[GRUB] Replacing grub with boot-repair

[petrux]

A heart stopper/panic: Due to a defective on-off button on the case (the button that activates the real on-off switch) I turned the computer on and off several times during the boot stage and damaged Kubuntu grub. Boot attempts gave the message that nothing was there, like the kernel. An old openSUSE system on another drive booted fine and showed that the Kubuntu system was still there and intact.



With the live version of the Kubuntu 20.04 install DVD, I found and installed boot-repair, cycled through the steps, rebooted, and Kubuntu came up fine. So all is good?


The grub version installed is Ubuntu (it says so in the boot menu and in the boot folders). Booting looks a little different, but it works just as smoothly. Is the difference between Ubuntu and Kubuntu grub cosmetic? During some future update, there may be one to grub, and that would result in a return to the Kubuntu version. The update should be seamless, but could there be issues? I?m not fixing what isn?t broken, and don?t have the desire or knowledge to mess with grub. Just happy for now that it?s working.

[Don B. Cilly]

Kubuntu is Ubuntu (it's not quite a separate distribution, it's a "flavour"), so the grub in the BIOS and /boot is called that, it's correct.
You won't find one called Kubuntu.

[jlittle]

The vanilla grub in Kubuntu is the same as Ubuntu; Kubuntu is (mostly) Ubuntu with the KDE desktop, and vanilla (that is, not themed and customized) grub is the same, as installed. The differences you perceive are perhaps those of different versions, or you may have done some simple customization at some point.

During a boot grub is almost entirely read only, I don't think repeatedly powering off would have any effects to grub itself. I suspect the UEFI or the BIOS got messed up; something like that has happened to my desktop a couple of years ago, after some repeated power outages. Grub limits writing to exactly one 512 byte block, and then only if it's sure that block won't move (btrfs doesn't give that guarantee, so on my systems grub doesn't write at all.)

[Qqmike]

Not much to add to what the guys have said above. The 'ubuntu' label is a fooler, in UEFI-BIOS systems. All Ubuntu derivatives, including Mint, will show 'ubuntu' in its UEFI listings. Not a problem. There ARE ways to edit/customize what you see in your UEFI "BIOS" lists. However, your philosophy is a good one: don't mess with it if it is working OK; only mess with it (1) if it is broken; and/or (2) you have made a new hobby editing UEFI settings and booting tricks, THEN you can mess with your system (and surely break it now and then ;-) )

[petrux]

Thanks, all, glad to have confirmed that there’s no difference between the Kubuntu/Ubuntu grubs. The Kubuntu-installed boot options menu did say “Kubuntu”, and the screen resolution was different, which got me to wondering if there were other, hidden differences.


jlittle, those on-offs were right in the very initial boot process, so it may well have been BIOS-related. Who knows? But kudos to the boot-repair creators. That is a remarkably well-assembled tool!