Removing Crunchbang an Grub

mo. · 2016-05-26 14:47:52

Hello

I installed crunchbang, along with grub from a crunchbang live CD I've had from early 2013.
Grub was installed during crunchbang installation.
I don't have windows installed , nor do I have a windows CD.
I have a Live Tiny Core USB stick.
I turned on my laptop, and pressed F2. I went to the boot options and put my USB stick at the top of the list, but Grub still turns on and gives me the options of booting.

How can I remove both of them?

damo · 2016-05-26 14:59:24

Please confirm you are running Crunchbang, not BunsenLabs - in which case we can move this to the Crunchbang Help section.

NB The boot options are offered by the machine's BIOS, and grub starts up later in the boot process. They aren't connected.

To update the grub menu entries, then boot to whichever installation you want to be at the top of the list and (assuming the drive is /dev/sda) ...

sudo grub-install /dev/sda && sudo update-grub

It is also possible to manually edit the grub files, but don't forget to do 'update-grub' again afterwards.

If you have just installed Crunchbang, be aware that the project has ended, and you can longer update/upgrade without a lot of intervention. Why not use BunsenLabs instead?

mo. · 2016-05-26 15:43:09

damo wrote:

Please confirm you are running Crunchbang, not BunsenLabs - in which case we can move this to the Crunchbang Help section.
NB The boot options are offered by the machine's BIOS, and grub starts up later in the boot process. They aren't connected.
To update the grub menu entries, then boot to whichever installation you want to be at the top of the list and (assuming the drive is /dev/sda) ...
sudo grub-install /dev/sda && sudo update-grub
It is also possible to manually edit the grub files, but don't forget to do 'update-grub' again afterwards.
If you have just installed Crunchbang, be aware that the project has ended, and you can longer update/upgrade without a lot of intervention. Why not use BunsenLabs instead?

I had installed crunchbang yesterday.

I put the above code into the terminal and everything went fine in the terminal.
I can't avoid grub I don't know what to do. I put my USB drive at the top of the boot list but i still get grub. How can I format the partition with crunchbang in it? Will that help? I don't care about data loss

I wouldn't mind bunsenlabs at all, as long

xaos52 · 2016-05-26 16:07:40

If you have the USB drive at the top of the drives to boot from and you still get the grub entries from the hard drive, it is because your system can not boot from the stick, and falls back to the hard drive. Removing grub from the hard drive would make your system bootable only from external media.

I suggest you download the bunsenlabs ISO, use dd to copy it to a USB stick, and boot from that USB stick.

damo · 2016-05-26 16:07:44

mo. wrote:

.... I put my USB drive at the top of the boot list but i still get grub....

OK, maybe I misunderstood your first post. You are saying that you want to boot the usb drive instead?

Is it a bootable usb?
Did you make it with whatever method Tiny Core recommend?
Does it work on other machines?

mo. · 2016-05-26 16:18:15

damo wrote:

mo. wrote:
.... I put my USB drive at the top of the boot list but i still get grub....
OK, maybe I misunderstood your first post.
1 You are saying that you want to boot the usb drive instead?
2 Is it a bootable usb?
3 Did you make it with whatever method Tiny Core recommend?
4 Does it work on other machines?

1 Yes, I would like to boot from the USB.
2 I burned the ISO file to the stick using unetbootin on a MAC laptop, so probably.
3 Tinycore guide starts from when you boot, not at the stage of the ISO file : http://tinycorelinux.net/install.html

4 I'm unable to check whether it's gonna work on another laptop because this is the only laptop I have.

I am sincerely appreciative of your help

mo. · 2016-05-26 16:20:02

xaos52 wrote:

If you have the USB drive at the top of the drives to boot from and you still get the grub entries from the hard drive, it is because your system can not boot from the stick, and falls back to the hard drive. Removing grub from the hard drive would make your system bootable only from external media.
I suggest you download the bunsenlabs ISO, use dd to copy it to a USB stick, and boot from that USB stick.

My goal is to remove crunchbang and grub. Only being able to boot from a USB stick doesn't bother me.

What is dd?

Thanks

damo · 2016-05-26 16:37:13

Well, it is easy to remove crunchbang by formatting the partition from a live usb. But your usb doesn't boot, so that is the problem - either the iso is corrupted or otherwise improperly written to the stick, or the usb itself is faulty.

'dd' is a method of writing data.

http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:install_usb

mo. · 2016-05-26 16:43:18

damo wrote:

Well, it is easy to remove crunchbang by formatting the partition from a live usb. But your usb doesn't boot, so that is the problem - either the iso is corrupted or otherwise improperly written to the stick, or the usb itself is faulty.
'dd' is a method of writing data.
http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:install_usb

Do you have any suggestions on what to do?

damo · 2016-05-26 17:02:00

mo. wrote:

Do you have any suggestions on what to do?

If you boot to Crunchbang, can you read the usb stick in the filemanager?

Read the link I posted - TinyCore should be the place for specific answers, since your problem has nothing to do with Crunchbang/BunsenLabs really.

Check the usb in another machine. Any one should do to check if it boots.
and/or
Download the iso again, make sure the checksum is OK, write it to the usb stick using a method recommended by TinyCore, and try again.

Method to write a live iso to usb for Debian systems here:

On a Linux machine, simply use the "cp" command, to copy an image to a USB flash drive:
cp <file> <device>
Alternatively you can also use "dd":
dd if=<file> of=<device> bs=4M; sync
where:
<file> is the name of the input image, e.g. "netinst.iso"
<device> is the device matching the USB flash drive, e.g. /dev/sda, /dev/sdb. Be careful to make sure you have the right device name, as this command is capable of writing over your hard disk just as easily if you get the wrong one!
"bs=4M" tells dd to read/write in 4 megabyte chunks for better performance; the default is 512 bytes, which will be much slower
The "sync" is to make sure that all the writes are flushed out before the command returns

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-05-26 17:52:14

mo. wrote:

I have a Live Tiny Core USB stick.

Please elaborate on this.

Are you using TinyCore in frugal mode or are you using the USB stick mode?

To erase the #! GRUB bootloader on your hard drive you can use:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1

This presumes that your main system drive is /dev/sda (check with `lsblk`); to erase the partition table as well change "bs=446" to "bs=512"

However, it may be that your stick is not bootable (as already observed) so it would be wise to backup your MBR first:

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=mbr.bak bs=512 count=1

This will generate a file called mbr.bak in the working directory that can be recovered from the #!/BunsenLabs live ISO image and restored back to the drive with:

sudo dd if=mbr.bak of=/dev/sda

#1 2016-05-26 14:47:52

Removing Crunchbang an Grub

#2 2016-05-26 14:59:24

Re: Removing Crunchbang an Grub

#3 2016-05-26 15:43:09

Re: Removing Crunchbang an Grub

#4 2016-05-26 16:07:40

Re: Removing Crunchbang an Grub

#5 2016-05-26 16:07:44

Re: Removing Crunchbang an Grub

#6 2016-05-26 16:18:15

Re: Removing Crunchbang an Grub

#7 2016-05-26 16:20:02

Re: Removing Crunchbang an Grub

#8 2016-05-26 16:37:13

Re: Removing Crunchbang an Grub

#9 2016-05-26 16:43:18

Re: Removing Crunchbang an Grub

#10 2016-05-26 17:02:00

Re: Removing Crunchbang an Grub

#11 2016-05-26 17:52:14

Re: Removing Crunchbang an Grub

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