8:56 p.m.
here is the problem...after finishing the Installation, i reboot then Windows XP boots up
like normal instead of grub. so i went into BIOS changed boot priority to :
1. [CDROM]
2. [HDD-1]
3. [HDD-0]
then all i get is a bash line:
GRUB>_
from here i don't know what to do...i find it odd that
stage2 didn't load.
it should be known that i'm using two hard drives.
tried using OSL2000 bootloader but that didn't work either, so i took it back off.
i don't understand why it's doing this. FC4 didn't have this issue. thinking
about trying the text based install and seeing what happens...but i'd rather not go
that way. I'll wait for responses first before i make a decision.
*note*
i'm still a newbie to linux. kinda half migrating from MS untill i get comfortable
with linux.
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10:14 p.m.
dpeck wrote:
here is the problem...after finishing the Installation, i reboot then
Windows XP boots up like normal instead of grub. so i went into BIOS changed boot
priority to :
1. [CDROM]
2. [HDD-1]
3. [HDD-0]
then all i get is a bash line:
GRUB>_
This can be caused by GRUB not being able to find the
grub/grub.conf file.
from here i don't know what to do...i find it odd that
stage2 didn't load.
Hmm. What was the disc setup when you installed GRUB? Has it
changed? What does your grub.conf file look like? Have you
tried to boot by hand? (I mean, have you entered the
commands to try to load Linux by hand at the GRUB> prompt?)
GRUB has a "find" command which may help you figure out
what has gone wrong.
it should be known that i'm using two hard drives.
tried using OSL2000 bootloader but that didn't work either, so i took it back off.
i don't understand why it's doing this. FC4 didn't have this issue. thinking
about trying the text based install and seeing what happens...but i'd rather not go
that way. I'll wait for responses first before i make a decision.
*note*
i'm still a newbie to linux. kinda half migrating from MS untill i get comfortable
with linux.
Everyone starts somewhere.
Mike
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10:57 p.m.
"What does your grub.conf file look like? Have you
tried to boot by hand?"
what is the command for manually booting linux? again i'm new, so i probably wont
completely understand half of what you say.
it's kinda hard to view files from a linux install from windows.
what do you mean by disc setup...boot priority? originally it was:
1. [CDROM]
2. [CDROM]
3. [Floppy] after this is an assumption
4. [HDD-0]
5. [HDD-1]
should i change it to
1. [CDROM]
2. [HDD-1]
3. [HDD-0]
then retry the install?
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11:50 p.m.
dpeck wrote:
"What does your grub.conf file look like? Have you
tried to boot by hand?"
what is the command for manually booting linux? again i'm new, so i probably wont
completely understand half of what you say.
Well it takes a few, not just one.
I'm sure someone here will say I'm completely off base, and
that you just need to do something simple which will work
(well, 95% of the time, anyway). But I like to be methodical and
understand what is wrong and figure out how to fix it.
You might get your machine up faster listening to one of
those people. You might have a better understanding of
how your machine boots and what to do when it won't if
you are more methodical.
I see that you need a more-or-less complete tutorial
on how to run GRUB. I can't give you one here, so read
the manual, as they say. However, I'll step you through some
basics.
First, GRUB is not an operating system, and it knows very little
about file systems. It deals with discs, and uses a non-OS specific
method to deal with them.
So, naming conventions...
Hard disc names are (hd<driveno>), like this
(hd0)
This is the name of the first hard drive. The second
hard drive is called
(hd1)
Partitions on the drives are named like this
(hd<driveno>,<partitionno>)
For example, the third partition on the second drive is
named
(hd1,2)
GRUB boots in two (or more) stages. The first stage is
loaded into memory by the BIOS (at location 07C0:0000) and the
second stage gets loaded after that by the first
stage. The second stage is peculiar to the file system used,
and knows how to read it. The directory separator is
"/". So, on my machine, my /boot is on /dev/hda3, so
/boot/grub/grub.conf appears to GRUB as
(hd0,2)/grub/grub.conf
GRUB needs to be configured to know where to look for that
file, because of course, it can't read file systems until
the code to read file systems is read in. This is done with
the GRUB program (not to be confused with the GRUB boot code),
and which is used to install a configured GRUB, either to the MBR,
or to a BR within a partition.
My spash screen is thus on
(hd0,2)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
Now, having all those (hd0,2) in names is redundant,
so GRUB has a means to specify a sort of default directory
like in Linux when you cd to a directory, then names become
relative to that path, only in this case it is a partition/
file system relative. This is done with the root command:
root (hd0,2)
It's not necessary, but it saves some typing.
