[Wylug-help] grub problems...

[Jim Jackson]

My hard disk on my desktop system started playing up. I managed to 
copy across all partitions to a new, bigger, disk, and then 
I spent too long wrangling grub to boot the new disk!

Turns out that at Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Ubuntu moved from Grub to Grub2. 
BUTif you upgraded from previous release with old grub, it left that in place.
So my system was using old grub - but the 10.04 desktop live CD I was 
utilisi, had grub2. Installing grub from the CD put grub2 in place in the 
MBR etc, but the config files on my disk were old grub! So I just got 
dumped into a grub shell - no grub menu etc. From there I could just about 
boot - but I didn't immediately twig I was dealing with grub2.

It wasn't until next morning, some vague memory surfaced that a new release 
of grub had changed the way things worked. I didn't realise how much. Once 
I'd upgraded my system to grub2 and reinstalled and updated grub on the 
disk, everything was ok - except I had to figure out the new grub2 config 
stuff to get back a few custom menu entries I had.

So, if you change a program radically so it effectively becomes a new 
system, do you not make it obvious in the naming - things like the grub 
prompt in the grub shell, not just being "grub>"? Why not, do sanity checks 
to make sure all parts are the new version etc etc? While googling I've 
found loads of people with grub problems, and not realising that they were 
now dealing with _new improved_ grub, hence still using the old grub ways 
and getting very confused when they don't work.

The single most common solution I found people had turned to? A re-install 
- just to sort out booting! Surely a sane booting regime shouldn't be that 
difficult?

Anyway whinge over.

cheers
Jim