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BiBM installed, now can't boot from GRUB

Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2016 1:14 pm
by auryx
Hi everyone,

Hope you can help. I have just purchased and installed BiBM after reading lots of great reviews, and after many years of being frustrated with other boot managers. It was pretty intuitive in general and mostly works, except for my Linux installation.

Prior to installing, I had roughly this configuration:

HD0: SSD
Partition 0: Fedora 21 /boot
Partition 1: Fedora 21 OS

HD3: SSD (BIOS boot priority)
MBR: GRUB2
Partition 0: Windows 10 Pro
Partition 1: Windows 10 Recovery

HD1 and HD2 are just data disks and are ignored here. Previously, the PC would boot HD3 and give me the GRUB menu which I'd then use to select either Fedora, or chainload the Windows 10 OS booter. After installing BiBM and changing BIOS boot order, I now have the following:

HD0: SSD (BIOS boot priority) - changed to EMBR
Partition 0: Fedora 21 /boot
Partition 1: Fedora 21 OS
Partition 2: BiBM

HD3: SSD - changed to EMBR
MBR: GRUB2?? - seems to have vanished or not be detectable
Partition 0: Windows 10 Pro
Partition 1: Windows 10 Recovery

BiBM detects the Windows 10 partitions on HD3 fine, and can boot to them with no issues (with the "swap" option ticked in Boot Edit). However, it can't detect my GRUB2 any more and as a consequence, doesn't seem to be able to find a Fedora 21 install.

Did converting HD3 to use EMBR instead of MBR somehow wipe my GRUB? Or is it still there in the MBR of HD3 but BiBM can't find it? Also, it might be worth putting a warning flag on the "Change to EMBR" option in Partition Work if this is a destructive step - that wasn't clear to me at all!

My fear here is that I'm going to have to resort to something yucky and ugly and manual and hackerish like the procedure described in this KB article:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=408

but I'd really rather avoid that if at all possible :-)

Thank you,

auryx

Re: BiBM installed, now can't boot from GRUB

Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2016 2:32 pm
by auryx
Update: Ok, so the yucky ugly manual procedure mentioned in the knowledge base article above actually wasn't that painful, once I'd found a CD to burn GRUB to :-) It worked fine and I can now access my Fedora.

However, I'd still like to know if there is any way I could have avoided this beforehand, other than not having my GRUB2 config in the MBR? Is there some setting I could have changed in BiBM install to get around the problem?

Thanks all.

Re: BiBM installed, now can't boot from GRUB

Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2016 2:59 pm
by TeraByte Support(PP)
auryx wrote:
> Did converting HD3 to use EMBR instead of MBR somehow wipe my GRUB?
Yes. It would have overwritten GRUB -- same as if the disk were EMBR and you installed GRUB to it (would overwrite the EMBR).

You would want to keep the disk as MBR or make sure GRUB gets installed to a partition instead of the MBR (recommended for BIBM).

Re: BiBM installed, now can't boot from GRUB

Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2016 10:34 pm
by auryx
Thanks Paul. Yes, I'll bear that in mind for future Linux installs. Aside from that little hurdle, though, BiBM is working great. Looking forward to learning/playing with the other features as time goes on.

auryx