Ok, now to boot Linux, one needs two things (this is one
of the areas where Linux departs from the multiboot standard,
I believe).
One of them is the location of the kernel (ok so far)
and the other is the location of the inital RAM disc
(not part of the multiboot standard). These are
specified by the kernel and inird commands.
So, I can boot my Linux machine by using these commands...
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.10-1.771_FC2 ro root=LABEL=/ acpi=off rhgb
quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.10-1.771_FC2.img
boot
The first simply specifies a disc "path" to which everything is
relative, the second specifies where the kernel is, and what boot
parameters to pass to it (my machine has a broken ACPI BIOS interface,
so I have to turn that off, "rhgb" specifies to use a graphical boot
rather than the text boot etc.). The third specifies the initial
RAM disc to use. The fourth tells GRUB that I'm through specifying
stuff, and to proceed with the boot, and load the kernel.
it's kinda hard to view files from a linux install from windows.
:-)
But you *can* boot the Fedora rescuecd, and you can also use the
install disc, but with rescue on the boot command line.
what do you mean by disc setup...boot priority? originally it was:
1. [CDROM]
2. [CDROM]
3. [Floppy] after this is an assumption
4. [HDD-0]
5. [HDD-1]
should i change it to
1. [CDROM]
2. [HDD-1]
3. [HDD-0]
then retry the install?
Umm, no. Not unless that's the way you eventually want to boot.
Try booting the rescue CDROM[*] and do
# fdisk -l /dev/hd0
# fdisk -l /dev/hd1
and let's see how you have things configured. If you have a floppy
disc, it will be helpful to try building a GRUB boot floppy and
try some commands to see how successful the install of the OS
was. You may have a perfectly good install of the OS, but just
a boot problem. It would be nice to be able to fiddle with a
floppy until you get successful boots, then we can know exactly
what to put on your hard drive.
[*] I want to warn you that I don't use the Fedora rescuecd, but
Kanotix, for my emergency repair, so you may have to fiddle
the commands to get exactly the results. But fdisk should be on
any rescue CDROM. If not, then I'd say it's a pretty pitiful
rescue CDROM.
Mike
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I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!
12:09 a.m.
Mike McCarty wrote:
[snip]
GRUB needs to be configured to know where to look for that
file, because of course, it can't read file systems until
the code to read file systems is read in. This is done with
the GRUB program (not to be confused with the GRUB boot code),
Ok, I realize that this statement is unforgivably vague. I mean
that GRUB must be configured to know the absolute location
on disc of stage 2, because it can't use file system access
until after reading in the code which understands file systems.
Mike
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I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!
10:12 a.m.
Mike McCarty wrote:
dpeck wrote:
> "What does your grub.conf file look like? Have you
> tried to boot by hand?"
>
> what is the command for manually booting linux? again i'm new, so i
> probably wont completely understand half of what you say.
Well it takes a few, not just one.
I'm sure someone here will say I'm completely off base, and
that you just need to do something simple which will work
(well, 95% of the time, anyway). But I like to be methodical and
understand what is wrong and figure out how to fix it.
You might get your machine up faster listening to one of
those people. You might have a better understanding of
how your machine boots and what to do when it won't if
you are more methodical.
My theory as well.
I see that you need a more-or-less complete tutorial
on how to run GRUB. I can't give you one here, so read
the manual, as they say. However, I'll step you through some
basics.
First, GRUB is not an operating system, and it knows very little
about file systems. It deals with discs, and uses a non-OS specific
method to deal with them.
So, naming conventions...
Hard disc names are (hd<driveno>), like this
(hd0)
This is the name of the first hard drive. The second
hard drive is called
(hd1)
Partitions on the drives are named like this
(hd<driveno>,<partitionno>)
For example, the third partition on the second drive is
named
(hd1,2)
GRUB boots in two (or more) stages. The first stage is
loaded into memory by the BIOS (at location 07C0:0000) and the
second stage gets loaded after that by the first
stage. The second stage is peculiar to the file system used,
and knows how to read it. The directory separator is
"/". So, on my machine, my /boot is on /dev/hda3, so
/boot/grub/grub.conf appears to GRUB as
(hd0,2)/grub/grub.conf
GRUB needs to be configured to know where to look for that
file, because of course, it can't read file systems until
the code to read file systems is read in. This is done with
the GRUB program (not to be confused with the GRUB boot code),
and which is used to install a configured GRUB, either to the MBR,
or to a BR within a partition.
