How To Restore GRUB On Ubuntu 11.04

Since version 9.10, Ubuntu uses the GRUB2 boot loader and manager on clean installs. This means my earlier post on how to restore GRUB will not work properly. To restore the boot loader on these versions of Ubuntu (and possibly any debian-based linux distribution that uses GRUB2), you need an Ubuntu 11.04 live disk. The 10.10 live disks will work too… any ubuntu live disk that uses GRUB2 will work. Fire up a terminal once the live disk finishes loading and enter the following commands:

I) Let’s find where Ubuntu is installed on your hard disk:

sudo fdisk -l

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2611 20972826 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 2612 60279 463218210 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 60280 60801 4192965 82 Linux swap / Solaris


My ubuntu partition is /dev/sda1 (it has the asterisk under Boot).

II) Armed with this information, mount the Ubuntu partition:

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

III) Install the GRUB2 boot loader:

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda

That’s /dev/sda — the hard disk itself, not the ubuntu partition – /dev/sda1.

IV) Unmount the Ubuntu partition and restart the computer like so:

sudo umount /dev/sda1 ; sudo reboot

V) If you have more than one OS installed, re-detect OSes like so:

sudo update-grub

That’s it.