[SOLVED] Install on external hard drive - Ubuntu will not boot - Help please!

[Phiabell]

*To start - I am a total linux newbie - I have spent the last couple of days trying to get a dual boot working with xp on my internal hard drive and ubuntu on my external, I tried 8.04 and Linux Mint and these kinda worked but had no support for my wireless card, I thought I would go with the most recent Ubuntu since I had heard it should support my wireless out of the box.*

Now I have installed Jaunty on my external hard drive, during install I put the boot loader onto the external since not doing that last time seemed to mess it up - but now when I restart the computer, with the BIOS set to boot from the USB HDD first, it just goes straight into XP with no menu, no black screen or grub error just boot as if Ubuntu was not there. Can anyone help me get Ubuntu booting? If it came to it, I really wouldnt be fussed if I had to plug and unplug the hard drive when I wanted to change between Ubuntu and XP, as long as they both work!

Thanks


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Info which may or may not be useful


(from Belarc)

System Model
Acer Extensa 5220 0100
System Serial Number: LXE870Y2618091F0112000

Main Circuit Board
Board: Acer Columbia Rev
Serial Number: LXE870Y2618091F0112000
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies LTD V1.32 02/01/2008

Drives
HTS54106 0G9AT00 USB Device [Hard drive] (60.01 GB) -- drive 1 (External)
TOSHIBA MK8046GSX [Hard drive] (80.02 GB) -- drive 0

[Jonathan183]

Welcome to the forums Phiabell

Are you sure you installed grub to the MBR of the external hard drive rather than Ubuntu root partition? I suggest you boot from the Ubuntu live CD and install grub to the MBR of the external hard drive and see if that cures your issue. Also double check that you have BIOS set to boot from the external.

If you need additional help for installing grub to the MBR of the external hard drive post the output of

sudo fdisk -l

also run

sudo grub
find /boot/grub/menu.lst
quit

and post the output as well.

[Phiabell]

Hello, thanks a lot for your reply!
No I am not sure where I installed it, I just followed the setup and when I got to the install screen I clicked on 'advanced' and changed the bootloader setting to my external drive.
I think I understand what you think I might have done, but no how I did it or how to fix it!


Here's the info from those two commands:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x4b4c0e9c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2 1274 10225372+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda2 1275 5502 33961410 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 5503 9730 33952768 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda5 2 1274 10225341 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 1031 MB, 1031798784 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 125 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x7ace8158

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 126 1007584+ 6 FAT16
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(124, 254, 63) logical=(125, 112, 51)

Disk /dev/sdc: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb8f0ffa4

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 3647 29294496 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2 3648 7296 29310592+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdc5 3648 3769 979933+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdc6 3770 7296 28330596 b W95 FAT32
sudo grub


find /boot/grub/menu.lst

grub> find /boot/grub/menu.lst
(hd2,0)

^eh? Wouldnt that be the third hard drive? Of which I only have two?

[Phiabell]

Hi!

Just to say, since you told me what I had to do I found a how-to on re-installing GRUB to the mbr elsewhere and followed that and seems to be working fine now.

Thanks a lot for your help.