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Downgrading grub2

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Grimnar
Posts: 173
Joined: 2008-03-30 16:24

Downgrading grub2

#1 Post by Grimnar »

So I'm running Grub 1.97 on some of my computers. And one of them I could temper and test things out with. And one of them are kinda production, but still runs squeeze. (Long story)
So the one I can temper with, I wanna downgrade grub2 to grub 0.97.
How can this be done? I just tried a little bit this evening but when I boot I still see the grub2 screen.

I wanna go back to the ages when /dev/sda1 was /dev/sda1 not all this:

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menuentry "Debian GNU/Linux, with Linux 2.6.32-trunk-amd64" {
	insmod ext2
	set root=(hd0,1)
	search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 6966f3e7-ad5b-4980-825e-a2eoad37a3c2
	echo	Loading Linux 2.6.32-trunk-amd64 ...
	linux	/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-trunk-amd64 root=UUID=6996f3e7-ad5b-4980-825e-a2edad37a3c2 ro  quiet
	echo	Loading initial ramdisk ...
	initrd	/boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-trunk-amd64
crap.

Can that be done? And I have this problem with the production server changing /dev/sda1 at every boot. So this is kinda the reason I want to downgrade. /dev/sda1 should be /dev/sda1 at every boot! Not changing all the time. Makes building raid that much harder.

:D

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nadir
Posts: 5961
Joined: 2009-10-05 22:06
Location: away

Re: Downgrading grub2

#2 Post by nadir »

http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Grub_2_durch_Grub_ersetzen
the commands are highlighted, so you don't need to speak german, just use the commands.
the rest is buntu-speak-chit-chat anyway.
if i recall correct i did it that way, it didn't work for the first time, after i smashed a few times on it i was back to grub-legacy.
"I am not fine with it, so there is nothing for me to do but stand aside." M.D.

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Grimnar
Posts: 173
Joined: 2008-03-30 16:24

Re: Downgrading grub2

#3 Post by Grimnar »

Thanks alot!

by the way: http://translate.google.com/translate?j ... l=de&tl=en

:D

Still, I'm norwegian! :D

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nadir
Posts: 5961
Joined: 2009-10-05 22:06
Location: away

Re: Downgrading grub2

#4 Post by nadir »

Still, I'm norwegian! :D
aha. thats good. :-)
i hope it will work (as said: i remember that i had a bit of trouble, but just did it again and again)
"I am not fine with it, so there is nothing for me to do but stand aside." M.D.

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Grimnar
Posts: 173
Joined: 2008-03-30 16:24

Re: Downgrading grub2

#5 Post by Grimnar »

Yeah, well. It sure makes me install

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grub grub-common grub-pc
again. grub-common = grub 1.97
But we will see :)

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Grimnar
Posts: 173
Joined: 2008-03-30 16:24

Re: Downgrading grub2

#6 Post by Grimnar »

That did not go as planned :D

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GNU GRUB version 1.98XX
Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB list possible command completitions. Anywhere else TAB lists possible device or file completitions.

grub>_

And this one came after I did this according to the page:

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Cleanup These are files in the / boot / grub / and / etc / grub.d, which can be manually deleted if necessary. 

logan
Posts: 269
Joined: 2008-03-29 18:09

Re: Downgrading grub2

#7 Post by logan »

I just reinstalled my work machine the other day using an old lenny cd and then upgraded to squeeze. I thought the installer said it it'd clean up any files in /boot/grub when I uninstalled grub-pc, but that didn't happen (or it left a heck of alot behind). I got rid of *.mod, *.lst (except for menu.lst), *.img, as well as *.o, grub.cfg, grubenv, some .png file, and unicode.pf2.

Make sure you update-grub after uninstalling grub-pc and installing grub-legacy, so you get 0.97 on the mbr.

kansasnoob
Posts: 17
Joined: 2010-03-10 04:19

Re: Downgrading grub2

#8 Post by kansasnoob »

You peeked my interest because I wrote the following HowTo for Ubuntu and having just installed Squeeze I decided see what differences there might be (there were a few so don't follow that!):

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1298932

One major difference was package names. While the package "grub" is still in the repos installing it automatically upgrades to grub2, so the correct package name is "grub-legacy".

The second major difference was the need to run "update-grub" twice, once before the "grub-install /dev/XYZ" to create a device.map and again after "grub-install /dev/XYZ" to create a menu.lst.

