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[Bug 414996] Re: [karmic] grub re-writes boot sector on wrong drive on fresh install

 

okay... I think the issue might be more subtle. I tried installing lucid
again via usb, hoping to be able to select the correct drive in the
advanced options in the installation procedure... what I instead find is
that when in livecd mode, gparted reveals my usb drive as /dev/sda,
which I believe is selected as the default drive to install grub to,
while my hard drive is /usb/sdb. I expect that after installation, this
might be humongously problematic, since when the usb is removed, the
hard disk would be reported as /dev/sda? Even though fstab would be set
up using uuids as opposed to device location, many things, including
grub, should expect to face issues upon update?

I also think this is closely related to the following bug:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/565189

Since this issue is not present in grub2 in karmic, this is certainly a
regression.

-- 
[karmic] grub re-writes boot sector on wrong drive on fresh install
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/414996
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Status in Mythbuntu, Ubuntu derivative focused upon MythTV: Invalid
Status in “grub2” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed

Bug description:
I attempted to install mythbuntu karmic/9.10 alpha 4 to a USB drive.   Using a laptop with an IDE drive containing Windows XP, I booted from the ISO image CD-ROM and went through the installation, selecting manual partitioning, and creating a single EXT4 root filesystem on a USB drive.   The installation proceeded through the complete install to the USB key until instructed to reboot.

I re-booted the laptop with the USB key inserted, and was presented with the message "No bootable partition in table".  Then, removing the USB key and booting from the laptop IDE drive (which should not have been touched by the mythbuntu install) I get the message "GRUB loading.  Welcome to GRUB!  Entering rescue mode... error: no such disk"  followed by the "grub rescue>" prompt.  

I examined the laptop hard drive with a partition editor, and the Windows partition is still intact....  but it looks like the boot sector has been re-written mistakenly.

Now I have two problems.....
1) how do I get Windows on my laptop to boot again....  I need my work data!
2) how do I make my mythbuntu USB front-end install bootable?