Can´t setup GRUB

chili_666 · n00b Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Posts: 43

Hey there,

so far the installation from a stage 3 tarball has been going quite smooth... the only problem is that I am now stuck with installing Grub.

I have 2 IDE-hdd sitting in my box.

/dev/hda is for WinXP (which I have to keep, wether I want to or not...)
/dev/hdb1 is boot
/dev/hdb2 is root
/dev/hdb3 is swap

Now, according to the instrutions all I have to do is tell the grub-console which partition i want to use. So I tell it: root (hd0,0) which should be the MBR of the first hdd. All it replies is:

File system ype unknown, partition tpe 0x7

If I then try setup (hd0) it says:

Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition

Is this because hda is an NTFS-Volume? Or am I just too dumb to follow the instructions...

Im a pretty ew to linux, but I have learned heaps about it just by trying to install Gentoo... So if anyone could just point me in the right direction or give me helping hand....

Thanks a lot and Merry Christmas...

Chili

hook · Posted: Wed Dec 25, 2002 4:56 pm Post subject:

here's my grub.conf:

GurliGebis · Retired Dev Joined: 08 Aug 2002 Posts: 509

Do this in grub:

root (hd1,0)
setup (hd1)
quit

Now tell your BIOS to boot from your second harddrive.
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raluke · n00b Joined: 11 Aug 2002 Posts: 56 Location: Maryland, USA

I'm having a similar problem installing Gentoo 1.4rc1 from scratch:

/dev/hda1 is boot (reiserfs)
/dev/hda2 is swap
/dev/hda3 is root (reiserfs)

and when I type "root (hd0,0)", it responds "Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x83".

When I type "setup (hd0)", it responds "Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition."

What have I done wrong?

TIA,
-Robert

GurliGebis · Retired Dev Joined: 08 Aug 2002 Posts: 509

raluke, what filesystem does /boot use????
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raluke · n00b Joined: 11 Aug 2002 Posts: 56 Location: Maryland, USA

Oops, I didn't get my editing done in time. Both /boot and /root are using Reiser FS. First time I've used anything but ext2 or ext3.

Thanks,
-Robert

GurliGebis · Retired Dev Joined: 08 Aug 2002 Posts: 509

hehe, you might get problems with /boot being Reiserfs

So, a good pratice is to keep /boot as ext2, since Grub likes it that way.
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raluke · n00b Joined: 11 Aug 2002 Posts: 56 Location: Maryland, USA

Uh-oh. Is there a way to switch /boot from Reiser back to ext3 without reinstalling from the beginning?

New info since posting: I found the following posted by Messiah in this thread: Grub,1.4_rc1,reiser problem

GurliGebis · Retired Dev Joined: 08 Aug 2002 Posts: 509

I actually don't know how to convert filesystem, but I'm sure it can be done.
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rac · Posted: Wed Dec 25, 2002 10:13 pm Post subject:

Valen · Posted: Wed Dec 25, 2002 10:13 pm Post subject:

I have a reiserfs running with grub 0.92 ... if maybe you might want to try emerging (if you just want the one masked ebuild just specify it by:

chili_666 · n00b Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Posts: 43

To whoever gave the hint about booting from -dev-hdb:

Thanks, good idea, but still....

So I setup grub on my second hdd and gave the grub this conf file:

default 0
timeout 30
splashimage=hd (1,1)/boot/grub/spalsh.xpm.gz

title=Gentoo Linux
root (hd1,2)
kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hdb2

title=Windows XP
root (hd0,1)
chainloder +1

Then I continued to follow the manual and set my bios to boot from my second harddisk.

The result was:

Black screen
GRub (upper left corner, cursor following after it, no reaction to the keyboard short of rebooting on ctrl-alt-del)

That was it...

I´ve been looking at the file for quite a while now and simply can´t see what I got wrong...

Any suggestions?

Thanks a lot in advance...

chili

GurliGebis · Retired Dev Joined: 08 Aug 2002 Posts: 509

try using root (1,1) instead of (1,2)
and try removing the splashscreen line.
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chili_666 · n00b Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Posts: 43

Thanks for the quick reply....

But this got me the same result....

I really don´t know what else I could do...

Any other suggestions?

Bugger, I just realised... could it be a problem that I might have forgotten to set the link to menu.lst?