Also, mostly due to subtle differences in Debian's CLI, infamiliarity with package names, etc. I chose to handle the package management part of this using Synaptic. Synaptic is great if you're unfamiliar with package names and such, I just clicked on Search and typed in grub, that made it easy to see just what I was dealing with :)

So it went like this (all commands run as root):

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mv /boot/grub /boot/grub_backup

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mkdir /boot/grub
I then check the directory structure like this:

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ls /boot
Example (you can see that I have both the /boot/grub and /boot/grub_backup):

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config-2.6.32-trunk-686      initrd.img-2.6.32-trunk-686.bak
grub                         System.map-2.6.32-trunk-686
grub_backup                  vmlinuz-2.6.32-trunk-686
initrd.img-2.6.32-trunk-686
I then went to Synaptic and marked grub, grub-common, and grub-pc for complete removal so it gets rid of the old configuration files (Note: you may find that the package "grub" is not installed, but I had fiddled using the CLI before realizing the package name difference as explained above).

I applied that, you'll be warned about having no bootloader, etc. but I wanted to get rid of it. After that was complete I installed grub-legacy which also reinstalls grub-common, now it's back to the Terminal (as root):

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update-grub
That created a device.map.

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grub-install /dev/XYZ
I assume you know where you want to install grub? Obviously the "XYZ" needs to be replaced with the proper device, eg: mine was /dev/hda. Then we repeat:

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update-grub
That time it created a menu.lst, now we need to use a grub shell:

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grub
Be patient and you'll see the prompt change to grub>, then run:

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find /boot/grub/stage1
Mine returned:

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grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
 (hd0,4)
 (hd0,6)
 (hd0,8)
 (hd0,11)
 (hd0,17)
And I know Debian is on (hd0,17) so I then (Note: those are zeros):

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root (hd0,17)

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setup (hd0)
If all went well you should see:
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"...* 15 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 d (hd0) (hd0)1+15 p (hd0,1)/boot/grub/stage
2 /boot/grub/menu.lst"... succeeded
Done.
Then just run:

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quit
I then checked to see how /boot/grub was populated:

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ls /boot/grub
Example:

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root@lance-desktop:/home/lance# ls /boot/grub
default        fat_stage1_5  menu.lst~	      reiserfs_stage1_5  stage2
device.map     jfs_stage1_5  menu.lst.backup  splashimages	 xfs_stage1_5
e2fs_stage1_5  menu.lst      minix_stage1_5   stage1
I then also installed "startupmanager" because I like it, and also "usplash" while I was there.

It worked out fine for me, no problem booting, now to change it back :)

I hope that's helpful.

kansasnoob
Posts: 17
Joined: 2010-03-10 04:19

Re: Downgrading grub2

#9 Post by kansasnoob »

Going back the other way was no problem at all, I used purely CLI now that I knew the package names:

mv /boot/grub /boot/grub_legacy
mkdir /boot/grub
apt-get --purge remove grub-legacy grub-common startupmanager
apt-get install grub-pc (answer yes to all questions)
update-grub (found all OS"s):
Generating grub.cfg ...
Found background image: moreblue-orbit-grub.png
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-trunk-686
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-trunk-686
Found Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition on /dev/hda1
Found Ubuntu 9.10 (9.10) on /dev/hda12
Found Ubuntu lucid (development branch) (10.04) on /dev/hda3
Found Ubuntu 9.04 (9.04) on /dev/hda5
Found Linux Mint 7 Gloria - Main Edition (7) on /dev/hda7
Found Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS (8.04) on /dev/hda9
Found Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition on /dev/hdb1
Found Fedora release 12 (Constantine) on /dev/hdb2
done
And while I was asked during the install/configuration process I trust nothing so I:

grub-install /dev/sda

Rebooted fine. I love grub2 :)

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Grimnar
Posts: 173
Joined: 2008-03-30 16:24

Re: Downgrading grub2

#10 Post by Grimnar »

Thats cool. But at the end there;
Generating grub.cfg ...
That indicates grub 1.97? I thought grub 0.97 used menu.lst instead of grub.cfg?

kansasnoob
Posts: 17
Joined: 2010-03-10 04:19

Re: Downgrading grub2

#11 Post by kansasnoob »

Grimnar wrote:Thats cool. But at the end there;
Generating grub.cfg ...
That indicates grub 1.97? I thought grub 0.97 used menu.lst instead of grub.cfg?
Yeah, that's wrong. I mean something is wrong. Give me a few minutes.

