Michael Lange composed on 2017-12-02 22:33 (UTC+0100):
On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 23:07:15 -0500 Dan Norton wrote:
(...)
What bootloader was installed -- LILO, GRUB, GRUB2, whatever? And,
where?
GRUB2 to sda1.
I did not read this thread in detail, so maybe this has already been
discussed, but I have just now been thinking, shouldn't grub go
to /dev/sda instead of /dev/sda1 ?
OP made it clear his is a multiboot context. Grub on sda works for a first
installation, but guess what happens with the next and subsequent installations
if you allow same with them? Just as traditionally experienced with
re-installation of Windows, each subsequent installation tries to, and typically
does, usurp control from the former, followed by updates to the prior at least
attempting to wrest it back, often with annoying, and time consuming, and
sometimes fatal, consequences. With the complication that is multiboot, some
kind of administrative intervention is inevitably needed.
The option the OP chose is to intervene ab initio. When Grub is installed to an
MBR primary partition, and the MBR contains legacy boot code, and a boot flag is
appropriately set, and the same policy is maintained, a subsequent installation
makes no attempt to usurp control from the first.