My spash screen is thus on
(hd0,2)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
Now, having all those (hd0,2) in names is redundant,
so GRUB has a means to specify a sort of default directory
like in Linux when you cd to a directory, then names become
relative to that path, only in this case it is a partition/
file system relative. This is done with the root command:
root (hd0,2)
It's not necessary, but it saves some typing.
Ok, now to boot Linux, one needs two things (this is one
of the areas where Linux departs from the multiboot standard,
I believe).
One of them is the location of the kernel (ok so far)
and the other is the location of the inital RAM disc
(not part of the multiboot standard). These are
specified by the kernel and inird commands.
So, I can boot my Linux machine by using these commands...
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.10-1.771_FC2 ro root=LABEL=/ acpi=off rhgb
quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.10-1.771_FC2.img
boot
The first simply specifies a disc "path" to which everything is
relative, the second specifies where the kernel is, and what boot
parameters to pass to it (my machine has a broken ACPI BIOS interface,
so I have to turn that off, "rhgb" specifies to use a graphical boot
rather than the text boot etc.). The third specifies the initial
RAM disc to use. The fourth tells GRUB that I'm through specifying
stuff, and to proceed with the boot, and load the kernel.
> it's kinda hard to view files from a linux install from windows.
:-)
But you *can* boot the Fedora rescuecd, and you can also use the
install disc, but with rescue on the boot command line.
You can also install the ext2 driver at http://www.fs-driver.org . It
doesn't support ext3 journaling, but can still read it fine, and can
write to it without the journaling. If you don't have any specific
reason to write to your linux partitions, I'd just leave the write
support off, since Windows can muck up the filesystems, especially if it
crashes. I have ext2 partitions which I use in both Windows and Linux,
and ext3 partitions that I don't even let Windows read. The driver has a
nifty IFS thing that it adds to Control Panel, to quickly and easily
bind letter drives to ext2/3 partitions.
> what do you mean by disc setup...boot priority? originally it
was:
> 1. [CDROM]
> 2. [CDROM]
> 3. [Floppy] after this is an assumption
> 4. [HDD-0]
> 5. [HDD-1]
>
> should i change it to 1. [CDROM]
> 2. [HDD-1]
> 3. [HDD-0]
>
> then retry the install?
Grub will by default try to install to the MBR of the
first disk (HDD-0
probably). If you have the BIOS set to boot from a disk where grub did
not install to, it won't boot grub, needless to say. If instead Windows
installed to that MBR, then it'll just boot Windows. You can change in
the advanced boot loader options what order it sees the hard drives in
(to match the order you want to set in BIOS). Then, you can install to
the MBR of HDD-1 or wherever you so desire.
[snip]
-Dan
3:06 p.m.
New subject: EXT2 and Windows: WAS Re: FC5 fails to boot after install
Dan wrote:
Mike McCarty wrote:
> dpeck wrote:
[snip]
>
>
> But you *can* boot the Fedora rescuecd, and you can also use the
> install disc, but with rescue on the boot command line.
>
You can also install the ext2 driver at http://www.fs-driver.org . It
doesn't support ext3 journaling, but can still read it fine, and can
write to it without the journaling. If you don't have any specific
This is good information to have. I'm going to salt this away...
reason to write to your linux partitions, I'd just leave the
write
support off, since Windows can muck up the filesystems, especially if it
Erm? Every OS can muck up a filesystem, especially when it crashes.
Is there a particular issue known when using this driver? Or what?
What are you warning against?
[snip]
Mike
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This message made from 100% recycled bits.
You have found the bank of Larn.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!
12:54 a.m.
New subject: EXT2 and Windows: WAS Re: FC5 fails to boot after install
Ok, thanks to Dan i now have access to grub.conf. i had no idea there was a program for
this. here is the content of grub.conf:
--------------------------------------------------------
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd1,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp.img
title Other
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
-------------------------------------------------------
if this isn't right it might be a bug in the installer?
i don't know, but there it is. :-D
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2:34 a.m.
New subject: unknown partition type
when i try to boot FC5 manually i get a message saying invalid or unknown partition type.
does FC5 simply use a partition type that GRUB cannot recognise? in this distro has Grub
become the GRand "Useless" Bootloader? :-P
i wish they would just go back to lilo...it was less complicated...well provided you
didn't have to reinstall windows after.
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2:55 a.m.
New subject: unknown partition type
dpeck wrote:
when i try to boot FC5 manually i get a message saying invalid or
unknown partition type. does FC5 simply use a partition type that GRUB cannot recognise?
in this distro has Grub become the GRand "Useless" Bootloader? :-P
i wish they would just go back to lilo...it was less complicated...well provided you
didn't have to reinstall windows after.
