You don't have any separate /boot
partition.
/dev/sda1
is your Ubuntu root partition (mount point /
, which includes all folders that are not mounted from anywhere else, including /boot
in your case)
/dev/sda2and
/dev/sda3are partitions for Windows, the small one is probably going to be the hidden system partition while the big one will show up as your
C:` drive in Windows.
/dev/sda4
is not a "real" partition for data, it's a so-called "extended partition" which means it's just a container that may hold any number of logical volumes (which behave like normal partitions again). Extended partitions are needed because an msdos/MBR partition table can only have 4 primary partitions or 3 primary and one extended (containing any number of logical) partitions.
/dev/sda5
is your Linux Swap partition, which is used to swap memory pages out of your RAM when it gets full.
However, to boot using GRUB, you must install it to the disk (/dev/sda
) and not to any of the partitions, using e.g. sudo grub-install /dev/sda
. This should be done from either your running Ubuntu installation on the disk (which will not be possible as you will need to restore GRUB first) or from a chroot
from a live Ubuntu environment into your mounted Ubuntu partition. It works like this:
- Boot an Ubuntu live DVD or USB drive. Should be the same architecture (32/64bit) and ideally same release as your installed Ubuntu. Select "Try Ubuntu without installing".
Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the following commands to mount your Ubuntu partition and chroot
into it:
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
for x in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys ; do sudo mount --bind "$x" "/mnt/$x" ; done
sudo chroot /mnt
Your terminal prompt should have changed now, as you are now logged in a shell session as root user to your Ubuntu installation on the disk, not the live system. Here type these commands to reinstall GRUB to the disk. Note that we don't need sudo
here for that reason. Also, the second command could probably be omitted, but it doesn't hurt:
grub-install /dev/sda
update-grub
Exit the chroot
session again by typing exit
or pressing Ctrl+D. Unmount all the mounted partitions again:
sudo umount -R /mnr
Exit the terminal and reboot from the disk, ejecting the live medium you booted from.