some people in here that's complicated this way , i found easy and good , will maybe for new windows and microsft world comers will found that complicated , because they are used to found everything ready and easy just some clicks and it's done , that's the bad side of windows , don't give chance to count on yur self and found out things , just next + next + finish and some like that i'm a newbie on ubuntu i was using windows xp for years but i like linux world because all the time you find out things and yu need all the time to work hard to stuff , and that good because i want to learn this good and free world .

This is too complicated.

A better way is:

1. In synaptic or using apt-get or aptitude, install package grub2. Accept the message to chainload from menu.lst
   
2. Reboot and check that the system starts OK
3. Optional, recommended: "sudo upgrade-from-grub-legacy", as advised in step 1
   
4. Optional, if you have extra OSes: Convert any menu items from menu.lst for other OSes to entries in /etc/grub.d/40_custom as per https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2. Run command "sudo update-grub". Reboot and check that the extra menu items appear. Remove /boot/grub/menu.lst* as also advised in step 1.

Perhaps this is obvious (though NONE of this is obvious to me - I'm lost after Extended BASIC), but this shiny new grub eradicated the pesky grub 1.5 Error 18 problem which had been keeping my newfound love of Ubuntu from flowering.

Thanks!

I found this article searching for the Error 11 problem and got the first useful answer here. It still didn't seem to work for me until I realized that updating by Ubuntu always gets my partitions wrong (e.g. (hd1,0) instead of (hd0,0) etc.) and this tradition seems to be continued. I just mention this in case others have similar problems: fiddle with partitions.

 

Great walkthrough, I had no problem doing this in VMware with my Jaunty Virtual Machine upgrade. Only mistake I made was rebooting before making changes (sudo upgrade-from-grub-legacy) permanent.

Thanks, Falko and Howtoforge.com! One day I hope to be able to contribute something useful here myself!

 

 

worked great thanks

I didn't even get an error 11, just welcome to Gub ! ,

actually still running 8.04, so... the install maybe a little different;

i did~$ sudo grub-install "(hd0)" && update-grub

to write grub2 to MBR, after install

-- (it didn't recognize the command: upgrade-from-grub-legacy)

and then the system said run: /usr/sbin/update-grub as root

then did a rm -f /boot/grub/menu.lst*

and all work-ed perfectly xD

it`s work in my computer and no problem found, thanks

Thanks Falko, this worked perfectly for me -- and your graphical follow-up! (Ubuntu 9.04)

I followed your howto and ended up with an "error 15" and a non-booting system that wouldn't even get me to a grub command prompt - but I learnt stuff so it's not all bad. TBH I expected it wouldn't go smoothly, boot loaders are always a bit edgy to play with - anyway here's my review of grub 2 on kubuntu, error 15 and my solution of it.

Apparently one must edit a file in /etc/ and then run a command to modify grub2's behavior.

The nightmare that was lilo is reborn as grub2!!!

EXACTLY following your instructions, I loaded Grub2...

 I rebooted, and low and behold, the chain load page did not come up!!

 The page that came up, started with 'when you verified...' which I could not do, since the 'chain load...' had not come up...

 Several attempts to get around this page (which was only one that initially came up) failed. I found following instructions from that point, useless, since there were no readily available 'grub programming instructions' which might have worked, if they had any hints to wtf they were talking about...

 I must assume, you are a typical linux instruction writer. That means you understand what you are doing, to the point, you keep all the important little bits, that you know 'everyone knows, since you do' and don't put them into the instructions. 

 I did, finally, get the thing to work. I now have both grub and grub 2 running in the boot box. I had to install an older version of my OS and get the grub working from there (I have multi partitions)...

 Pulleeeeze learn that writing instructions that work, depends on your ability NOT to forget the little bits you ass-u-me everyone knows. If linux commenters and instruction writers would finally learn that one thing...

 Linux might become the big OS much sooner...

Until then, it has a big problem.

 NOTE: I didn't say which distro I am running... I didn't specify 32 or 64 bit...

I didn't specify which processor... Why should I? YOU DIDN'T

And you didn't allow that there might be differences accordingly. (Which, blind fool that I can be, I didn't take into account... But, I know how problems can be fixed... Which you didn't set up for... before the instructions.