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Linux and Windows dual booting has always been a hassle. Linux likes to do it it’s way and Windows likes to do the same. Installing one after the other, one usually gets a nice friendly boot up screen that allows you to choose which operating system to boot. Windows 7 in it’s current form for some reason seems to despise other operating systems and does not to put an option to boot other operating systems after a fresh install when you installed Linux first.

While there are many ways to get the Windows bootloader to give you options, I find the best way to get the option to boot into Linux back is to re-install GRUB. I happen to use Kubuntu, so following the instructions step by step on any variation of Ubuntu should work while some other distributions might require some tweaking to the steps.

First you will need the live CD you used to install Linux. Boot into the live CD and open a terminal.

In the terminal, enter the following commands …

sudo grub
find /boot/grub/stage1
root (hd?,?) # replace ? with the information you got from the previous command.
setup (hd0)
quit

That’s it! Reboot and you should get your grub menu back.

Time it takes to get a fully functional personal Ubuntu server: 30 minutes. After downloading Ubuntu, setting up everything was such a breeze. I’ve been using Slackware as my personal server of choice for years and setting up Ubuntu server for the first time was light years easier, lots of credit goes to Ubuntu utilizing Debian’s apt system. After install which took mere minutes, I did the following:

• Setup /etc/network/interfaces – get the network up and running
• sudo passwd root – set password for root so that I can switch to root and do all my setup instead of having to sudo every time I need to run a command requiring root access.
• apt-get update – Updates the apt-get resources from online sources.
• apt-get install openssh-server openssh-client – install ssh. I’ll be working on this box remotely for the most part and this will eventually sit in a closet somewhere never to be seen. Good to go after install.
• apt-get install vsftpd – light, secure ftp daemon. Most of my transfers will be using samba, but I installed this just in case. Aside from small config changes, it was good to go after install.
• apt-get install samba – Install samba to share resources with my Windows Vista desktop where I’ll be doing most of my work. Check this quick Samba install guide for small networks.
• Apache, MySQL, PHP was already installed. You are given an option for this during the initial installation. Good to go.
• apt-get upgrade – Upgrades packages to the most recent version.
• apt-get dist-upgrade – This upgrades the core system files such as the kernel
• apt-get clean – Removes unneeded files
• Happy Ubuntu user.