But also don't just post bits and pieces of the terminal output, post it all so we can see what you're doing.

I'll be back.

kansasnoob
Posts: 17
Joined: 2010-03-10 04:19

Re: Downgrading grub2

#12 Post by kansasnoob »

Well the first thing is I need to know just what steps you wer following when that occurred.

Maybe I wasn't clear, but my first post in this thread was reverting grub2 to grub-legacy. The one after that was going from grub-legacy back to grub2. Maybe I shouldn't even have included the second post, but I was reporting my results.

Sorry if I was unclear about that. Give me a few minutes to type some commands so we can see what we have.

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Grimnar
Posts: 173
Joined: 2008-03-30 16:24

Re: Downgrading grub2

#13 Post by Grimnar »

Thats great! My pc which I could temper with Debian made a booboo, see earlier post. So I have to reinstall (to save time)
So I'll be running Debian AMD 64 Squeeze. And I will post the options for grub I have. And I'm going to re-read posts you have made in this thread. I was away all day today, and I need my sleep now. 02:33 here in Norway right now :D

So give me a few hours and I'll be back and posting! :)

kansasnoob
Posts: 17
Joined: 2010-03-10 04:19

Re: Downgrading grub2

#14 Post by kansasnoob »

Well you can see what's installed by running:

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aptitude show <package-name>|head -4
Since you want to know about grub, grub-pc, grub-common, and grub-legacy you could combine the commands with space&& space as such:

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aptitude show grub|head -4 && aptitude show grub-pc|head -4 && aptitude show grub-common|head -4 && aptitude show grub-legacy|head -4
Example:

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lance@lance-desktop:~$ aptitude show grub|head -4 && aptitude show grub-pc|head -4 && aptitude show grub-common|head -4 && aptitude show grub-legacy|head -4
Package: grub
State: not installed
Version: 0.97-59
Priority: optional
Package: grub-pc
State: not installed
Version: 1.98~20100115-1
Priority: extra
Package: grub-common
State: installed
Automatically installed: yes
Version: 1.98~20100115-1
Package: grub-legacy
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 0.97-59
Then to see what files/directories look like:

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ls /boot

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ls /boot/grub
A typical grub-legacy /boot/grub looks like this:

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default        grub.cfg      menu.lst.backup                 splashimages
device.map     jfs_stage1_5  menu.lst_backup_by_grub2_prerm  stage1
e2fs_stage1_5  menu.lst      minix_stage1_5                  stage2
fat_stage1_5   menu.lst~     reiserfs_stage1_5               xfs_stage1_5
A typical grub2 (grub-pc) /boot/grub looks like this:

