I multi-boot my laptop, Fedora 23, Ubuntu Mate, Linux Mint and Windows 10. I want Fedora’s grub to be controlling booting of the laptop, however, whenever there is a update to Ubuntu’s grub it gets re-installed to the mbr. I’m wondering if I can safely remove grub-common from the Ubuntu system?
It might be safe to remove, since you’ve got Fedora’s version of GRUB on another partition. The MBR stores code/data on finding the GRUB files (the ones in /boot/grub/)
It’s important to check Fedora’s GRUB is definitely installed and boots correctly before uninstalling Ubuntu’s version of GRUB, otherwise they’d be no files for Ubuntu’s GRUB to load any OS.
Updates for the kernel should continue to update startup scripts, but what I’m not sure is that without updating GRUB, it could be possible Fedora continues to use an older kernel until Fedora updates GRUB too.
You could try it, but take caution, I haven’t tested or verified this.
In a UEFI system, a grub menu entry for Ubuntu generated by Fedora 23’s os-prober will not boot Ubuntu. So don’t be surprised at that. If 2 boot lines in the menu entry are modified, it will work.
If it will work in a BIOS system, I have not tested.
On the flip side, Ubuntu will boot Fedora.
Use Boot Repair!:
Thank you all for taking time to reply. Fedora’s grub is installed and works just fine. It is what I used to boot Ubuntu Mate (which I’m using now). I’ve been bouncing back and forth between Ubuntu Mate’s grub and Fedora’s grub as system updates occur and grub gets reinstalled for one system or the other.
Perhaps I’ve worded my question wrong. I don’t care if Ubuntu Mate’s grub gets updated but I don’t want it re-installed to the mbr. It doesn’t necessarily need to be removed from the system as long as it behaves the way I want it to.
To get my Fedora boot loader back I simply reboot to Fedora, run
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfgand
grub2-install --efi-directory=/boot/efiWorks a charm, as it always does. I just don’t want to keep doing this over and over again.
I've done some thinking, it'll be safe to remove, as Fedora is already running show and can detect other OSes if it needs to. I even discovered you can omit installation of GRUB on your second installation by booting into the live session and typing:
ubiquity -b
Which will be helpful when installing a second GRUB-aware OS in future.
You are using BIOS mode then. What I would do is just lock the grub version in Ubuntu and Linux Mint so that they never are updated and reinstalled. It’s the reinstall that is causing the change in boot menu control to Ubuntu. You know grub is to be reinstalled if a grub package appears in the list of updates when running Ubuntu. You can lock the version easily with Synaptic Package Manager. Kernel updates don’t cause grub to be reinstalled by themselves.
Bang! That’s the kind of info I’m looking for! I’ll give it a go in the
morning. I’m currently working and don’t anticipate any home computer time
until then. Thank you!
I’ve used the command
apt-mark hold grub2*Hope this works. I don’t seem to have synaptic installed here under Ubuntu Mate.
This at the expense of an updated kernel ???