Grub Error 15

shazzam6999 · n00b Joined: 17 May 2010 Posts: 4

Alright, this is my first attempt at installing Gentoo (in a vbox) and it went fine until I rebooted and got "grub error 15" which I know is because it can't find the kernel image file (well I didn't know this... but I do now). So I went back into the livecd and mounted my partitions and dont have any kernel image in hda1 and for that matter I have no /usr/src/ file... there is nothing in the src file. I'm sure I messed up something simple but I've gone through the documentation and I'm not really sure where to go from here. I just used the genkernel, should I try recompiling it?

erik258 · Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 2:41 am Post subject:

Hello,

We'd better start at the beginning. Can we please see your /boot/grub/grub.conf file?

If you don't have anything in /usr/src, I find it hard to believe you have a kernel installed. Are you sure the genkernel process -which I'm afraid i don't use - completed successfully?
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shazzam6999 · n00b Joined: 17 May 2010 Posts: 4

Well... I apparently don't have a grub.conf file although I could swear I configured it. The kernel said it compiled successfully and it took around an hour to complete.

Actually, after Googling it I definitely created a grub.conf file so I'm not sure what happened to it.

I might just try reinstalling again... compiling gives me an excuse to study for finals anyways and I'm sure I just missed something simple.

erik258 · Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 3:01 am Post subject:

Huh, I always use gentoo as an excuse not to get anything done.

Have you checked to make sure you're mounting the right partition in the right place? It almost sounds to me like you installed a bunch of stuff on a boot partition, but then aren't mounting it at /boot when you're looking for the files - or maybe it's the opposite, that you meant to use a boot partition, but didn't mount it when you installed, and so when you mount the partition at /boot you 'hide' all the files in /boot with an empty partition.

It's also possible that you accidentally put your stuff in /boot on the livecd rather than /mnt/gentoo/boot - but I don't think that would be easy to do, since you'd have to pull some strings to get /boot to exist in /mnt/gentoo/boot. But, if you did copy some files to /boot on the livecd, they were 'saved' in memory and are gone now.

If you don't have a /usr/src/linux directory, something almost certainly went wrong. This directory should have been created by genkernel I think.

But these are all recoverable errors; reinstall if you prefer, but it seems more logical to me to figure out what went wrong. I think it's better experience than just starting over (very windozey behavior if you ask me) and it makes you understand what's going on as your system boots.
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shazzam6999 · n00b Joined: 17 May 2010 Posts: 4

I agree, I would rather figure out where I went wrong the first time and by no means am I deleting my first try. I'm actually kind of hoping that I may find where I went wrong the second time through.

And actually... on that subject I found the kernel. After I boot up the livecd and mount hda3 it is in /mnt/gentoo/boot and my grub.conf file is in /mnt/gentoo/boot/grub/. So I think I had an issue with locations at some point.

Okay I seem to have fixed it... the issue was both that I fail at mounting partitions and that I didn't double check the kernel name. Thanks for your help!

erik258 · Posted: Tue May 18, 2010 1:46 pm Post subject:

I've done the same thing more than once myself. Glad we could figure it out.
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