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I have a multiboot system with three operating sytems: Ubuntu Studio 20.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and Windows 10. The GRUB boot menu that should appear upon booting is the Ubuntu Studio graphical menu. However, whenever the Ubuntu box performs some updates, the graphical menu is replaced by a text-based menu and the Ubuntu Studio & Ubuntu entries in the menu are reversed: that is, I have to select the Ubuntu 20.04 menu entry to boot Ubuntu Studio. It seems to stay that way until the Ubuntu Studio OS performs its own updates and resets the GRUB graphical boot menu. GRUB is not at the MBR. It's located on the partition. Do I have multiple GRUB installs? And if so, can I remove one of them so this stops happening? I'm in no way any kind of expert, but here's the output of bootinfoscript in case that helps:

                 Boot Info Script 0.78      [09 October 2019]

============================= Boot Info Summary: ===============================


============================ Drive/Partition Info: =============================


no valid partition table found
"blkid" output: ________________________________________________________________


Device           UUID                                   TYPE       LABEL


/dev/nvme0n1p1   481A3E271A3E1284                       ntfs       Recovery
/dev/nvme0n1p2   5C3E-76AD                              vfat

/dev/nvme0n1p3

/dev/nvme0n1p4   708444198443DFE8                       ntfs

/dev/nvme0n1p5   cce2e2bc-1369-4ed6-b652-50c47072e214   ext4

/dev/nvme0n1p6   23cbea46-2abb-4681-b364-0a503e455caf   ext4


========================= "ls -l /dev/disk/by-id" output: ======================


total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  9 Feb 15 09:40 ata-ASUS_BW-16D1HT_KLZK2L81033 -> ../../sr0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Feb 15 09:40 nvme-eui.6479a732f004000b -> ../../nvme0n1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Feb 15 09:40 nvme-eui.6479a732f004000b-part1 -> ../../nvme0n1p1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Feb 15 09:40 nvme-eui.6479a732f004000b-part2 -> ../../nvme0n1p2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Feb 15 09:40 nvme-eui.6479a732f004000b-part3 -> ../../nvme0n1p3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Feb 15 09:40 nvme-eui.6479a732f004000b-part4 -> ../../nvme0n1p4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Feb 15 09:40 nvme-eui.6479a732f004000b-part5 -> ../../nvme0n1p5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Feb 15 09:40 nvme-eui.6479a732f004000b-part6 -> ../../nvme0n1p6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Feb 15 09:40 nvme-Sabrent_Rocket_Q_BC710704047C01600011 -> ../../nvme0n1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Feb 15 09:40 nvme-Sabrent_Rocket_Q_BC710704047C01600011-part1 -> ../../nvme0n1p1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Feb 15 09:40 nvme-Sabrent_Rocket_Q_BC710704047C01600011-part2 -> ../../nvme0n1p2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Feb 15 09:40 nvme-Sabrent_Rocket_Q_BC710704047C01600011-part3 -> ../../nvme0n1p3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Feb 15 09:40 nvme-Sabrent_Rocket_Q_BC710704047C01600011-part4 -> ../../nvme0n1p4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Feb 15 09:40 nvme-Sabrent_Rocket_Q_BC710704047C01600011-part5 -> ../../nvme0n1p5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Feb 15 09:40 nvme-Sabrent_Rocket_Q_BC710704047C01600011-part6 -> ../../nvme0n1p6


================================ Mount points: =================================


Device           Mount_Point              Type       Options


/dev/nvme0n1p2   /boot/efi                vfat       (rw,relatime,fmask=0077,dmask=0077,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/nvme0n1p6   /                        ext4       (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro)
dascream
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  • With UEFI, each system with major updates will reset boot order to make it first. You need to manually boot using UEFI. If Windows resets use efibootmgr to reset UEFI boot order. If several Linux installs, you can boot preferred Linux and reinstall grub. Or manually edit /EFI/ubuntu/grub.cfg with UUID & partition of preferred version. http://askubuntu.com/questions/485261/change-boot-order-using-efibootmgr & https://askubuntu.com/questions/738132/ubuntu-14-04-doesnt-boot-grub-prompt & https://askubuntu.com/questions/792413/how-to-set-grub-from-second-linux-distribution-as-default-in-uefi-boot – oldfred Feb 17 '21 at 03:48
  • Both of your installed ubuntu flavours install the bootloader to the same location (/boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu). When one of your installs receives an upgrade for the grub package, the files in this folder will be overwritten, that's the reason. – mook765 Feb 18 '21 at 06:27

2 Answers2

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After more research it seems that GRUB2 SHOULD NOT be installed in the MBR in EFI systems especially with WINDOWS, it should only be listed under the partitions.

It is possible that since the MBR is not found for the GRUB2, you might have to mount GPARTED to the /boot partition and run command
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
sudo update-grub
This will run an os-probe command that should be able to point to other partitions on the drive. It is also possible that the kernel is reversed in each particular partition of Ubuntu and Ubuntu Studio which can be further investigated by examining the grub.cfg for each partition. And if you update GRUB from the Ubuntu Studio the grub.cfg in /boot should ultimately point to that partition.

sudo apt-get install efibootmgr
is probably caused by a boot loop➿. Then use commands to delete or reconfigure grub EFI. @dascream would be right about the conditions like in: Long Explanation on Dual Boot Misconceptions and Problems that could arise due to [for example] boot loops.
Skip to step 4.1

CraigslistCesium
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After much Googling, the trend of recommendations included booting from a live CD/USB and mounting /boot/efi so it could be repaired by reinstalling grub. In my case, the system was already bootable so no live CD/USB was necessary. The most useful information was found here: 16.04 new installation gives grub-efi-amd64-signed failed installation /target/ ubuntu 16.04 at the end and here: https://superuser.com/questions/376470/how-to-reinstall-grub2-efi

The fix action was ultimately:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall grub-efi-amd64
sudo update-grub
dascream
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