How can I fix/install/reinstall grub?

Question

So I started out with a 250GB HDD, the stock drive from an EeePC 1015pem that I am trying to turn into a MintBook. The drive is physically operable, but all data has been nuked, including the old OS. Given this, I attached the HDD to my desktop and installed Linux Mint 16 Xfce from a live USB created through Unetbootin-585. Set aside 10GB for swap and 240GB for ext4 and /.

The drive now refuses to boot for either the desktop or netbook. Both motherboards are sounding the correct sequence of beeps, so they seem healthy, and I can successfully access the BIOS on both systems. However, the only thing that comes up after starting the computer is a nonresponsive command-line. There is no error message, no grub or grub-rescue, nothing.

Is there anything I can try besides reformatting and starting over? How would I go about installing a boot loader that can boot my OS?

Answer 1

So, it sounds like you have not installed a boot loader (e.g. grub) on the disk. This means that although you have a valid OS on it, there is no way to boot it and so you can't use it.

You need to attach the HDD to a working computer (you can use a live CD), set up a chroot environment and install grub on it.

1. Mount the partition you will be using as / (I will call the drive /dev/sdb and the / partition sdb1, the names may be different on your system, you will need to use the correct ones) somewhere :

   sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/foo
   

2. Bind the directories that grub needs to have access to

   sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/foo/dev && 
   sudo mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/foo/dev/pts && 
   sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/foo/proc && 
   sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/foo/sys
   

3. Set up the chroot environment

   sudo chroot /mnt/foo
   

4. Create grub's configuration file:

   sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
   

   If you have multiple operating systems installed, make sure that the command above lists all of them. For example:

   $ sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
   Generating grub.cfg ...
   Found background image: /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png
   Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.10-2-amd64
   Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.10-2-amd64
   Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-amd64
   Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-4-amd64
   Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-3-amd64
   Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-3-amd64
   Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-2-amd64
   Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-2-amd64
   Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
   Found memtest86+ multiboot image: /boot/memtest86+_multiboot.bin
   Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda2
   done
   

5. Now install grub to the MBR of your drive (remember to change /dev/sdb to whichever drive you actually want to install it on)

   grub-install /dev/sdb
   grub-install --recheck /dev/sdb
   

6. Exit the chroot and unmount everything so your running system is back to normal:

   exit
   sudo umount /mnt/foo/dev/pts /mnt/foo/dev /mnt/foo/proc /mnt/foo/sys /mnt/foo
   

7. Try booting from the drive, you should have a grub menu this time.