(Re)installing GRUB to the MBR

December 31, 2013

This is just a very short roundup of the relevant commands needed to reinstall grub, e.g. when migrating a Linux installation to a new hard drive.

  • boot live Linux system (from CD/DVD or USB key, I use grml, any other live Linux should do)
  • mount root-fs of your installation (e.g. /dev/sda2) to /mnt/
  • if they’re in separate partitions, mount the /boot/, /usr/, … partitions of your installation to /mnt/boot, /mnt/usr/, …
  • mount --bind /dev/ and /sys/ to /mnt/dev and /mnt/sys (maybe also /proc for older versions of grub?), grub will need those
  • chroot /mnt
  • execute grub-install $device (e.g. /dev/sda) to install grub to the MBR of $device
  • update-grub to upgrade the grub menu entries
  • If names of partitions changed, don’t forget to adjust /etc/fstab
  • reboot, remove live linux
  • configure your BIOS/UEFI to boot from that harddisk

That’s all - you should now be greeted by a fresh grub that lets you boot your Linux, BSD, Windows, .. installations