How to save Grub bootloader!

[Jonny_hikingferal]

Hi guys, last year I tried UBUNTU and I loved it, I had it installed on a 100GB partition on my laptop's 1TB SSD and was really enjoying learning about Linux and how to use the terminal. One day I allowed windows to update and it wiped my ability to duel boot into UBUNTU, in what was basically a tantrum I deleted and cleared the partition back to normal but I miss tinkering!!

 

Could someone please ELI5 how to prevent windows update from ruining my fun and my ability to duel boot into Linux - I want to be able to Duel boot and I want UBUNTU on a small 50-100GB partition but I am open to any and all other suggestions. Thanks so much in advance.

 

J

[manikyath]

dont put linux and windows (10/11) on the same drive. that's all there's to it.

 

linux is perfectly happy running off a USB drive, SD card, etc. just install it to such a drive, and configure your BIOS to boot from that drive before the windows boot loader, that way if it is present you'll be in linux, and if it's not present, you'll be in windows.

 

there's been a thread a while back with a similar question, i'll see if i can dig it up, it'll probably contain some resources you can use

[Eigenvektor]

Here's how my drive is partitioned:

 

Linux simply has its own EFI partition, which prevents Windows from overwriting it on updates. Windows and Linux have happily coexisted on this drive for a long time.

 

The "EFI system partition" (0n1p1) is the one Windows created during installation. The one with mount point /boot/efi (0n1p5) is the one that belongs to Manjaro. This way I can switch between both using Grub.

 

[Jonny_hikingferal]

5 minutes ago, manikyath said:

dont put linux and windows (10/11) on the same drive. that's all there's to it.

 

linux is perfectly happy running off a USB drive, SD card, etc. just install it to such a drive, and configure your BIOS to boot from that drive before the windows boot loader, that way if it is present you'll be in linux, and if it's not present, you'll be in windows.

 

there's been a thread a while back with a similar question, i'll see if i can dig it up, it'll probably contain some resources you can use

Yeah I get that's an option but I want Linux on this drive, I don't want to run it from a thumb drive or whatever, it shouldn't really even be an issue to want to have an operating system on a drive lol - anyway I read in a forum the best thing would be to fix it when it happens rather that try to prevent it from happening, currently looking at Grub repair tools.

[Eigenvektor]

2 minutes ago, Hikingferal said:

Yeah I get that's an option but I want Linux on this drive, I don't want to run it from a thumb drive or whatever, it shouldn't really even be an issue to want to have an operating system on a drive lol - anyway I read in a forum the best thing would be to fix it when it happens rather that try to prevent it from happening, currently looking at Grub repair tools.

I think this should help: https://askubuntu.com/a/1313998

 

You should be able to boot to Ubuntu by telling it to boot the particular partition. Otherwise you might be able to get there with a live-USB stick.

[Jonny_hikingferal]

1 minute ago, Eigenvektor said:

Here's how my drive is partitioned:

 

Linux simply has its own EFI partition, which prevents Windows from overwriting it on updates. Windows and Linux have happily coexisted on this drive for a long time.

 

The "EFI system partition" (0n1p1) is the one Windows created during installation. The one with mount point /boot/efi (0n1p5) is the one that belongs to Manjaro. This way I can switch between both using Grub.

Thankyou, I will try to emulate what you did here while I set it up in a moment. Have you heard of Rescatux? I am looking at Grub repair tools to simply repair grub bootloader should it be wiped again

1 minute ago, Eigenvektor said:

 

 

[Eigenvektor]

1 minute ago, Hikingferal said:

Thankyou, I will try to emulate what you did here while I set it up in a moment. Have you heard of Rescatux? I am looking at Grub repair tools to simply repair grub bootloader should it be wiped again

Haven't heard of Rescatux. If you want to emulate the partitioning scheme, you'll need to select manual partitioning during installation and create the partition and mount point yourself. There's probably a way to get there with a system that's already running, but not sure how. This might serve as a starting point: https://askubuntu.com/a/1296430

[Ralphred]

Fixing it should be as simple as issuing a grub-install command from your Ubuntu install media. The only part that windows messes with is the actual loader in the boot-sector, so mounting your /boot over the top of the live OS's /boot, and running

grub-install --skip-fs-probe --target=x86_64-efi --force /dev/sda

Replacing /dev/sda with your drives device file (maybe /dev/nvme0n1, /dev/sdc etc)

 

You should look at grub's GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT and GRUB_DEFAULT config settings too, would be useful in this use case.

[MichaelHabib]

Both untested ideas

- have windows on a different disk

- install windows in a VHD and boot it with https://www.ventoy.net/