Mandrake still boots even though i've installed Gentoo

Snoober · n00b Joined: 10 Sep 2003 Posts: 3

I installed Gentoo, did everything right (i hope). But when i'm done and is about to boot it with Grub i get the Mandrake boot screen and i't wont go away. Please, help me :/

tollwilly125 · n00b Joined: 31 Aug 2003 Posts: 73 Location: Boston, MA

if you used fdisk, did you type 'w' to write the changes to your hd?

Snoober · n00b Joined: 10 Sep 2003 Posts: 3

Yes, and i thought everything got deleted. I'm going to reinstall it but i'll bash my head into a wall if it happens again :/

EDIT with details: I installed Mandrake on my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 2500, but Gentoo looked kinda neat so i thought what the hell. I followed the installation guide and created partitions as the example. I made my own kernel and compiled it. I also installed Grub as loader and configured it. But when i restarted the computer the Mandrake loader comes up (with the options Linux, failsafe and floppy). I thought it would go on with Gentoo but it didnt. If i choose linux or failsafe it gives me a kernel panic message.

grooveman · Veteran Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 1217

I think we need a little more info here...

Do you mean that grub comes up, and offers you choices between OS's, and no matter what you choose, you get Mandrake?

How did you set up your partitions? I am assuming you have mandrake on one, and Gentoo on another... if not, then you are in trouble... please give details.

How did you execute your grub command toward the end of your Gentoo install?

etc.

Chris
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iamlarryboy · Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2003 5:54 pm Post subject:

This sounds like a grub problem. I would reboot the live cd and make sure you have grub installed and configued correctly.

grooveman · Veteran Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 1217

I agree. It sounds like you didn't execute grub properly. I always put it in the master boot record of the first HD (0). It looks like that is what your Mandrake install did. You might have put it elsewhere. Don't.

Try your grub setup again on hd(0). If that fails, you can try wiping your MBR. I have heard of people doing that with a command like this:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hd1 bs=1024 count=1

BUT, I have not done this. So don't blame me if you try it and aren't happy with the results

. Theoretically, it should write zeros to your MBR, and kill the existing boot loader. Then you can grub it, and go from there.

You could also try putting grub on a boot disk, and see where that gets you. If you can boot from that and choose your OS, you can at least validate that the rest of your install worked. If it did, then you know it was your grub setup.

Just a couple more ideas.

Chris
_________________
To look without without looking within is like looking without without looking at all.