[vox-tech] Linux live disk's install attempt onto external drive botched my internal drive's grub!

[Bill Kendrick]

So we got a new SSD drive for Melissa's laptop, and I've placed a Kubuntu
installer/live demo image onto a USB flash drive.

Melissa was busy working on her laptop, so I decided to just
get the install onto the new SSD, and we can physically migrate
drives between her laptop at our leisure.

So, I booted _my_ laptop up with the installer USB flash drive, and
stuck the target drive for the install (the SSD drive) into an
external SATA enclosure, and connected that to my laptop via its USB cable.

Then I told the installer to install onto that external drive.

I answered a few questions, watched the enclosure's blue LED blink at me
for 10 minutes while the installer did its job, and done!  "Great," I assume!
I unplug the installer USB flash drive, and try to boot up the
freshly-installed Linux off of the external drive enclosure.
It didn't come up.  That's not good, but not a disaster.

But, it gets worse...

So I unplug the SATA enclosure's USB cable as well, and reboot my laptop again.
Now I'm staring at a "grub rescue>" menu!  Nooo! :^(

Apparently, the installer slammed an update to GRUB(?) on my laptop's
_internal drive!_  (Full disclosure, I know almost nothing about GRUB since
I never need to deal with it.)  So now I can't boot my laptop!
(Aaand, since it was handy, and is newer and faster than my personal drive,
I was using my work laptop.  "Why should it matter," I assume,
"I'm installing Linux onto an _external drive_.")


I Googled around and discovered something called "boot-repair",
which I installed onto the live/install USB flash drive, but when I ran
it in it's default / recommended mode, it didn't seem to help me.

The results of its scan can be seen here:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/19599532/

It seems like I got bit by this bug...?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub-installer/+bug/384633


I'm seeing a LOT of questions and answers about this kind of problem
online, but a lot of it is old, a lot of it has to do with people
who are trying to boot Linux off an external drive (not my goal;
my goal was only to install it there; I guess it was foolish for me
to assume that that's a "thing one can do").

I'm asking coworkers for assistance, but since many are remote,
I figured I'd ask here, in case someone local feels like dropping by
(or meeting me somewhere) to help fix this.

Thanks,

-- 
-bill!
Sent from my computer