Scheduled Maintenance: We are aware of an issue with Google, AOL, and Yahoo services as email providers which are blocking new registrations. We are trying to fix the issue and we have several internal and external support tickets in process to resolve the issue. Please see: viewtopic.php?t=158230

 

 

 

Failed Debian 9 GRUB boot loader installation

Ask for help with issues regarding the Installations of the Debian O/S.
Post Reply
Message
Author
I am a nobody
Posts: 45
Joined: 2012-04-13 03:44

Failed Debian 9 GRUB boot loader installation

#1 Post by I am a nobody »

Hi,

I've just installed Debian 9 to a Dell laptop Inspiron 15 which has multiple partitions, CentOS 6 is installed in /dev/sdb6, I installed Debian 9 in /dev/sdb9 partition and the bootable flag is on. In the step of "Install the GRUB Boot Loader on a hard disk", it changed GRUB boot loader to /dev/sdb9 MBR, but after installation, it still booted from CentOS 6 which uses an older version of GRUB and cannot boot Debian 9. I tried command line "grub-install /dev/sdb9", it did not work either. Appreciate any insight how to force installing Debian 9 boot loader over CentOS 6 and booting from Debian 9 partition MBR.

Thank you.

Kind regards

User avatar
sunrat
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 6412
Joined: 2006-08-29 09:12
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Has thanked: 116 times
Been thanked: 462 times

Re: Failed Debian 9 GRUB boot loader installation

#2 Post by sunrat »

If you want Debian to take over booting duties, you need to install GRUB to the MBR of the drive, /dev/sdb in your case, not /dev/sdb9. I'm assuming you are using MBR boot rather than UEFI seeing you mentioned it.
If you want CentOS to keep booting duties, you'll have to update it's GRUB when booted from CentOS. In Debian you could do this simply by running update-grub (as long as it's installed to drive MBR), but wou'd have to check if CentOS is the same.
“ computer users can be divided into 2 categories:
Those who have lost data
...and those who have not lost data YET ”
Remember to BACKUP!

User avatar
debiman
Posts: 3063
Joined: 2013-03-12 07:18

Re: Failed Debian 9 GRUB boot loader installation

#3 Post by debiman »

as root/superuser:

Code: Select all

grub-install /dev/sdX # where X is _one letter_, NOT a number
# then, from either centos or debian:
update-grub # which is the same as:
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
make sure os-prober is installed.

I am a nobody
Posts: 45
Joined: 2012-04-13 03:44

Re: Failed Debian 9 GRUB boot loader installation

#4 Post by I am a nobody »

Finally resolved by installing Ubuntou16 which was able to overwrite the boot MBR. Thanks sunrat and debiman.

Post Reply