Problems with new installation, file system and grub related

horstenpeter

I have some problems with my new installation.

First of, grub displays nothing. I can boot into both Windows and Gentoo, because I know which keys I need to press. But no display.

Booting up gentoo brings up this:

Root block device unspecified or not detected. Please specify a device to boot, or "shell" for a shell.[i]

I then specify /dev/hda4, my boot and root device. Next up is:

[i]Partition /dev/hda4 is mounted with write permission, cannot check it.
Fsck could not correct all errors, manual repair needed.

Alright what do I need to do ?

I was wondering whether it might be better to start over. I did an "emerge sync" during the install and now everything I install is downloaded. Will that continue with all software ? (KDE and the like) Since I'm on a 1 GB monthly download limit, that is a no-no. I would rather use my second CD and sacrifice some up-to-dateness.

WrathChild · Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2004 11:25 am Post subject:

I had something similar, everything i emerged was trying to be downloaded. Then i used "emerge -k " and it seemed to do the trick.

I aint too sure what it did but it started taking it from my cd rather than downloading it

horstenpeter · Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2004 3:31 pm Post subject:

Alright I'll try

What about the other stuff ? Anyone ?

horstenpeter · Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2004 7:07 pm Post subject:

help people! i wanted my system up within the week!

Blejd · n00b Joined: 01 Apr 2003 Posts: 30 Location: Sweden

post your /etc/fstab and /etc/grub.conf

horstenpeter · Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2004 7:41 pm Post subject:

/dev/hda4 /boot reiserfs notail,noauto,noatime 1 1

/dev/hda4 / reiserfs noatime 0 0

/dev/hda3 none swap sw 0 0

/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro,user 0 0
/dev/croms/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 iso9660 noauto,ro,user 0 0

/dev/hda5 /mnt/windows FAT32 noatime 0 0

none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0

and next up the grub.conf

default 0
timeout 30
splashimage=(hd0,3)/grub/splash/xpm.gz

title=Gentoo Linux 2.4.22
root (hd0,3)
kernel (hd0,3)/kernel-2.4.22-gentoo-r7 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc realroot=/dev/hda4
initrd (hd0,3)/initrd-2.4.22-gentoo-r7

title=Windows 2000
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

daveb · Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2004 9:15 pm Post subject:

horstenpeter · Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2004 10:16 pm Post subject:

yeah I had those 2 lines. I commented the /boot one out. Solved the "mounted with write permission" thing, but I still need to specify a device to boot.
And I still need to know about the emerge sync thing.

ToucanMan · Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2004 11:47 pm Post subject:

I just noticed this error in your grub.conf. It is most probably the reason why you aren't getting your pretty splash image.

You wrote you grub.conf is:

daveb · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 12:31 am Post subject:

If your /boot directory is on hda4 (along with root), change your kernel and initrd lines in grub.conf to something like:

horstenpeter · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 8:28 am Post subject:

Actually, these files are in my / directory (and the grub and boot directories are subdirectories of that) so the paths should be correct...

horstenpeter · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 9:48 am Post subject:

Toucan, got the splash screen fixed. Thanks!

Putting boot and root on the same partition was done deliberately (though I originally wanted to have the kernel and stuff in a subdir, but that didn't work out).
Do the root, boot and swap partitions have to be primary partitions ? (Having only room for 2 more primary partition caused me to not create a boot partition)

Anyways, I tried emerge -k and emerge --usepkg but it still tries to download the packages. (Unsucessfully, the network doesn't work, but that's fine with me for now, since I need to use my second CD)

nevynxxx · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 10:31 am Post subject:

Any partition can be either extended or primary in linux, it doesn't notice the difference. So long as you have a motherboard from the last 5 years that can boot off any part of the hard drive you will be fine.
My setup is usually root on hda8, swap on hda7 and boot on hda6, but thats because of the way I set boot and swap to specific sizes and root to whats left.
boot does not have to be a seperate partition, but if it is on root, you need to use different paths in grub (i use lilo so don't ask me what they are),
and you file system check error is, as others have said, because you are mounting the partition to /boot, then trying to mount it again, this time read only to /. This is not going to work. Just comment out the /boot entry in fstab.

hope that helps.
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horstenpeter · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 10:43 am Post subject:

I already commented it out. That solved the fsck error (see above)
For some reasons I cannot create any more logical partitions. I get an "no free sectors available" error.

The weird thing about the boot / root device error is, that by the time it occurs, gentoo is already booting off of the root device.

ktbken · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2004 Posts: 1