Grub2 For Mac

Posted on by admin

Grub on Mac via EFI (Linux: /dev/sda1 Darwin: /dev/disk0s1) (MacBook Pro Early 2011 if it matters) 1. Triple Boot Mac OS Sierra, Windows 10, Kali Linux 2.0 On A Macbook Pro. Install Windows 10 or 8.1 on MacBook 4,1. 3.Complete. recipe for installing single-boot Linux. Super GRUB2 Disk is an open source project that allows users boot into broken operating systems, in an attempt to try to repair them. It mainly interacts with the GRUB2 bootloader and the booting process of the respective computer. A complete rewrite of the 1st generation GRUB bootloader. Update the grub configuration like this: sudo update-grub; I answered step by step so anyone who finds this answer can easily reproduce the steps. This was tested on Ubuntu 16.04 with Ubuntu installed in EFI-mode. Mac OS X: El Capitan, Mac mini.

Grub2 and Grub4Dos of AIO Boot can be booted from Windows Boot Manager without having to install them to your hard drive.

Note: This method only applies to Legacy BIOS mode. UEFI mode is not supported.

  • Windows Boot Manager

Introduce

When you boot into Windows, there is always a menu to select the Windows operating system that you have installed on your hard drive. If you have only one Windows operating system, the menu will not display and will automatically boot into that operating system.

By editing the Windows Boot Manager menu, we can add or remove any menu if desired. The great thing is that both Grub2 and Grub4Dos from AIO Boot support booting from Windows Boot Manager. This makes it possible to add a menu to Windows Boot Manager without having to install Grub2 or Grub4Dos.

Installing AIO Boot on your hard drive will give you more free space to integrate your packages, as well as faster speeds than a regular USB drive.

Install AIO Boot

First, you need to download and install AIO Boot to any drive you want.

Note:

  1. Uncheck Auto install Bootloader to skip installation of Grub2. After extracting, you can install Clover and Syslinux from AIOCreator.exe -> Bootloaders.
  2. Select Use Hard Disk Drive to list all drives in the drop down list.
  3. Select the drive on which you want to extract the files and install AIO Boot.
    • You should create a new partition to install AIO Boot. This makes it easier to manage.
    • Use FAT32 format for best support.
    • New partitions can be created easily by using the Shrink feature of Disk Management.
  4. Click OK to proceed with the extraction.

We will now proceed with adding Grub2 nor Grub4Dos menus to Windows Boot Manager.

Mac

Windows Boot Manager

We will now use BootICE to add Grub2 and Grub4Dos to Windows Boot Manager. For Windows XP, we just need to add the menu to boot.ini.

Windows 7/8.1/10

Grub2

The steps below help you add a Grub2 and Grub4Dos menu to BCD of Windows 7/8.1/10.

  1. Running BootICE, this tool can be found in /AIO/Tools folder or from AIOCreator.exe -> Tools.
  2. Switch to BCD, select BCD of current system by default and click Easy mode.
  3. Select Add and then select New RealMode entry (Grub/Linux).
  4. In the next option, you need to select the following:
    • Type: Partition.
    • Boot disk: select the disk containing the partition where you extracted AIO Boot.
    • Partition: select the partition where you extracted AIO Boot. Here, I extracted to C: drive.
    • OS title: enter the name you want the menu to display.
      • For Grub2, it could be Grub2.
      • For Grub4Dos, it could be Grub4Dos.
    • Boot file:
      • Grub2: AIOgrubgrub2win
      • Grub4Dos: AIOToolsgrub4dosgrldr
  5. You can adjust the number of seconds in the Timeout (s). The system will automatically boot into the selected menu if it is not selected within the time specified above.
  6. Click Save current system to save the menu.
  7. Restart your computer for testing. You will see the menu as shown below:

Windows XP

Reinstall grub after windows 10 install

Unlike Windows 7/ 8.1/10, Windows XP uses the menu in the boot.ini file. Grub2 does not support booting from XP, here I will boot to Grub4Dos and then boot to Grub2.

  1. The boot.ini file is located on the drive where you installed Windows XP. This file is hidden so we need to show it first.
    1. Open My Computer, select Tools from the menu, then select Folder Options.
    2. Switch to View and uncheck Hide protected operating system files (Recommended).
    3. Click OK to save the options.
  2. Open boot.ini in the drive where you installed Windows XP. My drive is C:.
  3. Add the following lines:
    • For Grub2:
    • For Grub4Dos:
  4. Copy the following files to the root of the C: drive.
    • For Grub2: AIOgrubgrub2xp
    • For Grub4Dos: AIOToolsgrub4dosgrldr.
  5. Save boot.ini file.
  6. Restart your computer for testing. You will see the menu as shown below:

Ubuntu Grub Install

Good luck!

Grub2 is a very powerful boot loader, developed by GNU. You can easily install Grub2 from Windows with just a few commands.

Grub2 supports both UEFI and Legacy BIOS modes. It is capable of booting most Windows, Linux, BSD and macOS operating systems. For more information on Grub2, please refer to the GNU GRUB Manual.

Remove Grub Bootloader

Grub2 also supports installation on many operating systems such as Ubuntu, Linux distributions and including Windows. This article will guide you how to install Grub2 from Windows. AIO Boot also uses Grub2, which saves you a lot of time.

Download

You can download Grub2 source code for all platforms here. For Windows, you should download the latest version of Grub2 here. It supports Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and Windows 10, not yet tested on Windows XP.

Ubuntu Macbook

Once downloaded, you need to extract the downloaded file above. Here I will extract the grub-2.02-for-windows directory to the C: drive.

Grub2 For Mac

Install Grub2

We will now start installing Grub2. You can install Grub2 for USB, or HDD, or even a memory card.

  1. Run Command Prompt under Admin and go to the grub-2.02-for-windows directory that you extracted above.
  2. Check the number of hard disk you will install, be it USB or HDD. Run diskmgmt.msc to open Disk Management.
  3. Grub2 for Windows supports installation and boot on three platforms: i386-pc, x86_64-efi and i386-efi. If you want to boot Grub2 in UEFI mode, you need to create a partition formatted as FAT32.
  4. Install Grub2 for BIOS (i386-pc):
    • Number 2 in the above command is the number of the hard disk that we checked in step 2.
    • G: is the drive of one of the partitions of the hard disk above.
  5. Install Grub2 for UEFI 64-bit (x86_64-efi):
  6. Install Grub2 for UEFI 32-bit (i386-efi):

    For UEFI, you need to specify a drive of the FAT32 partition at the –efi-directory parameter. If it does not support UEFI, Grub2 will report an error: grub-install.exe: error: F: doesn’t look like an EFI partition.

  7. Output results:
  8. If you want to change the path of the grub directory, change the value of the –boot-directory parameter. For example, if you want the grub directory located in YourName, use –boot-directory=G:YourName.
  9. You have now completed the installation of Grub2. Please restart your computer for testing.

Configuration

The configuration file for Grub2 is grub.cfg, which is stored in the grub directory. This file includes all Grub2 configurations, including interface, fonts and menus.

You can create this file for yourself. Or download my grub.cfg file here and copy it into the grub directory.

Here I will open the grub.cfg file to add two menus: Restart and Power Off.

Wish success!