Mint installer does not install Grub
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linux Mint |
In Progress
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
I installed Linux Mint 9 for the first time today. As I have BootIt NG installed as my main partition manager/boot loader, I wanted to install grub into the root partition rather than the MBR. I had previously deleted my existing Linux partitions (leaving Windows intact) so was starting with a lot of empty disk space. I ran into two distinct bugs in attempting to install grub:
1. After creating custom partitions, I reached the final step of the installer and clicked "Advanced" to bring up the boot loader installation options. Grub wanted to install to the MBR by default. I attempted to change this to /dev/sda7 (the new root partition I had just specified) only to discover I could not accept this option. The reason? The partition had not actually been created or formatted yet; this happens only after you finish the installation wizard. So the Mint installer would not let me specify the to-be-created partition as the Grub installation target.
2. After backing out of the installer and creating & formatting my partitions manually, I was then able to select /dev/sda7 as the grub installation target. The installer completed and said everything was fine. I rebooted. BootIt NG promptly told me that /dev/sda7 was unbootable and in fact I could not boot Mint. I returned to the live DVD and repeated the process. Again, the installer said everything was fine, but the partition remained unbootable. I returned to the live DVD again and ran "sudo grub-install" manually. Then I found the problem: grub whined that "Embedding is not possible" and that I had to use "blocklists" which were "UNRELIABLE and discouraged".
Such technobabble meant nothing to me other than that grub failed to install and the Mint installer didn't detect it nor inform me about it.
I finally found (after some reading to try to figure out what the babble meant) that using --force was required; I got grub installed and away I finally went.
The Mint installer needs both these bugs fixed.
| Ikey Doherty (ikey) wrote | #1 |
| Changed in linuxmint: | |
| status: | New → In Progress |
Hi, thanks for reporting this issue!
This one is gonna take a bit of investigation on
my part, so I'll mark this "in progress" until
I reach any decision