It's far more likely that you're trying to boot the wrong partition. FC5
uses ext3 by default, and GRUB has no problem with that filesystem. The
boot line in your grub.conf suggest it's trying to boot from the first
partition on the second hard drive. While in the grub prompt, type:
geometry (hd1)
to check if this is actually an ext3 partition (or even the right hard
drive). Check (hd0) and see if you can recognize which is which. If hd0
is the one you actually want to boot from, then try booting using
(hd0,0) instead.
good luck,
-Dan
2:31 p.m.
New subject: unknown partition type
On 4/8/06, Dan <grinnz(a)gmail.com> wrote:
dpeck wrote:
> when i try to boot FC5 manually i get a message saying invalid or unknown partition
type. does FC5 simply use a partition type that GRUB cannot recognise? in this distro
has Grub become the GRand "Useless" Bootloader? :-P
>
> i wish they would just go back to lilo...it was less complicated...well provided you
didn't have to reinstall windows after.
>
>
>
It's far more likely that you're trying to boot the wrong partition. FC5
uses ext3 by default, and GRUB has no problem with that filesystem. The
boot line in your grub.conf suggest it's trying to boot from the first
partition on the second hard drive. While in the grub prompt, type:
geometry (hd1)
to check if this is actually an ext3 partition (or even the right hard
drive). Check (hd0) and see if you can recognize which is which. If hd0
is the one you actually want to boot from, then try booting using
(hd0,0) instead.
good luck,
-Dan
Try installing GRUB with "force LBA32".
9:43 p.m.
New subject: unknown partition type
Dan wrote:
It's far more likely that you're trying to boot the wrong partition. FC5
uses ext3 by default, and GRUB has no problem with that filesystem. The
boot line in your grub.conf suggest it's trying to boot from the first
partition on the second hard drive. While in the grub prompt, type:
geometry (hd1)
to check if this is actually an ext3 partition (or even the right hard
drive). Check (hd0) and see if you can recognize which is which. If hd0
is the one you actually want to boot from, then try booting using
(hd0,0) instead.
good luck,
-Dan
well i did that; according to grub the second hard drive appears as HD0. but FC5 is
installed on hd1 not hd0.
it shows two partitions on the second hard drive.
1 ext3
2. unknown 0x7
Partition Magic shows this for hard drive #2:
1. ext3
2. Type 8E
Anyway...i reinstalled FC4, then used FC5 like an upgrade.
I can boot FC5 but only manually...at least it will boot now but when i want to boot the
other OS i have to change boot priority.
i have a copy of SuSe on the way though...maybe the Suse install can correct this?
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11:49 p.m.
New subject: unknown partition type
On Mon, 2006-04-10 at 04:43 +0200, dpeck wrote:
>
> Dan wrote:
> It's far more likely that you're trying to boot the wrong partition. FC5
> uses ext3 by default, and GRUB has no problem with that filesystem. The
> boot line in your grub.conf suggest it's trying to boot from the first
> partition on the second hard drive. While in the grub prompt, type:
> geometry (hd1)
> to check if this is actually an ext3 partition (or even the right hard
> drive). Check (hd0) and see if you can recognize which is which. If hd0
> is the one you actually want to boot from, then try booting using
> (hd0,0) instead.
> good luck,
> -Dan
well i did that; according to grub the second hard drive appears as HD0. but FC5 is
installed on hd1 not hd0.
it shows two partitions on the second hard drive.
1 ext3
2. unknown 0x7
Partition Magic shows this for hard drive #2:
1. ext3
2. Type 8E
An 8e partition is Linux LVM.
You can use the lvm tools to make it accessible. You probably only need
to use vgs to identify the volume group name then use vgchange to make
it active.
Anyway...i reinstalled FC4, then used FC5 like an upgrade.
I can boot FC5 but only manually...at least it will boot now but when i want to boot the
other OS i have to change boot priority.
i have a copy of SuSe on the way though...maybe the Suse install can correct this?
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2:50 a.m.
New subject: EXT2 and Windows: WAS Re: FC5 fails to boot after install
Mike McCarty wrote:
Dan wrote:
> Mike McCarty wrote:
>
>> dpeck wrote:
[snip]
>>
>>
>> But you *can* boot the Fedora rescuecd, and you can also use the
>> install disc, but with rescue on the boot command line.
>>
> You can also install the ext2 driver at http://www.fs-driver.org . It
> doesn't support ext3 journaling, but can still read it fine, and can
> write to it without the journaling. If you don't have any specific
This is good information to have. I'm going to salt this away...
