Ubuntu and Chameleon, wouldn’t it be great if they just got along? That way you could boot to Ubuntu directly from the Chameleon Bootloader without having to change the boot partition every time (or whatever you used to do). The issue itself is actually between Grub (not Ubuntu itself) and Chameleon fighting to see who has the bigger cojones.

Grub and Chameleon both install themselves onto the MBR (Master Boot Record). Since they both try to install to the same place, whichever is installed last is able to stay on. This means that if you install Ubuntu and then you install OS X, you will be able to get into Chameleon to choose which OS you would like to boot to. The problem with this is that because you just installed Chameleon to the MBR, Grub was replaced at the top of the list and you can no longer boot to it. If you install OS X and then Ubuntu afterwards, you can boot to most other OS’s with Grub, but not OS X.

To have both Grub and Chameleon satisfied, you just need a couple of commands in the Ubuntu’s Terminal and everything can be fixed and working smoothly. So today, I’ll tell you how to move Grub from the MBR directly to the Ubuntu partition so that it remains intact when Installing Chameleon, but also so that you can boot Ubuntu directly from Chameleon. To do so:

1. Boot into Ubuntu like you normally would.

2. Launch Terminal.

3. Type df and press RETURN or ENTER.

4. Note the first entry on the list – the one mounted as /. This is the one we want. In my case it was /dev/sda3.

5. Type sudo grub-install /dev/sda3 – replace /dev/sda3 with the correct entry for your system.

6. Enter your Password and press RETURN or ENTER.

7. Close the terminal window and restart your system.

8. Boot into OS X and reinstall Chameleon.

9. Leave a comment below about how everything went for you.

While you’re at it, you may want to access your Ubuntu files from within OS X.

If you found this guide useful then feel free to make a donation by clicking the link at the end of the Authors Mini-Biography. Any amount truly does help.