Grub Error Collection [Part 6]

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 3:33 am Post subject:

Hi Gooserider.

Actually, from your error, I would review again how you installed GRUB in the MBR and what device the BIOS is booting from.
From your grub.conf, you should have used:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 11:02 am Post subject:

Gooserider,

DOS 5.0 predates drives bigger than 8GB and the need for Logical Block Addressing. Thus it will have written correct Cylinder/Head/Sector partition information. It may have written the LBA too, its been a while since I used that fdisk. However, it will have set the partition type to FAT16, which is incorrect for a Linux boot partiton. grub can work from a FAT partiton but you have to be very careful because FAT does not support symbolic links. That means menu.lst must be a real file, not a link to grub.conf.

If you choose to use a Linux filesystem on your /boot that issue goes away, the partiton type byte is largely ignored by Linux, so having that set to FAT16 but using ext2 will not cause problems.

As you say, if the kernel loads and the root filesystem mounts, grub has done its stuff and your remaining issues are elsewhere.
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MrBill · n00b Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 1

I have a problem with when i extract the portage image i after a while get an error message saying no more space and file doesent exist has this been adreesd before and what should i do?

Gooserider · Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 8:05 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the responses, however so far they haven't helped me get very far :cry:

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 10:24 pm Post subject:

96140 · Retired Dev Joined: 23 Jan 2005 Posts: 1324

@Gooserider:

Did you remember to watch out for the symlinks problem? Remember that any sort of FAT filesystem doesn't allow symlinks.

Gooserider · Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 3:31 am Post subject:

jmbsvicetto;
When I'm set to manual/LBA, I can boot either the installed linux system from the minimal grub floppy, or the CD version from the CD. In EITHER case, I can mount the linux partitions w/o problem or they are mounted as part of bootup. I have run grub "setup (hd0)" from a chroot off the CD (per the manual procedure), from the installed and booted hard-drive install, and directly from the grub minimal floppy.

In all three cases, setup runs w/o any visible errors. It properly finds and mounts (hd0,1) (aka /dev/hda2) as an EXT2 filesystem, which it is formatted as, then procedes to find my kernel (I know that it's mine because of the name I gave it when creating it) and all the associated grub files (stage 1, stage1.5ext, stage2, menu.lst, etc) without complaint of ANY sort.

I then reboot w/o the floppy or CD, and get the exact same Hard Disk Error message I've been getting from the beginning :!:

The only thing I've noticed where there is any complaint, is that when I've booted my kernel (using the grub floppy) it doesn't want to mount my /dos partition (hda1) I get the error message "wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1, missing codepage, or other error" ALL other hard drive partitions are mounted or mount w/o problems. I tried changing the fstype in /etc/fstab from "msdos" to "auto" but that didn't help.

nightmorph: Please don't feel offended, but did you READ my earlier post? :roll:

I went into great detail to explain to Neddy (and presumably everyone else) that I am ONLY using a FAT16 partition on /DEV/HDA1 :!:

My BOOT partition is on /dev/hda2 and is formatted ext2 :!:

Therefore it is a type 82 Linux partition, and is perfectly capable of working with symlinks! I am not trying in any way to work with symlinks on a FAT fs, I don't quite understand why people seem to think I am. (I'm not mad at anyone, but it gets frustrating after a while...)

Actually, I did just notice that I have /dev/hda2 labeled as an ext3 partition in /etc/fstab, it is grub that labels it as ext2 - however my understanding is that ext3 is really just ext2 with journalling, and that it isn't unusual or a problem if something sees an ext3 fs as ext2.

Gooserider
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Gooserider · Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 5:13 am Post subject:

Oh yes, latest experiments... I had speculated earlier that when I created (ONLY) /dev/hda1 as a DOS partition using DOS 5.0 fdisk, which doesn't recognize big drives, then created the rest of the partitions w/ Linux fdisk, there might have been some wierd interaction between the two different fdisks, and they might have put something strange on the disk.

In light of this, I went in with Linux FDISK and removed only the /dev/hda1 (fat16, DOS, created w/ DOS fdisk) partition, then recreated the same size and type partition with Linux FDISK, saved the partition table, and rebooted. This should have fixed any possible problems if I understand the way fdisk works.

SAME PROBLEM! :cry:

I can boot the hard disk off the grub floppy, but get Grub Hard Disk Error when I try to boot off the hard drive directly.

