I'm looking for a way to reboot into Windows from Ubuntu on a 10.10/Vista dual boot system. The specific use case is that I would like to be able to ssh into my running Ubuntu instance and issue a command that will initiate a reboot directly into Windows.
I found a promising blog post, but the script that it suggests isn't working:
#!/bin/bash
WINDOWS_ENTRY=`grep menuentry /boot/grub/grub.cfg | grep --line-number Windows`
MENU_NUMBER=$(( `echo $WINDOWS_ENTRY | sed -e "s/:.*//"` - 1 ))
sudo grub-reboot $MENU_NUMBER
sudo rebootman grub-reboot isn't much help, but it seems to be leading me in the right direction:
set the default boot entry for GRUB, for the next boot only
WINDOWS_ENTRY=`grep menuentry /boot/grub/grub.cfg | grep --line-number Windows`
MENU_NUMBER=$(( `echo $WINDOWS_ENTRY | sed -e "s/:.*//"` - 1 ))
echo $MENU_NUMBERThis returns the expected value, but on reboot the first menu entry is still highlighted. Any ideas why this isn't working or suggestions for other solutions?
28 Answers
You have to edit your grub first.
sudo gedit /etc/default/grubSearch for the line GRUB_DEFAULT=0 and modify it to GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
Update your grub using the following command.
sudo update-grubNow create a script file,
sudo gedit switch-to-windows.shThen add these lines.
#!/bin/bash WINDOWS_ENTRY=`grep menuentry /boot/grub/grub.cfg | grep --line-number Windows` MENU_NUMBER=$(( `echo $WINDOWS_ENTRY | sed -e "s/:.*//"` - 1 )) sudo grub-reboot $MENU_NUMBER sudo rebootMake the script executable.
sudo chmod +x switch-to-windows.shAnd now you can run this script from terminal to reboot into windows.
./switch-to-windows.shOr you can execute the following command in your terminal
sudo grub-reboot XWhere X is the menuentry position of the OS you want to restart in from the GRUB menu.(starting with 0 as the first entry)
For Example:
- If this is your grub menu and if you want to boot into windows you should give the value of X as 5.
sudo grub-reboot 5- You can also create a launcher for the above command,so that double clicking the launcher will reboot into windows.
There is a grub command just to do so, it is grub-reboot.
It seems to only work when you have grub configured to start with the last saved entry. So if you have not already done so, modify /etc/default/grub and set
GRUB_DEFAULT=savedthen update grub configuration file:
sudo update-grubFrom now on, at each boot grub will start the last used entry.
Now, if you want to set in advance what should be the system to boot the next time, use
sudo grub-reboot ENTRYwhere ENTRY could be a number relative to a menu entry (numbered starting from 0), or an exact menu entry title, for example
sudo grub-reboot "Microsoft Windows XP Professional (on /dev/sda1)"This command can easily be made available as a launcher
#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
#
# save as ~/Desktop/reboot-into-windows.desktop
#
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Exec=sh -c 'gksu "grub-reboot 2" && gnome-session-save --shutdown-dialog'
Name=Reboot into Windows
Icon=gnome-panel-launcherbut I don't know how it could be integrated into the system menu.
You can obtain the available menu entry title with
sed -n '/menuentry/s/.*\(["'\''].*["'\'']\).*/\1/p' /boot/grub/grub.cfg I think I have found an even nicer way for people who want to the same while locally at their pc without ssh.
A solution to reboot into a specific system choosen through a unity launcher was just posted on webupd8. See
I know this is not exactly what the question is about but in case someone has a similar question later this might be helpful.
As far as I understood this will not be exactly what you want but I guess pretty close. Just follow the link webupdate article.
1So for me the best was to create following script with grub-reboot command
#!/bin/bash
WINDOWS_TITLE=$(grep -i 'windows' /boot/grub/grub.cfg|grep "^[^#;]"|cut -d"'" -f2)
sudo grub-reboot "$WINDOWS_TITLE"
echo "Your computer will reboot on ${WINDOWS_TITLE} in 3 seconds, press Ctrl+C if you want to abord it"
sleep 3 && sudo rebootEveryone's info was helpful for me but in the end I still couldn't accomplish changing the grub default and then restarting in one click. After tinkering away for 2 hours I discover this program which is the exact same thing we're all trying to build and in 5 minutes I'm rebooting into windows. Thanks everyone here's the cheater link for those that also give up.
I'm not sure if this will 100% also work in ubuntu, but I once made this work on a centos machine
basically you'll have to tell grub which id # from grub.conf it should run next. The id # can be found out by
echo `sudo grep ^title /boot/grub/grub.conf | grep -n Windows | cut -f 1 -d:`-1so in my case this would e.g. output "4-1" as the fourth entry in my grub.conf contains the text "Windows". (Replace this with the actual entry name (also partially) you want to use. Then you can feed this to grub like:
echo "savedefault --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --default=4-1 --once" | sudo /sbin/gruband at the next reboot it should automatically boot the entry you've told it to.
this all can be put together in a script like the following:
#!/bin/sh
let NEWBOOT=`sudo grep ^title /boot/grub/grub.conf | grep -n Windows | cut -f 1 -d:`-1
echo Booting $NEWBOOT - `sudo grep ^title.\*Windows /boot/grub/grub.conf`
echo "savedefault --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --default=$NEWBOOT --once" | sudo /sbin/grub
sudo rebootthe script will automatically determine which entry from your grub.conf corresponds to the text "Windows", will feed this to grub to tell what should be loaded on next boot and will reboot your pc.
for a gui you could e.g. add a shortcut icon to your desktop to achive this.
1Simply edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg and change the default entry to point to the entry you want to boot. The value can either be the ordinal number of the entry (starting from zero for the first one) or you can place the full title of the entry you want in quotes.
