double grub problem

Question

I have just installed a new ubuntu on my system which lives alongside another linux distro. My original linux distro uses grub to boot. However now when I boot my laptop it boots into a new grub which originates from the new ubuntu install which doesn't contain entries for my original distroy. If I remove the UEFI entry for ubuntu my machine boots into my original grub which contains a new entry which boots in the new grub.

However the real problem starts then. If I boot into that ubuntu it somehow "restores" the UEFI entry which means on the next boot it again boots into the ubuntu grub.

I have no clue how to fix this. Ideally I just want to have a single grub. But how can I delete the newly installed ubuntu grub and add a correct entry that boots into the new ubuntu?

Answer 1

As rastafile points out there is little cooperation between distributions. Getting to a point that they can work together is harder than it sounds. Where a lot of distributions offer signed versions designed to work with TPMs it's next to impossible to come up with a commercial arrangement allowing one distribution to just drop changes into another's configuration.

However... I would be surprised you've seen any instance of EFI being automatically updated outside of a full install. Package updates will normally trigger update-grub to change the contents of /boot/grub (the grub menu). Updates do not normally trigger grub-install which writes to /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu.

It's possible that you only removed the BIOS entry for UEFI and not the files. UEFI BIOS entries are a little more tricky and there are things that will notice the files on your EFI partition and automatically re-instate the BIOS entry. Some older (poorly implemented) BIOSs just re-scan the EFI partition every time you boot looking for new entries.

Also note that some distributions will really fight because they have forked from Ubuntu and not bothered to change the location of their EFI files. Specifically I know that Linux Mint uses EFI/ubuntu where really they should have switched to EFI/mint long ago.

If you are seeing problems, just uninstall Ubuntu's Grub:

• Completely remove grub from Ubuntu. You don't need grub installed in both distributions, if your other distribution is successfully creating grub menu entries for Ubuntu.

  # Find grub packages with 
  dpkg --list | grep grub
  # Remove these packages replacing "..." for the package names.
  sudo apt-get autoremove ...
  

• As you previously removed the EFI entry in the BIOS then you may also want to remove EFI files from the file system.

  # DO NOT DO THIS IF you are using Linux Mint or Kali
  sudo rm -rf /boot/grub/efi/EFI/ubuntu