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915resolution.mod            gcry_rmd160.mod     part_sun.mod
acpi.mod                     gcry_seed.mod       parttool.lst
affs.mod                     gcry_serpent.mod    parttool.mod
afs_be.mod                   gcry_sha1.mod       password.mod
afs.mod                      gcry_sha256.mod     password_pbkdf2.mod
aout.mod                     gcry_sha512.mod     pbkdf2.mod
ata.mod                      gcry_tiger.mod      pci.mod
ata_pthru.mod                gcry_twofish.mod    play.mod
at_keyboard.mod              gcry_whirlpool.mod  png.mod
befs_be.mod                  gettext.mod         probe.mod
befs.mod                     gfxterm.mod         pxeboot.img
biosdisk.mod                 gptsync.mod         pxecmd.mod
bitmap.mod                   grldr.img           pxe.mod
blocklist.mod                grub.cfg            raid5rec.mod
boot.img                     grubenv             raid6rec.mod
boot.mod                     gzio.mod            raid.mod
bsd.mod                      halt.mod            read.mod
bufio.mod                    handler.lst         reboot.mod
cat.mod                      handler.mod         reiserfs.mod
cdboot.img                   hashsum.mod         relocator.mod
chain.mod                    hdparm.mod          scsi.mod
charset.mod                  hello.mod           search_fs_file.mod
cmp.mod                      help.mod            search_fs_uuid.mod
command.lst                  hexdump.mod         search_label.mod
configfile.mod               hfs.mod             search.mod
core.img                     hfsplus.mod         serial.mod
cpio.mod                     iso9660.mod         setjmp.mod
cpuid.mod                    jfs.mod             sfs.mod
crc.mod                      jpeg.mod            sh.mod
crypto.lst                   kernel.img          sleep.mod
crypto.mod                   keystatus.mod       tar.mod
datehook.mod                 linux16.mod         terminal.lst
date.mod                     linux.mod           terminal.mod
datetime.mod                 lnxboot.img         terminfo.mod
device.map                   loadenv.mod         test.mod
diskboot.img                 locale              tga.mod
dm_nv.mod                    loopback.mod        true.mod
drivemap.mod                 lsmmap.mod          udf.mod
echo.mod                     ls.mod              ufs1.mod
efiemu32.o                   lspci.mod           ufs2.mod
efiemu64.o                   lvm.mod             uhci.mod
efiemu.mod                   mdraid.mod          usb_keyboard.mod
elf.mod                      memdisk.mod         usb.mod
example_functional_test.mod  memrw.mod           usbms.mod
ext2.mod                     minicmd.mod         usbtest.mod
extcmd.mod                   minix.mod           vbeinfo.mod
fat.mod                      mmap.mod            vbe.mod
font.mod                     moddep.lst          vbetest.mod
fshelp.mod                   msdospart.mod       vga.mod
fs.lst                       multiboot2.mod      vga_text.mod
functional_test.mod          multiboot.mod       video_fb.mod
gcry_arcfour.mod             normal.mod          video.lst
gcry_blowfish.mod            ntfscomp.mod        video.mod
gcry_camellia.mod            ntfs.mod            videotest.mod
gcry_cast5.mod               ohci.mod            xfs.mod
gcry_crc.mod                 part_acorn.mod      xnu.mod
gcry_des.mod                 part_amiga.mod      xnu_uuid.mod
gcry_md4.mod                 part_apple.mod      zfsinfo.mod
gcry_md5.mod                 part_gpt.mod        zfs.mod
gcry_rfc2268.mod             partmap.lst
gcry_rijndael.mod            part_msdos.mod
You'll notice that everything is in alphabetical order. If it's huge like the last example then just look for a menu.lst. If there's a menu.lst in that bunch then you have a problem.

If you have mixed grub-pc and grub-legacy files in the /boot/grub directory neither will work properly. That's why I always start with making a new /boot/grub directory.

Now, it's hard to give you more specific directions without the full output from the terminal of those commands. My first set of instructions was for reverting from grub2 to grub-legacy. The next post was just me reporting that it was easy to go back the other way.

So if you need more specific help post the output of:

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aptitude show grub|head -4 && aptitude show grub-pc|head -4 && aptitude show grub-common|head -4 && aptitude show grub-legacy|head -4
And these two:

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ls /boot
ls /boot/grub
And also post the output of the Boot Info Script:

http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net/

The instructions are there but I do things a bit different, for instance if I downloaded to the Desktop I run:

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cd Desktop
Then "su" + password to become root and :

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bash boot_info_script055.sh
The output will be long so it should be placed in CODE tags.

This can be done, sorry if I confused you.

kansasnoob
Posts: 17
Joined: 2010-03-10 04:19

Re: Downgrading grub2

#15 Post by kansasnoob »

Grimnar wrote:Thats great! My pc which I could temper with Debian made a booboo, see earlier post. So I have to reinstall (to save time)
So I'll be running Debian AMD 64 Squeeze. And I will post the options for grub I have. And I'm going to re-read posts you have made in this thread. I was away all day today, and I need my sleep now. 02:33 here in Norway right now :D

So give me a few hours and I'll be back and posting! :)
It's all good! I may be tending goats (seriously) when you're asking questions.

Although we're worlds apart we can help each other :)

User avatar
Grimnar
Posts: 173
Joined: 2008-03-30 16:24

Re: Downgrading grub2

#16 Post by Grimnar »

logan wrote:I just reinstalled my work machine the other day using an old lenny cd and then upgraded to squeeze. I thought the installer said it it'd clean up any files in /boot/grub when I uninstalled grub-pc, but that didn't happen (or it left a heck of alot behind). I got rid of *.mod, *.lst (except for menu.lst), *.img, as well as *.o, grub.cfg, grubenv, some .png file, and unicode.pf2.

