0

I have new laptop Asus N76 with 500GB HDD and 256 SSD. Windows 7 is installed on HDD with partitions:

/dev/sda1  fat32    200MB boot (GPT)
/dev/sda2  unknown  128MB msftres
/dev/sda3  ntfs     94GB (Win 7)
/dev/sda4  ntfs     20GB  hidden,diag 

I want to install 12.04 on SSD disk. Is it possible to install GRUB2 at /dev/sda1 partition? Is Ubuntu installer ready for that? Is there some configuration for GRUB2 to setup boot path for Windows 7 (HDD) and Ubuntu 12.04 (SSD)?

1

1 Answer 1

0

Yes! The Ubuntu installer should take care of that for you, but if you already have an installation or something, you can install the grub-efi packages. Running grub-install /dev/sdX will install grub as the default boot entry and copy the needed files to /boot and your first partition. You can then chainload to windows (assuming the installer doesn't detect this option automatically).

I have an EFI boot of Ubuntu working on my MacbookPro (which I am using to post this). You can build your own grub image (detailed here) for maximum portability (which I recommend). If you build your own image, it will work as a recovery image even when you don't have Ubuntu installed.

To summarize:

  • The Ubuntu installer will setup grub for you.
  • The installer should detect Windows for you.
  • If it does not, use your intellect to find a way to boot into your installation and install grub2-efi-amd64 or similar package and run grub-install /dev/sda1. Note that this will squash your current boot option and make grub the default. You may also want to run grub-update.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .