Grub issue, boot repair not working

Question

I have an installation of multiple systems on my laptop. I m running on a asus vivobook x202e with an i3, a 240gb ssd and 4gb ram. I have: Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Windows 8.1 and and fedora (Cant remember wich version). I wanted to install 15.04 nightly and to do so I tried to resize some partitions on my ssd. After doing that my grub just would not work at all. When I boot my PC it directly goes to the BIOS and there are no boot options in there. I tried boot repair but it would block at this step:

When I do the commands one by one everything is working except the last one:

sudo chroot "/mnt" apt-get purge -y --force-yes grub*-common grub-common:i386 shim-signed linux-signed*

When I execute this command the following error comes every single time:

Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 grub-efi-amd64 : Depends: grub-common
                  Depends: grub-efi-amd64-bin (= 2.02~beta2-9ubuntu1)
 grub2-common : Depends: grub-common (= 2.02~beta2-9ubuntu1)
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.**

I've tried do fix it but nothing seems to work. As this command does not work, when I hit continue in boot repair it tells me:

If you guys could help me out by telling me a way to fix this or just another way to fix grub then it would be really appreciated! :-)

Solution

I think your best bet would be to just reinstall GRUB. Boot into a live session (of whichever distro you have handy) and set up a chroot environment and install grub on it.

1. Mount the partition you will be using as / (I will call the drive /dev/sda and the / partition sda1, the names may be different on your system, you will need to use the correct ones) somewhere :

   sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/foo
   

2. Bind the directories that grub needs to have access to

   sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/foo/dev && 
   sudo mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/foo/dev/pts && 
   sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/foo/proc && 
   sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/foo/sys
   

3. Set up the chroot environment

   sudo chroot /mnt/foo
   

4. Create grub's configuration file:

   sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
   

   If you have multiple operating systems installed, make sure that the command above lists all of them. For example:

   $ sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
   Generating grub.cfg ...
   Found background image: /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png
   Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.10-2-amd64
   Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.10-2-amd64
   Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-amd64
   Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-4-amd64
   Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-3-amd64
   Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-3-amd64
   Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-2-amd64
   Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-2-amd64
   Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
   Found memtest86+ multiboot image: /boot/memtest86+_multiboot.bin
   Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda2
   done
   

5. Now install grub to the MBR of your drive (remember to change /dev/sda to whichever drive you actually want to install it on)

   grub-install /dev/sda
   grub-install --recheck /dev/sda
   

6. Exit the chroot and unmount everything so your running system is back to normal:

   exit
   sudo umount /mnt/foo/dev/pts /mnt/foo/dev /mnt/foo/proc /mnt/foo/sys /mnt/foo
   

7. Try booting from the drive, you should have a grub menu this time.

Comments

[oldfred]

Are all installs UEFI or all installs BIOS? You cannot mix without issues. Post link to summary report from Boot-Repair. And if UEFI you also have to include that in the chroot.