Make sure you update-grub after uninstalling grub-pc and installing grub-legacy, so you get 0.97 on the mbr.
Yeah, this is typical Debian the way I see it. Many intstallers and such say they are going to remove/clean up stuff, but they leave a pretty much left to create confusion.
Running apt-get remove --purge package should really remove /etc/package and /usr/share/package for instance. Or else we should rename that syntax to apt-get remove --****-up package or apt-get remove --create-confusion package
Don't get me started on dpkg-reconfigure package, it works just as great as windows' repair network connection button
And the way I see it, installing and running grub2 really is a step back. way to many conf-files to comprehend. The files users are suppose/can edit should be visible, all in one dir the rest of the files we should not temper with should be tucked away in a non-obvious lib-dir or something. And of course, /boot/grub should be renamed to /boot/grub2 that goes to /etc/grub as well, call it /etc/grub2 (yeah I know its 1.97)
And what is really the progress of grub2 besides installing splash images?
Grub is a _very_ crucial part of running a computer and it's too easy the way I see it to **** it up and make it totaly useless for normal users.

This is my view of the state of some parts of Debian today.
In other words, before : If you dont know how to run Debian, stick to Windows. If you dont know how to run Squeeze, stick to stable, and every other typical forum quotes. And of course, RTFM
Excuse the french in this post. But it was really good!
Now, I'm going to fix me a workable version of grub! :D

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Grimnar
Posts: 173
Joined: 2008-03-30 16:24

Re: Downgrading grub2

#17 Post by Grimnar »

kansasnoob wrote: I hope that's helpful.

This is from my fresh install of Debian Squeeze.

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/home/andreas# dpkg -l | grep grub
ii  grub-common                             1.98~20100115-1            GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (common files)
ii  grub-pc                                 1.98~20100115-1            GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (PC/BIOS version)
apt-cache search grub gives me this:
grub-choose-default - Control Grub Default through a GUI
grub-splashimages - a collection of great GRUB splashimages
grub-disk - GRUB bootable disk image (dummy package)
grub-doc - Documentation for GRand Unified Bootloader (dummy package)
grub-legacy-doc - Documentation for GRUB Legacy
grub-legacy - GRand Unified Bootloader (Legacy version)
grub - GRand Unified Bootloader (dummy package)
grub2-splashimages - a collection of great GRUB2 splashimages
grub-common - GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (common files)
grub-coreboot - GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (Coreboot version)
grub-efi-amd64 - GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (EFI-AMD64 version)
grub-efi-ia32 - GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (EFI-IA32 version)
grub-efi - GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (dummy package)
grub-emu - GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (emulated version)
grub-firmware-qemu - GRUB firmware image for QEMU
grub-ieee1275 - GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (Open Firmware version)
grub-linuxbios - GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (dummy package)
grub-pc - GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (PC/BIOS version)
grub-rescue-pc - GRUB bootable rescue images, version 2 (PC/BIOS version)
grub2 - GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (dummy package)
And a whole lot of other crap which is irrelevant.
Anyways, now I'm going to move the /boot/grub to /boot/backup_grub and try to install grub (0.97).

This is now the ls of /boot

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backup_grub		   grub				  initrd.img-2.6.32-trunk-amd64.bak  vmlinuz-2.6.32-trunk-amd64
config-2.6.32-trunk-amd64  initrd.img-2.6.32-trunk-amd64  System.map-2.6.32-trunk-amd64
According to Kansasnoob, (which is outside and having fun with his goats! That's gotta be pretty fun! :D ) I should use synaptic to play with the installed grub and such. I dont use synaptic since I dont have gnome installed. Going to try my best anyways.

apt-get install grub-legacy which give me this:

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  multiboot-doc grub-emu grub-legacy-doc mdadm
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  grub-common grub-legacy os-prober
Then I had to update-grub and that gave me this:

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Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
Searching for default file ... Generating /boot/grub/default file and setting the default boot entry to 0
entry not specified.
No problem, cause I'm going to run grub-install /dev/sda
And that gave me this:
root@debianUSB:/etc/apt# grub-install /dev/sda
Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

(hd0) /dev/sda
So far so good I guess.
Now it's time to update-grub
And voila, the end of it looked like this:

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root@debianUSB:/etc/apt# update-grub
Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub
Searching for default file ... found: /boot/grub/default
Testing for an existing GRUB menu.lst file ... 


Generating /boot/grub/menu.lst
Searching for splash image ... none found, skipping ...
Found kernel: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-trunk-amd64
Updating /boot/grub/menu.lst ... done
Now it's time to run grub and run find boot /boot/grub/stage1
And that gave me this, as suspected

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grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
 (hd0,0)

grub> 
And next up:

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grub> root (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

grub> setup (hd0,0)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0,0)"... failed (this is not fatal)
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0,0)"... failed (this is not fatal)
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0,0) /boot/grub/stage2 p /boot/grub/menu.lst "... succeeded
Done.

grub> 
Not sure about the first error there, since /dev/sda is ext3, but all systems are go so far in my view.

