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Reinstalling GRUB on unallocated free space

PROBLEM

I had accidentally deleted the partition containing GRUB (/dev/sda1) due to which my Linux Mint installed on /dev/sda5 stopped booting. 

Solution

So, I wanted to reinstall GRUB and edit it to boot my Linux Mint. I wanted GRUB and booting sectors on /dev/sda1 while my OS was in /dev/sda5. (I am using these as my defaults for this blog. Please use fdisk -l to figure out your partition names and numbers).
Getting a live USB : I created a new USB bootable drive of KDE Neon (It is a derivative of Ubuntu). 
Installing GRUB : After booting KDE Neon, I opened the terminal and created the partition using fdisk.
Fdisk : 
  • $ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 232.9 GiB, 250059350016 bytes, 488397168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x6c778d7d
    Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
    /dev/sda2        97298430 488396799 391098370 186.5G  5 Extended
    /dev/sda5        97298432     467601407 370302976 176.6G 83 Linux
    /dev/sda6       467603456 488396799  207933    44   9.9G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
    • Here you can see that /dev/sda1 is missing
    • So I used parted to see the free partitions
    • $ sudo parted /dev/sda unit s print free
    Model: ATA Samsung SSD 750 (scsi)
    Disk /dev/sda: 488397168s
    Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
    Partition Table: msdos
    Disk Flags: 

    Number  Start       End         Size        Type      File system     Flags
     1      63s         97298429s   97298367s             Free Space            boot
     2      97298430s   488396799s  391098370s  extended
     5      97298432s   467601407s  370302976s  logical   ext4
     6      467603456s  488396799s  20793344s   logical   linux-swap(v1)
            488396800s  488397167s  368s                  Free Space
    • Enter the parted program in interactive mode
    • $ sudo parted /dev/sda
    • mkpart primary ext4 63s 97298429s
    • quit
    • The partition would have been created. You can check this by
    • $ sudo fdisk -l
    Installing GRUB
    • $ mkdir /home/neon/temp
    • $ sudo mount /dev/sda /home/neon/temp
    • This mounts /dev/sda1 (the newly parted drive to a directory 
    • $ sudo grub-install --root-directory=/home/neon/temp /dev/sda
    After this reboot the machine

    GRUB Command Line
    • (grub) set root=(hd0,5)
    • (grub) linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-21-generic /dev/sda5
    • (grub) initrd /boot/initrd.img-4.4.0-21-generic 
    • (grub) boot
    First line sets the root directory. The next sets the linux daemon. The next sets the init program of the linux program. The last line boots the OS.

    Comments

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