Restoring Grub With A LiveCD

I enjoy installing different distributions that I usually find first on Distrowatch. This is the premiere Linux site for finding what's the latest on your favorite distro. I like to install the Debian derivatives like Ubuntu, Mint, Mepis, AntiX and now the most recent I have downloaded, elive. I have also cut my Linux teeth on Damn Small Linux, Zenwalk, Slax, Back Track and a few others. But the common denominator is I start looking and keep current on the Distrowatch site. This site is a great resource for the Linux enthusiast.

It was here I found the terrific article on Restoring Grub written by Jesse Smith in the Questions and Answers section. I felt it was a well written and easy to understand article that covers an important piece of information. No one wants to see the fatal message No Operating System found or Grub errors 17, 22 or 25. (These are the three I've seen in my short Linux experience.) Here is the article in its entirety re-posted with permission.

Restoring GRUB

Can't-boot-any-more asks: Distro hopping wiped out my GRUB. How can I reconstruct it?

DistroWatch answers: Sometimes when making changes to a hard drive, such as installing a new operating system, the disk's master boot record (MBR) will get wiped or corrupted. When that happens, GRUB will no longer function. This has the unfortunate side effect of preventing the user from being able to boot their operating system and, in those cases, it's important to be able to get the system up and running again, preferably without re-installing the operating system(s) from scratch.

The easiest way to get GRUB back on-line is with a live CD. It doesn't really matter which live CD, so long as it comes with a copy of GRUB. Place the live CD into the computer and boot from it. We're then going to venture into command-line territory. The next thing to do is run the "grub" command as root or, if you are running a live CD that uses sudo, run "sudo grub". This will start GRUB and provide us with a prompt.

     grub>

We'll then find out where the GRUB files are located:

     grub> find /boot/grub/stage1

The find command will return a disk location for us. Probably "(hd0,0)" or "(hd0,1)". We now know where the GRUB files are stored. Next, we'll tell GRUB to use this location in the future. In the following step, type "root", followed by the location we were given above. In my case:

     grub> root (hd0,1)

GRUB now knows where its files are located and we need to re-setup GRUB in the master boot record. To do this, we type:

     grub> setup (hd0)

The above step should work for most people, who have GRUB installed in the MBR. For folks who have installed GRUB onto a partition, the "setup" command can be modified to include the partition number. The catch is, you need to know where you originally installed GRUB. In these cases, remember that GRUB starts counting partitions from zero, not one. So, for example, if GRUB was installed on the third partition of the first hard drive, the "setup" command will look like this:

     grub> setup (hd0,2)

When we get back to the prompt again, we can quit GRUB:

     grub> quit

And then reboot the computer. Remove the live CD from the drive and we should be back to normal.

Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 3 Is Available

Hey all you Ubuntu fans according to Distrowatch, Canonical has release Karmic Koala Alpha 3 for Ubuntu 9.10. I will certainly give this a try since I did like 9.04 it just never really performed that stellar in the wireless department. It connected fine using the Dlink-652 wireless card in my laptop but wasn't as responsive as Fedora 11. See the Speedtest results I posted a while back for Ubuntu and Fedora. So I am curious to see if they have improved the performance for the Ahteros chipset in this version. I will give it a try this weekend and report back. Two of the more noteworthy changes are the 2.6.31-3.19 kernet and ext4 as the default filesystem. I suggest you head over to their website for the full run-down of the newest features in Karmic Koala.

Speedtest Results

Cox Cable advertises all time about Powerboost but only in off hours like almost 4am have I obtained the results advertised.

I ran a second test on a Los Angeles server for comparison and the results were almost the same.

I did these tests in Fedora 11 on my HP laptop. I am using a D-link wireless N card. It has the Atheros chip set which has been very difficult in the past to get any connection. In Fedora 10 it would connect but never go anywhere. In Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04 I was able to get it working but not at this speed rating. I should also mention that my best test ever in Windows only went above just above 12 Mb/s. So once again I am very pleased with the progress Project Fedora is making.