And now /boot/grub looks like this

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root@debianUSB:/boot/grub# ls -l
total 212
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    197 2010-03-12 09:39 default
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     15 2010-03-12 09:38 device.map
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   8672 2010-03-12 09:39 e2fs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   8512 2010-03-12 09:39 fat_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   9536 2010-03-12 09:39 jfs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   4047 2010-03-12 09:41 menu.lst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   7872 2010-03-12 09:39 minix_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  10688 2010-03-12 09:39 reiserfs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    512 2010-03-12 09:39 stage1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 126728 2010-03-12 09:39 stage2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  10248 2010-03-12 09:39 xfs_stage1_5
Looking good in my opinion! (Not like the crap that fills the grub2 /boot/grub folder)
Now I'm going to boot this sucker to see if it works! And hopefully the classic grub front is presented.
About a minute later, it works pretty good.
But /etc/grub.d/ is still populated (not good, create confusion)
Same goes to /etc/default/grub

And to make this perfect, I would like to remove the UUID stuff from menu.lst

Code: Select all

title		Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.32-trunk-amd64
root		(hd0,0)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-trunk-amd64 root=UUID=6271c35e-a80a-45c2-a4f8-441f54aec1fd ro 
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-trunk-amd64

A big thanks to Kansasnoob! What a ironic nick!


But I'm still a bit upset of grub-common, I don't see why I need to have that package installed. Don't worry I'm not going to remove it, yet.

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root@debianUSB:/etc/default# dpkg -l | grep grub
ii  grub-common                             1.98~20100115-1            GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (common files)
ii  grub-legacy                             0.97-59                    GRand Unified Bootloader (Legacy version)
rc  grub-pc                                 1.98~20100115-1            GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (PC/BIOS version)

User avatar
Grimnar
Posts: 173
Joined: 2008-03-30 16:24

Re: Downgrading grub2

#18 Post by Grimnar »

And of course, I have more to cry over :D

Looking at my /etc/fstab I discovered this:

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# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=6271c35e-a80a-45c2-a4f8-441f54aec1fd /               ext3    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=329ebb13-2a9d-4715-9325-23f700cc2519 none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0
/dev/sda1       /media/usb0     auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0
/dev/sda2       /media/usb1     auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0
/dev/sda5       /media/usb2     auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0

Not exactly pretty stuff. Is there any way to fix this?
Some of it is commented out, but the UUID scares me :?
Is it okay (and will it still work) to remove the clutter and make look like this:

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proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0
/dev/sda1       /media/usb0     auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0
/dev/sda2       /media/usb1     auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0
/dev/sda5       /media/usb2     auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0
And I'm going to fix it like Nadir points out here http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=50193
Yeah, its on a 16gb usb stick.

User avatar
dotlj
Posts: 646
Joined: 2009-12-25 17:21

Re: Downgrading grub2

#19 Post by dotlj »

I think that what you have done is a useful exercise; you (and others) have learned something useful and you have your system the way you want it. I was happy with GRUB, most of the time and the first few times I installed various distros with GRUB2 I looked for the GRUB option, or, chose not to overwrite my working GRUB MBR. After reading in Squeeze (which shares my hard disk with Lenny), that GRUB2 will be the default once Squeeze becomes stable (and that is not too far away now), I thought that I may as well try it and it does work much better, with minimal changes I'm happier now with GRUB2 than with GRUB.

I have had kernel upgrades in both Lenny and Squeeze that GRUB2 handled correctly, but in the past with GRUB, I would have had to modify the menu.list - so far, I haven't had to do that. In the past I've had one or two GRUB updates that caused problems and I needed to use the install CD as a rescue disk, mount the / partition, run "grub-install" and reboot, but not since GRUB2; so overall I think GRUB2 is better. :)

runbei
Posts: 15
Joined: 2008-12-29 20:47
Location: Mountain View, CA

Re: Downgrading grub2

#20 Post by runbei »

This is more than a matter of taste - Grub1 vs. Grub2. Grub1 (legacy) allows me to enter a nomodeset command in the grub boot screen kernel line so that the suspend-to-ram/resume function works on my ThinkPad X32. Grub2 doesn't allow that, and so far, I have been unable to find a way to make suspend/resume work with Grub2 installed.
Last edited by runbei on 2011-01-18 02:07, edited 1 time in total.

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