[Solved] Unknown Partition type and other problems

Honselas · n00b Joined: 24 Mar 2011 Posts: 29

I just followed the handbook (3 times through it now actually) and I'm having a couple issues that I can't for the life of me get sorted. I just finished compiling kernel from source 2.6.38 using Pappy's seed. I included scsi/ext2/ext3 in the kernel. When I reboot I get:

BradN · Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2011 4:16 am Post subject:

Double check your grub.conf file and make sure the device specifications are all correct (especially check the root (hd?,?) part). Also, be sure to remember grub's drive and partition numbering starts at 0, so sda2 becomes (hd0,1)

I ran into this after I cloned a gentoo install to another system but the partition layout was different - I had to adjust the partition specifications in grub.conf.

The video messup seems to be a bug in grub where it doesn't work properly under certain errors (you can try commenting out the splashimage line to make it stay in normal text mode)

Honselas · n00b Joined: 24 Mar 2011 Posts: 29

I meant to post this before.

BradN · Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2011 4:27 am Post subject:

There's your problem - (hd0,0) refers to your NTFS partition, probably not what you want.

Without knowing which partition is which in your disk, I can't say for sure what you need to change those to, but it should be either (hd0,3) or (hd0,4)

Honselas · n00b Joined: 24 Mar 2011 Posts: 29

Thanks so much. sda4=boot and sda6=/
Point grub to boot? (hd0,3) ?

BradN · Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2011 4:56 am Post subject:

That should do it. Make sure to change both instances in the file - the first one is causing the graphical messups (actually this is a bug in grub - it should fall back to text only display without messing up if it can't load the splashimage), but the second one is preventing you from booting the system.

Good luck!

Honselas · n00b Joined: 24 Mar 2011 Posts: 29

I realized I didn't have my swap partition (/sda5) type right so I fixed that in fdisk.

Just so I understand. All the (hd0,x) need to point to my /boot partition? Or should some of them point to / ?

Thanks for the help btw. I've been banging my head against the wall for 2 days can't believe I missed that in grub.

BradN · Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2011 7:10 am Post subject:

To the boot partition if you have one, as that's where grub needs to go to load its files and the kernel.

Good luck with your new gentoo install!

cwr · Veteran Joined: 17 Dec 2005 Posts: 1969

For booting you need two locations, that of the grub partition and that of the root partition;
they may well be the same. If they aren't, then set grub.conf up with root as the the grub
partition, and add "real_root=/dev/XXX" to your kernel boot arguments to give grub the
location of the actual root partition.

After that, /etc/fstab takes over, so you need to keep it in sync with grub.

Will

BradN · Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 12:15 am Post subject:

real_root=/dev/XXX isn't for grub, it's for if you use an initrd, and according to his grub.conf, no initrd is loaded so root= specifies the actual root partition. His config should be fine just by changing the (hdx,x) parts.

Honselas · n00b Joined: 24 Mar 2011 Posts: 29

Thanks for the replies. After fixing the obvious (hd,x) errors in my grub.conf everything worked beautifully. Gotta say I'm really loving Gentoo so far.