As a separate issue, I did fix the problem with mounting /dos however. I had the options "defaults,notail,noatime" in /etc/fstab, apparently dos doesn't like one of them. When I changed the fstype back to msdos from where I had tried it as auto, and changed the options to just "defaults" then it mounted just fine.

FWIW, I also tried making /dev/hda2 the active (boot flag) partition in fdisk, that doesn't seem to help either.

I'm starting to wonder - is there any chance that my grub is corrupted or a bad version? I didn't get any errors when I emerged it a couple of weeks ago, and it seems to be installing properly, but could there be some other issue?

Is there any possibility that I may be having a problem due to grub thinking the fs is an ext2 fs, while /etc/fstab thinks its ext3? (FWIW, I'm 99.9% certain that I created it as an ext3 when I was installing the system)

Gooserider
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 8:49 am Post subject:

Gooserider,

Remaking the partition table entry for /dev/hda1 does nothing to the data on the partition.
You need to continue buy saving the data from /dev/hda1, making a filesystem (ext2 is good) and copying the kernel, initrd and grub.conf back.
You need to

cyrillic · Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 11:22 pm Post subject:

aeklant · n00b Joined: 26 Aug 2006 Posts: 4

hi everyone

so, i´m a noob at this gentoo stuff n i was at the install grub part of gentoo installation so i did the following:

ter_roshak · Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 12:36 am Post subject:

Try mounting your /boot partition by executing the following command:

cyrillic · Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 12:45 am Post subject:

... and if your /boot is not on a separate partition, then make sure you remove the /boot line from /etc/fstab so that the GRUB installation does not get confused.

aeklant · n00b Joined: 26 Aug 2006 Posts: 4

ok so i checked fstab n its right, n also boot is on a separate partition, tried the
mount /boot command n it didn´t work, could someone explain what "mounting rw" means n the difference between "mounting" n "mounting rw" so i can have an idea of what is happening, i would really appreciate it.

Nick C · Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 1:40 am Post subject:

should just be a case of mount /dev/hdax /boot (or sda if your drive is sata or scsi and where the number of your boot partition). Assuming you formatted /boot as ext2, if its ext3 then use mount -t ext3 /dev/hdax /boot
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jamesdick628 · Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 1:42 am Post subject:

I don't remember ever having to mount /boot to emerge grub. Is this new?

Nick C · Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 2:05 am Post subject:

i believe its only recently that the error message has been added to grub but yes, while it might not strictly be necessary for the grub binary, it is needed (or at least very useful) so that the right folders can be created and sample files added.
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jstead1 · Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 3:10 am Post subject:

You will probably need to be root to mount /boot (you need to be root to emerge so I assume you know how to do it).
The default for mounting a drive is read/write (rw).
So as root, you should be able to mount /boot by just:

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 3:24 am Post subject:

[mod]Merged above 8 posts here.[/mod]

Hi.
Are you sure that you're inside the chroot?
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 11:52 am Post subject:

aeklant,

You should mount things from outside the chroot
The command would be

Gooserider · Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 1:09 pm Post subject:

Bob Leny · Apprentice Joined: 18 Aug 2006 Posts: 189

I need some help here if at all possible. I installed grub on hdb,5 and stupid me, doesnt load from hdb, it loads from hda. So I switched out the hard drives. You can the issue... (If not, now grub is looking in hdb,5, which doesn't exist...)

I either want to redo grub from the live cd or boot from a floopy to bypass grub and fix the problem from Gentoo drive.

I tried a few diffrent things...

JugglingSuns120 · n00b Joined: 16 Oct 2005 Posts: 15

I am slightly confused here. I am still in the process of booting linux off an external drive on my laptop. After a bit of a strugle I managed to get grub installed on the drive and then proceded to boot it. When I installed grub from the knoppix disk it installed to what grub recognized as (hd1,0) so I assumed thats where the splashimage was. I set my splashimage to this location and also set root to /dev/sda3. These were the only lines i modified from my old grub.conf file. When I boot I get an error from grub that it cannot mount the partition nor does it find the splashimage. Any ideas on this one? here is my grub.conf

default 0
timeout 15
splashimage=(hd1,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=Gentoo Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.13-gentoo-r7 root=/dev/sda3

any ideas?

AJ

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 4:32 pm Post subject:

Hi.

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 5:05 pm Post subject:

Hi.