-1

Just 30 minutes before writing this question I installed Ubuntu on an external 500 GB HDD I had lying around (so I could mess around in Linux when I'm in the school computer lab), and I did so by booting from a 32 GB USB thumb drive which I put the Ubuntu iso on with Rufus.

I opened the installer and triple checked that I wasn't installing stuff on my main Windows drive, so I clicked continue and after some time the installation finished.

I was still scared that I might've fucked up something and somehow installed stuff on my main drive, so I booted up the PC after removing the thumb drive, and... boom. Black screen with a GRUB command line(?). I started panicking, so I shut down again and opened the boot menu, and there it was: under my main drive, there was a UEFI "ubuntu" boot option, and under it was Windows Boot Manager. Windows boots perfectly fine, and all my files are here, but why the hell did it install GRUB on my main drive when I clearly selected the external HDD as the install destination???

I tried moving WBM up in the boot order settings, but it won't let me for some reason. How can I uninstall GRUB so I don't have to go through this mess every time I want to use my PC??

P.S. sorry for making such a long post for what seems to be a pretty easy problem to solve, I just wanted to give full context to anyone reading.

snp
  • 1
  • 1
    This is a known bug in the Ubuntu 22.04 installer (Ubiquity). 23.10 uses the subiquity installer, and does not display the bug. Copy all files in your internal disk's UEFI partition to the external disk's UEFI partition, and it should boot. Remove grub from the UEFI menu with efibootmgr or use the machine's UEFI settings/Boot menu. – ubfan1 Mar 19 '24 at 21:39
  • @ubfan1 I don't think I'll be able to use efibootmgr if I'm on Windows... anyways, I think I've found something that might work here, however I'm not sure how to copy the files from that directory and transfer them to the external drive. If you could please provide more details it would be much appreciated. – snp Mar 19 '24 at 21:58
  • 1
    efibootmgr should be able to run off an Ubuntu install media, but using the UEFI settings (aka BIOS) to delete boot items should work. The UEFI partitions all have a FAT file system, which windows should easily handle, just drag and drop from one to the other using File manager. – ubfan1 Mar 20 '24 at 00:11
  • 1
    Do you have an ESP on external drive. Needs to be FAT32 with esp,boot flags if using gparted from live installer. While normally first or second partition, it does not have to be, as long as external drive not very large. Best if external drive is gpt partitioned as that is recommeded by UEFI. You need to then copy /EFI/Boot & /EFI/ubuntu folders from internal drive to external. change UUID in fstab to new ESP on external. More info: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1250199/move-bootloader-or-remove-efi-partition-in-second-drive – oldfred Mar 20 '24 at 02:45
  • @oldfred Thanks for the help, however I'll now try installing 23.10 on the drive instead since, as ubfan1 said, subiquity doesn't have this bug and so I won't have to mess around with moving files from the EFI partition. I solved my issue, by the way, I used VBCDE to remove the ubuntu boot option after removing the ubuntu folder from the EFI partition. – snp Mar 20 '24 at 14:53
  • I have not used subiquity, but calamares lets me choose an existing ESP on my second drive where my main working install is on first drive. I like to partition in advance with gpt partitioning, so I can use Something else install option and know exactly which partition(s) are which. – oldfred Mar 20 '24 at 15:01

0 Answers0