sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst is empty

[coolczone]

Hi guys,
I am a Linux newbie. I have win 7 and Ubuntu 10.04 installed on my computer in dual boot- win 7 installed first. I am trying to modify boot order and make Win my default OS. Typing in terminal sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst comes up with an empty list. I modified before the grub list but this time it just seems to be over my head.
My Linux partition is to small as well. Is there a way to increase it?
Can you help me please?

[tarung1793]

If u look through the changelogs of ubuntu, u will get to know that there is a shift from grub to grub2 bootloader,
Editing the menu.lst file was all u need with grub but with grub2, there are different(and more complex) things to change and i never understood how to get it done with grub2,

I will say u better use Startup manager, it provides a GUI for making changes to Grub2, hence, make the whole process a lot easier, It is available in the software center..

I Hope it will resolve ur problem,,

[Swarup]

Visit this link may be it help you

how do you edit the kernel configuration file in ubuntu 10.04
Change the GRUB Menu Timeout on Ubuntu
Set Windows as Default OS when Dual Booting Ubuntu

[Alboguy]

Hey coolczone read below:

GRUB 2 incorporates a totally revised directory and file hierarchy. The menu.lst of GRUB legacy is no longer used.
To find out where GRUB 2 is installed, the user can run the following commands: sudo grub-probe -t device /boot/grub for the device and sudo grub-probe -t fs_uuid /boot/grub for the UUID.
The main directories and files used by GRUB 2 include:

/boot/grub/grub.cfg

This is the file most closely resembling GRUB's /boot/grub/menu.lst. This file contains the GRUB 2 menu information but unlike GRUB's menu.lst the grub.cfg file is not meant to be edited.

• Each section is clearly delineated with "(### BEGIN)" and references the file in the /etc/grub.d directory from which the information was generated.
• grub.cfg is updated by running the update-grub command as root. The update-grub command is a stub for sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg. For standardization, the command update-grub will be employed, run as "root" with the sudo.
• The file is automatically updated with kernel installations/removals or other updates which would affect its output.
• By default, and whenever the update-grub command is executed, this file is made "read-only". This is in keeping with the intent that the file should not be edited manually.

I hope everything's clear to you now. But Ubuntu is known for being highly customizable so I think somebody will discover a trick on how to edit the boot menu soon.

Ah I think I found it:

grub-set-default Sets the default boot entry until changed.

• The format is sudo grub-set-default X, with X being the menuentry position (starting with 0 as the first entry) or the exact menu string. Examples: sudo grub-set-default 3 or sudo grub-set-default "Ubuntu, Linux 2.6.32-15-generic"
• To obtain the existing menuentry choice number (starting from 0) or the menuentry "string", run grep menuentry /boot/grub/grub.cfg

So according to this the command to set Win 7 as the default boot entry might be: sudo grub-set-default "Windows 7 Loader"

[coolczone]

Hi guys,
thanks for your replays. Alboguy, tried your suggestion first, unfortunately with no positive result. I really appreciate your time into trying to help me especially because you did some reserch. What worked was the startup manager. Really easy and it solved my problem. Thank you tarung and swarup for pointing into this direction.
Any suggestion for increasing my linux partition? I have gparted installed. So my question is Should I resize windows partition and after that try to increase my linux partition under Ubuntu? Will this affect my Win 7 or Ubuntu in terms of startup failure?
Thanks again.

[Alboguy]

I need to see your partition table to help you about this. So take a screenshot with a Snapshot (it's located under Accessories if I remember right) of GParted and post it here. And it would be great to tell us how did you fix your problem using Start Up Manager.

[hellnoire]

Startup Manager is extremely easy to understand once installed, Alboguy. If no one had recommended it to him, I would have told him that.

And if you gave Ubuntu about 5-10 gigs of space, that's enough to use for a long time, assuming you're not downloading to it often.

[johnshaw1917]

Like hellnoire said, 5 to 10 gigs is more than enough for Ubuntu and if you are downloading music, photos, etc., you can save them to a NTFS partition and still access them from Ubuntu.

[tarung1793]

As every one is saying you don't actually need more than 5-10 gigs of space for the ""OS"" partition, Rest of the things youcan put to your windows drives, but it would be a pain to auto-mount each drive every time, so i would say to install "NTFS configuration tool"(available in software center), it has the capability to set your NTFS,Fat32 etc drives to auto mount on your system startup, and you can also set custom mount point names, hope it solves your problem..

But still if you want to expand your ubuntu disk drive space, Then you need to first shrink a partition-(The one from which you wish to take space from, but keep in mind it would be better if you choose the one next to your ubuntu partition(As alboguy said, it would be better if youcould post some screenshots))-, you can do it from gparted or if youfear any boot problems do it in windows(available in computer management->disk management), you need not format the new partition, then boot back in ubuntu and add it to your ubuntu partition via gparted coz windows will not be able to recognize the ext# partition...... aaand you are done..

[coolczone]

Hi guys , I toked a snapshot from windows. In the mid time a messed up a little with some tools, so now I ended up with a lot of partitions. The 4th one (3.86) is my downloads partition, the next one (14.97) is the one that has Ubuntu installed on. The last one is Acronis Secure Zone ( I can renounce at this partition if this is required and after that redoit). The ones between Ubuntu and Acronis are the rezult of no knowledge in partitioning. I have tried to format this partitions with gparted. The message was that I have to many primary partitions mounted I think, and trying to unmount some of this partitions was with no rezult as the options were grayed out.
Using Startup Manager was really simple as the Gui interface was offering the option to select the order of the OS that I am using. Nice tool that made my life a lot easier.
Thanks again.
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Ok, I know it is a shame, but I ended up messing with my MBR and had to reinstall Ubuntu,this time I allocated 50 GB so now I am more than happy. Many thanks guys for your help. I am sure that very soon I will be in need for some more help since I am used to try a lot of stuff and since Ubuntu is really a wonder I will need your help again. Really appreciate your effort.