Anyways... it is 5:30 in the morning now, so I might as well leave until this afternoon...

cheers

chili

GurliGebis · Retired Dev Joined: 08 Aug 2002 Posts: 509

Try switching the discs around, so hda becomes hdb and hdb becomes hda.

Have you enabled the bootflag for the /hdb1 partition in fdisk???
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flying_monkey · n00b Joined: 22 Jul 2002 Posts: 33 Location: New Jersey

chili_666, raluke,

I think the problems you are having have to do with the face that Win2000 and XP require booting from only their own bootloader. I explained how to work with the NT bootloader in this post, have a look there.

Also, I strongly support what GurliGebis said about keeping your boot partition as ext2. There's simply no advantage to be gained, as that partition is usually not mounted, and only referenced at boot time, and grub behaves much better with ext2 boot partitions.

Good luck,
Ed
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chili_666 · n00b Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Posts: 43

Allrighty, thanks everyone for trying to help me out and sorry about taking almost a week to get back to you...

None of the solutions has so far worked....

Here´s what I have done:

Reinstalled Gentoo from the LiveCD again using the 1.4 stage3 tarball for a Pentium 4.

Everything went fine until the setup of grub. I tried it the normal way first, installing it into the mbr of my second harddrive, by telling it to use root (hd1,0) and i also wrote the config accordingly.

This got me: Grub _ after a reboot and switching hdb to boot drive. And yes i had a bootflag set for boot-partition (dev/hdb1).

Next I tried the NT-Loader-soluition:

Same story but tried to copy the crub.conf to a floppy. Not a chance, gentoo wouldn´t do anything, it just sits there waiting for something and doesn´t even think about copying the file to disk....

So I killed the whole thing: Busted windows, formated C: and D: and reinstalled everything again. Windows is now running again, but with Gentoo all the same Problems arise...

So I nagged an old (7.3) RedHat distribution of a friend and tried to install this. I wanted to do this so I could learn from its grub.conf.

Weeeelll, I let Redhat set grub to /dev/hdb and lo and behold: same result: Grub _ and thats it...

I am really reaching a point now, where I think that somebody does not want me to use Linux let alone Gentoo....

Too bad, allthough I find the idea of having a free OS custombuilt for my machine just to appealing...

Anyways, is there still somebody left out there with a suggestion what I could do?

chili

GurliGebis · Retired Dev Joined: 08 Aug 2002 Posts: 509

Maybe you can get LILO to work???
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chili_666 · n00b Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Posts: 43

chili_666 · n00b Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Posts: 43

I really might be too dumb to do this...
Anyways, tried to setup up Lilo but I reckon that during one of the tries before I seriously buggered up my MBR on both hdds. So, lets start all over gain, kill everything do a low-level format and start from scratch with installing gentoo....
Not that bad cause by now I know the install guide more or less by heart :-)

So, before I get to configuring Lilo and doing it all wrong, buggering up everything again and starting everything from the beginning, I just would like to ask if anybody could proof read my (planned) lilo.conf

It should look like this:

boot=/dev/hdb
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
message=/boot/message
lba 32
default=linux

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20.img
read-only
root=/dev/hdb2

My partition are setup like this

/dev/hdb1 = boot
/dev/hdb2 = root
/dev/hdb3 = swap
/dev/hdba = Win Xp (NTFS)

So am I on the right track? I am not really sure about the Kernel-line and the line with the .img file. Do I need them? And am I using the correct ones?

Thanks so much for the help so far and for any further I help I might require...

Chili

sergio · Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2002 12:35 pm Post subject: Re: Can´t setup GRUB

scrllock · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Oct 2002 Posts: 102

wait up! this problem is quite easy to solve.

Just re-emerge grub like this:

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=¨~x86¨ emerge grub

that version (0.92-r1) supports reiser. After emerging tis version my error 17 problems went away, and i can boot fine.

chili_666 · n00b Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Posts: 43

Well, thanks for the suggestion... but, erm, /dev/hda is using NTFS (Win XP) not ReiserFS....

Might try it though if Lilo is not working....

Anyways, I am gonna finish my first beer for today now, celebrate the new year and get bloody tanked...

Might as well forget about this computer-stuff.....

Chili...

Valen · Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2002 5:33 pm Post subject:

Another option you might want to consider is making your XP partition fat32 instead of ntfs and that should leave you fine for a grub install in the MBR (saves me a lot of trouble getting linux to boot from the ntloader or whatever it is now).

I have grub 0.92 on mine with reiserfs, here is my configuration: