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I have Ubuntu 15.10 installed on my laptop hard drive. I regularly have to boot from a live USB containing another Linux distro. It has to be done this way for security reasons, I cannot dual boot with the two distros. Each time I boot from the USB I have to reinstall GRUB in order to boot from the hard drive again. I have been running the Boot-Repair disk each time I have to change back to booting from my hard drive, but I would like to have it so that I could switch between the two more easily.

PC is a Toshiba Satellite L15W-B1208D, and the USB contains Arch Linux, but the issue happens even after booting from a live Ubuntu USB.

William
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  • Do the security reasons prevent booting a virtual environment? – pfeiffep May 11 '16 at 17:48
  • They do unfortunately. – William May 11 '16 at 18:32
  • Apologies if you've done this ... When installing grub do you specify laptop hard drive? – pfeiffep May 11 '16 at 19:06
  • No need to apologize at all! I appreciate the input. Yes I believe that I am doing what you are asking. To be clear, my laptop hard drive is located at /dev/sda and when I install the grub I am using the command grub-install /dev/sda. – William May 11 '16 at 19:24
  • How about doing it when you've booted the USB? try this link http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1581099 – pfeiffep May 11 '16 at 19:47
  • Those exact instructions aren't working for me as my system uses UEFI, but when I do something similar I run into the following error message when reinstalling GRUB:

    Installing for i386-pc platform. grub-install: warning: this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be possible. grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged.. grub-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists.

     – William May 12 '16 at 13:08
  • Also when I mount /dev/sda1 and chroot it (after binding a number of system files to make this possible) then perform update-grub2 this does not work either. It says that it found Ubuntu 15.10 on /dev/sda2 and is adding a boot menu entry for EFI, but when I attempt to boot from the hard drive afterwards I am unable to do so. I get the "Reboot and select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key" error message. – William May 12 '16 at 13:25
  • I have no experience with uefi ... there are explicit instructions available for Ubuntu https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI – pfeiffep May 12 '16 at 13:35
  • If Boot-Repair is asking for a bios_grub partition then that is a BIOS install of grub. You want the UEFI install. Post link to summary Report from Boot-Repair above in first post. But Toshiba is now like Sony & HP and uses description as part of boot. That is not allowed per UEFI standard and for some reason the only valid description is "Windows Boot Manager". If not booting Windows you can change the ubuntu description to Windows and boot shimx64.efi. See option D, but also suggest A: http://askubuntu.com/questions/486752/dual-boot-win-8-ubuntu-loads-only-win/486789#486789 – oldfred Jul 12 '16 at 16:03

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Create a UEFI compatible Ubuntu LiveUSB install drive, and use recovery options from within Windows 10 to boot it. (start menu, type recovery opt and press enter, advanced start up, then use device. This will boot the Ubuntu installer in EFI mode, and thus install Ubuntu in full EFI mode... do not use the default partitioning.

You have to choose the windows boot manager partition to install the grub bootloader. Then you can boot into your Ubuntu install using the recovery options program describe above, and you will see "Ubuntu" in the list as well as your UEFI usb drive as an option... You must change GRUB to be loaded before the Windows Boot Manager to avoid having to load windows 10 before booting into Ubuntu.

This software should be able to change that order for you. http://www.easyuefi.com/index-us.html

Ellie187
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