failing eyesight, I use a 65" TV as my monitor. Long-story-short, I lost my entire Linux install. I decided to completely wipe the drive and install several different Linux distros instead of just one. The distros will change over time since I want to try to work with several different flavors over time.

Here is my dilemma. What type of partition EXACTLY does GRUB2 need to be installed on for it to work with several different OS's. Ubuntu would NOT install unless GRUB2 was installed in a FAT32 partition, but Linux Mint wanted an EFI partition for GRUB2. openSUSE Tumbleweed can't install either.

I have read man page after man page and NOBODY gives a clear explanation as to WHAT kind of partition GRUB2 needs to be installed on. Can anyone here point me to something that will actually tell me the answer to this question? It seems like such a simple question, but NOBODY answers it, that I have found so far.
 


The answer to your question is provided in the grub manual:

Grub is normally installed to the drive rather than a named partition, e.g.:
Code: 
grub-install /dev/sda
The grub installer takes care of where it locates itself.

If installing a number of linux installations, it is usually the grub of the last linux installation that is installed to the drive, and it will generally see all the linux distros installed on the partitions on the disk and provide a menu to choose them.

Grub may need to be configured with the option: GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false to have it's prober detect all the installations.
 
osprey said:
The answer to your question is provided in the grub manual:

Grub is normally installed to the drive rather than a named partition, e.g.:
Code: 
grub-install /dev/sda
The grub installer takes care of where it locates itself.

If installing a number of linux installations, it is usually the grub of the last linux installation that is installed to the drive, and it will generally see all the linux distros installed on the partitions on the disk and provide a menu to choose them.

Grub may need to be configured with the option: GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false to have it's prober detect all the installations.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the link to the 160 page document. I will get back with you after I read through the whole 160 pages trying to decipher what I need from it. This may take a while though.

I understand that GRUB is normally installed on the drive instead of a partition, but that was not my experience installing Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS. It asked for a SPECIFIC location to install it. Ubuntu INSISTED that it had to be installed on a FAT32 partition, while Linux Mint insisted that it be installed on an EFI partition. I really didn't want to redevelop my programming skills and pour through lines and lines of code to figure out what it was doing and what it wanted.

As for the GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false, I did that right after installing Mint.
 
Belair Stormwalker said:
Ubuntu INSISTED that it had to be installed on a FAT32 partition, while Linux Mint insisted that it be installed on an EFI partition.
Click to expand...

Usually EFI partitions are Fat32. I think the distro's just name the file system types differently.
Every distro I'm currently using does this.
 
Belair Stormwalker said:
Thanks for the link to the 160 page document. I will get back with you after I read through the whole 160 pages trying to decipher what I need from it. This may take a while though.

I understand that GRUB is normally installed on the drive instead of a partition, but that was not my experience installing Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS. It asked for a SPECIFIC location to install it. Ubuntu INSISTED that it had to be installed on a FAT32 partition, while Linux Mint insisted that it be installed on an EFI partition. I really didn't want to redevelop my programming skills and pour through lines and lines of code to figure out what it was doing and what it wanted.

As for the GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false, I did that right after installing Mint.
Click to expand...
That's very amusing :) Of course you don't have to read the whole document, just the installation section will do, which is only a few pages. Where else would one expect the canonical answers to questions on the matter? Section 4.1 in the grub manual appears to be relevant to your question. It shows the relevant commands.

If you are using an iso to install and it demands something odd as you have described, an alternative is to install the distro, and after that with a live disk, or a live grub disk, mount it all and install grub. Here are a couple of reads to consider how to do that:
 
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