I have experienced a load of problems with GRUB 2 (betas that are included in Ubuntu 9.10–why did they include a beta, anyway?) so I sought a method to downgrade, or revert to GRUB legacy (ver 0.97). Below are detailed instructions, all found from the following post. Credit to posters.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1330347
Reverting to GRUB Legacy
If a user chooses to return to GRUB legacy (0.97), these steps will remove GRUB 2 and install GRUB.
The command line produces a cleaner uninstall and reinstallation. While adding and removing the packages can be accomplished with Synaptic, certain steps must be accomplished in a terminal.
- Open a terminal: Applications, Accessories, Terminal.
- Make backup copies of the main GRUB 2 folders & files. (Optional)
sudo cp /etc/default/grub /etc/default/grub.oldsudo cp -R /etc/grub.d /etc/grub.d.oldsudo cp -R /boot/grub /boot/grub.old- Remove GRUB 2
sudo apt-get purge grub2 grub-pcThe system will be unbootable until another bootloader is installed.
- Once the packages are removed, many files will still remain in ‘/boot/grub’
- Install GRUB 0.97
sudo apt-get install grub- With grub installed, the user must still create the menu.lst and stage1/stage2 files by running the following two commands.
sudo update-grub
- Generates menu.lst
- Tab to “Yes” when prompted.
sudo grub-install /dev/sdX
- Choose the correct device (sda, sdb, etc), normally the one on which Ubuntu is installed.
- Creates the stage1 & stage2 files in /boot/grub and writes to the MBR.
Run this command to keep it from upgrading automatically:
echo "grub hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selectionsReboot
#1 by Happeh on March 5th, 2010
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I followed the tutorial, when I rebooted it loaded GRUB Legacy, I chose Ubuntu 9.10, and guess what? My computer restarted again, not booting into ubuntu. I tried recovery mode and memtest, same results.
#2 by brett on March 5th, 2010
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Sorry it didn’t work for you. As all internet tutorials go, proceed at your own risk
Try this tutorial, see if you can get yourself back into ubuntu!
Link.
#3 by Happeh on March 5th, 2010
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Trying the tutorial right now. Making a live usb right now since my computer is in lack of a CD drive, thanks anyway, Brett.
#4 by utku on February 9th, 2010
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@Darrell
That command should be:
echo “grub hold” | sudo dpkg -–set-selections
with two dashes before set.
Thanks for useful tutorial.
#5 by Owen on February 6th, 2010
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That’s allright, thanks for the advice so far
#6 by Darrell on February 6th, 2010
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When I enter the last command (echo “grub hold” | sudo dpkg –set-selections)
I get:
> dpkg: conflicting actions -e (–control) and -s (–status)
> …
> Type dpkg –help for help about installing and deinstalling packages [*];
> Use `dselect’ or `aptitude’ for user-friendly package management;
> Type dpkg -Dhelp for a list of dpkg debug flag values;
> Type dpkg –force-help for a list of forcing options;
> Type dpkg-deb –help for help about manipulating *.deb files;
> Type dpkg –licence for copyright licence and lack of warranty (GNU GPL) [*].
> Options marked [*] produce a lot of output – pipe it through `less’ or `more’ !
When I reboot, I’m back to grub2. Forgive my stupidity: What have I done wrong?
Thank you so much for posting this. I hate grub2.
#7 by brett on February 6th, 2010
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It may be a problem with the text in the command. The quotes should be double quotes that are vertical, they should not have a slant. The dashes before “set-selections” should be two individual dashes without a space between them, not one long dash (en vs em dash). My blog software may be changing the text in am attempt to make it more grammatically correct, but may in the long run be causing some problems.
Let me know if this works.
#8 by Owen on February 6th, 2010
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Can you do this from the LiveCD?
#9 by brett on February 6th, 2010
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I think that should work, but haven’t tried it for myself. Post back if you try it out.
#10 by Owen on February 6th, 2010
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I have tried doing this from the LiveCD and it has done nothing. I get exactly the same boot screen I got before I did it.
#11 by brett on February 6th, 2010
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Ok. I’m sure there is a way, but i’m not sure how. Why can’t you boot into Ubuntu first?
#12 by Owen on February 6th, 2010
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The reason that I need to downgrade is because GRUB 2 is going to a command line boot, and says “No such drive” when I try to boot from the drive (hd0,1) which came up when I used ls or set or whichever it was. I can use “chainloader +1″ to boot XP (Which I’m posting from) but I can’t get into Ubuntu.
#13 by brett on February 6th, 2010
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Try the link below. Even though the scenario doesn’t really apply to you, try using that as a starting point to get some kind of grub back on. Once you get it back, you can follow this tutorial for grub legacy.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows
#14 by Owen on February 6th, 2010
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Thanks for the advice
.
It might be a bit tricky though, as I am using wubi and already I’ve several mentions of “Mount your Ubuntu partition”
and it is not on a seperate partition
#15 by brett on February 6th, 2010
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In that case, I have no idea! Sorry.
#16 by Pixel on January 26th, 2010
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I had so many problems with GRUB 2. Sometimes the system started and sometimes not. Very confusing. But with GRUB 1 it works perfectly now.
Thanks for the tutorial
. I will trackback this post soon.
#17 by bjokke on December 16th, 2009
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Thanks a lot!
GRUB2 is still buggy and it just don’t work well. These are some of the problems I noticed:
- the disk and partition modifires are inconcequent. disk number start at 0 en partition number starts at 1.
- when I installed grub2, I can boot one time and it’s broken again.
- It doesn’t fit on the partition. (I have a good reason to want to do that)
#18 by jesus_gs on December 6th, 2009
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Really useful, thanks.
We should learn how to set grub2 up and so… but I prefer the old one meanwhile and avoid any problem.
#19 by brett on December 6th, 2009
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Glad you found it useful.
I agree, but some of the problems I have experienced are (i believe to be) bugs with grub2–not just configuration problems
. But that is to be expected, it is still in beta.