2 replies to this topic

[bowsernight]

Hi, I installed Debian "Testing" using UNetBootin and a USB onto my harddrive. However, whenever I want to boot into Debian, I must boot from the USB rather than the harddrive. How can I make it so it will boot into Debian without the USB, since I installed Debian on the harddrive?

Edited by bowsernight, 12 November 2010 - 09:17 PM.

[breaker]

Hi, I installed Debian "Testing" using UNetBootin and a USB onto my harddrive. However, whenever I want to boot into Debian, I must boot from the USB rather than the harddrive. How can I make it so it will boot into Debian without the USB, since I installed Debian on the harddrive?

To clarify, you made a Debian Live USB stick and you then used it to install Debian to your hard drive?

It sounds like you installed GRUB to the mbr of the USB flash drive again when you used the Debian installer, and it used to boot the rest of grub which is in your /boot of Debian on your hard drive.

Install a bootstrap to the mbr which will allow you to boot Debian, such as GRUB2. You can simply boot to Debian using the USB flash drive, unmount and unplug the flash drive, make sure the grub-pc package is installed on Debian, rename your /boot/grub/device.map to /boot/grub/device.map.old, reinstall GRUB, update GRUB and reboot to see how it went.

How well do you know how a computer boots, what the mbr is, and how well do you know Linux and GRUB? You need to be sure which disk the BIOS boots so you can install GRUB to the correct mbr.

You can use fdisk to inspect -

sudo fdisk -l

So if you know your BIOS boots the mbr at /dev/sda (typical), just do this (don't forget to remove all removable drives first!) -

sudo grub-install --no-floppy --recheck /dev/sda

sudo update-grub

If all is well you will get nice messages that it finds Linux etc.

Reboot to confirm.

good luck,

breaker

Edited by breaker, 13 November 2010 - 05:19 AM.

[bowsernight]

Hello, thanks for your response and sorry for my late one.

For your first question, yes.

I'm still a beginner in topics such as computer booting, the mbr, GRUB and linux in general, however after running the commands you've provided it works perfectly.

Thanks again.