Debian Tips & Tutorials

How to reinstall GRUB?

Note: before continuing read this post if you are not familiar with GNU/Linux
http://debian.sreenadh.in/mount-partitions-in-a-gnulinux-system/

Put the first DVD of Debian in DVD drive.  After booting from DVD you will be asked to choose language, country, keyboard layout. you need to press 3 enter keys for that process.

Press Ctrl Alt F2 then
Press enter key

If you are reinstalling grub of latest Ubuntu versions the partition type may be ext4 so instead of using Debian DVD use Ubuntu live CD otherwise mounting will fail.

mkdir temp_dir
mount /dev/hda6 temp_dir

(where hda6 is your GNU/Linux partition. if you don’t know where you have installed GNU/Linux mount partitions one by one and run the following command to see the contents of that partition.

ls temp_dir
Eg:

mount /dev/hda5 temp_dir
ls temp_dir

if you can see bin boot usr opt directories then it is your GNU/Linux partition. else

umount temp_dir and try other partitions
)
then run the following commands in order.

mount -o bind /dev temp_dir/dev
mount -o bind /proc temp_dir/proc

chroot temp_dir

grub-install –root-directory=/ –no-floppy –recheck /dev/hda

where hda is your hard disk where you have installed GNU/Linux

exit

umount temp_dir/dev
umount temp_dir/proc

umount temp_dir

reboot

Related posts:

1. Grub 2 in Debian Etch