Sorry, this is just a little complicated but I need to include this detail to explain the problem.
I’m in the process of recuperating an old Netbook which has two ssd’s (4 GB and 16 GB).
I had initially installed Haiku (r42190) on the smaller ssd which, AFAIK, put BootManager into /dev/sda1 rather than the mbr of the first disk.
Nevertheless, it still booted fine.
Then, I installed Ubuntu in two partitions (/ and /home) on the larger ssd. Because the installer was unable to install Grub to the mbr of /dev/sda (some kind of incompatibility with the BFS on this disk), I instead installed it in /dev/sdb1 (the root partition rather than the mbr of the larger disk).
Then I went back to Haiku and used BootManager to create a boot menu.
However, BootManager would not install on the smaller disk’s mbr (saying that no space was available – which I don’t understand as nothing should have been in this mbr) so I had to install it in the mbr of the larger disk.
This enabled me to boot to the Haiku bootloader and select either Ubuntu or Haiku. Great.
But, I wanted Grub as my bootloader.
So, back in Ubuntu, I deleted everything on the smaller disk, created a new partition /dev/sda1, installed Grub to the mbr of the smaller disk and then removed the Haiku bootloader from the mbr of the larger disk by running # dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sdb bs=446 count=1
I was a bit surprised when the output from this command showed zero input and output but, nevertheless, I proceeded to reboot.
However, I was amazed to find that, on reboot, the BootManager menu showed up again, fully functional, and NOT Grub.
I then, in Ubuntu, ran the boot_info_script which confirmed that Grub2 was installed without any problems in the mbr of /dev/sda.
I’m baffled.
Can anybody suggest how I might get rid of BootManager so that I can get Grub to do the bootloading?
2nd method
"# dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sdb bs=446 count=1"
I think your command is wrong above. Drive has 512 byte sectors. 2nd, /dev/null means nothing, ie, write nothing. Your command should really be similar to this one but with your own “of=”:
“dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1”
Do search for “dd mbr” and read the links. You can also search for grub-install or install grub to mbr. That should help you out.
[quote=tonestone57]Only way to get rid of BootManager is by overwriting with another boot loader or wipe it out with dd.
2nd method
"# dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sdb bs=446 count=1"
I think your command is wrong above. Drive has 512 byte sectors. 2nd, /dev/null means nothing, ie, write nothing. Your command should really be similar to this one but with your own “of=”:
“dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1”
[/quote]
Thank you for your reply.
Yes, you hit the nail on the head, my dd command was wrong. I should have included "if=/dev/zero"
However, I used “bs=446” rather than “bs=512” because, AFAIU, the part between 447 and 512 contains the partition table for the disk which I didn’t want to take out.
So, BootManager is gone now and everything is working correctly.
Strange though, that BootManager in the mbr of the second disk took precedence over Grub in the mbr of the first disk.
Edit: Well, turns out that in all of the messing around that I had done, I had set the large disk (/dev/sdb) as the primary boot disk in the BIOS. This explains why the BootManager in the mbr of /dev/sdb, which hadn’t actually been deleted, was preferred over Grub on the first disk.
So, that makes TWO silly mistakes…