Boot-Repair-tool for Ubuntu is Updated with Lots of New Features!

Boot-Repair is a bloody excellent little utility that lets you recover your boot-loader configuration (GRUB actually) related settings which seems to be pretty common with MS Windows 7 and Ubuntu users since when you do updates in MS Windows and if the OS core files are updated, then sometimes Windows just update/over-write (errrr :D) MBR thus breaking GRUB boot-loader files, completely or partially.

Although when it was released few months ago some of the advanced options were not shown to the Ubuntu users but I don't know when it happened, but the author has released a new version/updated of Boot-Repair which brings a lot of very useful, advanced features such as ...

*. A simple welcome screen from which now we can choose either:

1. "Recommended Repair": If you choose this option, then you don't have to do anything the Boot-Repair will take care everything for you.

From checking the partition to removing your current installed/broken GRUB to re-installing it... everything is automatic (few minutes ago I successfully reinstalled my GRUB and everything went really well, hey I'm still here!).

2. "Create a Bootinfo Summery": This is another very useful feature. For instance, say that you have a partially installed GRUB, wait!, what the heck does that mean!?

Well lets just say that you have a GRUB menu without anything but a blank screen .... and you went to an online community of Ubuntu experts and the geeks out there asked you whether you could give them a "log-file" related to your current GRUB settings or something similar.

Then you can use this second option that will create a full summary about your GRUB boot-loader and in my case it took like 40-50 seconds. Boot-Repair even uploaded that log-file in the Ubuntu Paste-Bin service which makes sharing it a breeze!.

But if you want additional controllability, then simply click on the "Advanced" button which will let you do things like...

*. Reinstall the GRUB (with or without replacing MBR).

*. Show/Hide the boot-menu after few seconds (that you can define manually).

*. Repair File Systems.

*. Install the GRUB loader into a different location (other than your MBR which is the default location) such as on the Ubuntu 11.04 partition, USB drives, etc.

Don't worry if you don't see your MS Widows 7 or Vista here since it only shows the OS that you're currently running...

*. Add additional initial boot-functions such as ACPI on/off, disable APIC, ATI Readon GPU related settings, etc.

Watch out for Pride! :P...

*. Enable/disable ATA disk support.

*. Restore the original MBR (the one that came with MS Windows which was there before you install Ubuntu). This however will only be available if it's not deleted by the Ubuntu OS installer.

*. Manually edit the GRUB file using a text editor (ahh, the good-old-days :D).

You can install Boot Repair in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below three command in your Terminal window.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install boot-repair

After installing, you can run it by pressing "Alt" + "F2" keys and entering the below command.

boot-repair

Remember, I think before going into the advanced section, you should try the Recommended option that'll solve many known GRUB boot related problems with Ubuntu 11.04 and MS Windows 7/Vista, etc.

And lastly, please don't try to enable advanced Kernel settings (above mentioned ACPI, etc) unless you know what you're doing.

Update: You can also visit this new official Boot-Repair Ubuntu Wiki-page for more (thanks Yann for the update!).

Startup-Manager: A Utility to Edit GRUB Boot-loader related Options Easily in Ubuntu

Startup-Manager is a graphical tool that's written in the GTK+ toolkit which was developed for letting the users of Debian GNU/Linux OS to easily edit few "boot-related" options such as GRUB menu delay, Splash screen, other security related settings, etc.

But since Ubuntu is based on the awesome Debian ;-), SturtupManager can also be installed and used to edit few of those settings in Ubuntu as well. The reason I said, "few of those settings" is because, as you can see with the below screenshots, the first one is the original application image running in Debian with lots of settings (tabs) but the second one is from my Ubuntu 11.04 Laptop and has only two tabs thus fewer options than in Debian.

It's running in Debian

As you can see, somewhat "reduced" under Ubuntu...

But still, even though it's a bit "restricted" under Ubuntu, if you want to do things like...

*. Choose the default selected menu in GRUB boot-loader.

*. Change GRUB boot-loader's resolution and color depths such as 8/16 and 24 bits (although Ubuntu uses a bit ugly GRUB loader theme, without any background at all, I don't think changing the color-depth is gonna help :D).

*. Change time-out in seconds.

*. Enable/disable boot-splash (once enabled, this will display a splash screen after the default Ubuntu boot-logo is closed and just before loading the GDM log-in window).

*. Enable/disable boot-text (I don't think this applies to the recent versions of Ubuntu since they all come with text outputs disabled while booting by default).

*. Create a boot-able Floppy "image" (accessed via the "advanced" tab):

This is hardly ever used by computer users these days, since the Floppy-disk drive is a hardware that's almost dead. Although in the "not that long ago" past :), creating a Floppy image was quite heavily used in case of your Boot-loader was corrupted or something bad happens to it, etc.

Well that's about it folks. You can install startup-manager in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install startupmanager

Once installed, press "Alt" + "F2" keys on your keyboard and use the below command to launch it.

startupmanager

Although it can be a bit tempting but I humble suggest you not to enable the "splash screen", not because it'll do any bad to the booting process, but having it disabled (Ubuntu come with it disabled by default) it should help to speed-up the boot-up times, just a little bit though :).

Anyhow, it's your choice mate!. Good luck.

Install GRUB Customizer (GUI) for Ubuntu 10.10

If you dual boot or just use Linux only, in either case the installer will automatically install a boot manager called GRUB (or LILO, depending on the distro). Not that long ago, after installing GRUB and wanting to change the names displayed in the boot menu or changing the time-out settings, it wasn't used to be that easy.

You had to manually edit a configuration file using the terminal or text-editor but still even changing something simple like boot menus was a bit risky unless you know what you were doing. But now it seems that those days are long gone, not only one, but there are a lot of applications that let you do that graphically!.

The one that I'm going to reveal is called "startupmanager". After installing it you'll be able to change the things like...

*. Time-out settings.

*. Boot sequence.

*. Boot logo's resolution.

*. Color depth change.

*. Remove text or logo during boot, etc are just a few to name.

So, open your terminal and issue the below command...

sudo apt-get install startupmanager

After installing it you should be able to execute it via "System" -> "Administration" -> "Startup-Manager" and make all those above mentioned (+ many more) customizations to the GRUB loader graphically.