> reason to write to your linux partitions, I'd just leave the write
> support off, since Windows can muck up the filesystems, especially if it
Erm? Every OS can muck up a filesystem, especially when it crashes.
Is there a particular issue known when using this driver? Or what?
What are you warning against?
[snip]
Mike
I'm just saying that Windows, like Linux, can leave the ext2 filesystem
in an unstable state if it is modifying it and crashes. So the next time
you boot Linux it's going to fsck it, and you might have to manually
fsck it. And since it can't do ext3 journaling, the same thing happens
there.
-Dan
7:35 a.m.
New subject: EXT2 and Windows: WAS Re: FC5 fails to boot after install
Dan wrote:
You can also install the ext2 driver at http://www.fs-driver.org . It
doesn't
support ext3 journaling, but can still read it fine, and can write to it
without the journaling. If you don't have any specific
reason to write to your linux partitions, I'd just leave the write support
off, since Windows can muck up the filesystems, especially if it
Mike McCarty wrote:
Erm? Every OS can muck up a filesystem, especially when it crashes.
Is there a particular issue known when using this driver? Or what?
What are you warning against?
Driver bugs. Lack of support for ext3 journalling. And which OS is most
likely to crash, anyway? [1]
I don't know about you, but I'm more concerned about disk and filesystem
integrity than nearly any other part of the OS. An OS that crashes
*without* mucking up the filesystem is much less of a problem than one
which loses data.
And one reason to doubt a third-party driver is simply that it isn't
that widely used, and you might not want to be the person that finds the
next bug. Which is a lot more likely if you're one in (say) ten thousand
users than if you're one in (say) ten million. (Figures plucked from
thin air).
Next point: when Linux closes down cleanly, ext3 filesystems are in a
consistent state and can reasonably be read as ext2. If Linux crashes,
or the power fails, you need data in the journal to get the filesystem
into a consistent shape.
A driver that doesn't write to the filesystem may not get a 100%
consistent filesystem, but on next boot into Linux, fsck will get it
into shape. But if an ext2-only driver boots an inconsistent filesystem
in write mode, it will throw away the data in the journal which could
have been used to recover filesystem data that was being written when
Linux stopped abnormally.
James.
[1] In my experience, that question is closely related to "which OS has
more kernel-mode driver code written by third parties to which the OS
vendor doesn't have source".
Both Linux and Microsoft techs, as far as I can tell, indicate that core
OS code is of better quality than drivers from the same tree (on
average), which are better -- sometimes *much* better -- than
third-party drivers (which might not support such exotic features as
dual-core processors).
This is one reason why Microsoft is trying to get all drivers checked
(by them) and signed.
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8:12 a.m.
After reading the posts in this thread, I come to the conclusion that the community is not
in unison about what really caused the initial problem being the "Grub_ event"
after booting.
I had a similar experience installing fc5 on a machine with a W2k OS already installed.
The Linux system was installed to a separate harddrive (IDE-1, the Windows System being on
IDE-0)
My fix to the problem was very easy though: I installed SuSe 10.1 which worked just fine.
I have a dual boot system now only I don't know what caused fedora not to work. But I
am willing to learn.
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4:01 a.m.
Hi all,
I'm quite new to Linux, just eagerly moving my first steps.
I have read this thread while searching for an answer to an issue that arised when I
installed FC5 on my machine: it would read the MBR from the HD (where I have Ranish boot
manager), but then fail to load grub, and go for the second entry in the BIOS. So it's
not exactly what described by dpeck, as grub never got launched. Yet, I think this might
be of help, and it still goes under the heading: "FC5 fails to boot after
install". So here it goes:
FC5 installed fine, but would not boot. I tried a manual boot after starting the FC5
installation DVD in rescue mode. I mounted my installation under /mnt/sysimage/ as done by
default by the rescue DVD. I was pleased to see that everything was there. From grub
command line,I specified the location for kernel and initrd but the command 'boot'
gave nothing at all. Using 'geometry (hd0)' I noticed that the partition of
installation was not recognised. (thanks so much to Mike for his brief 'tutorial'
on GRUB, I had always seen it as an obscure boot loader, but now I see some light!)
I must now give some more details on my hd0. I use the <b>GREAT Ranish Partition
Manager</b>, which allows me to have 8 partitions on my 120 GB hd, with 3 Win2000
installations and 1 Linux. Why so many? well, just to play around. Of course, you
can't see more than 4 partitions at a time, but that's exactly the point: I
don't like having a Win2000 aware of another win2000 on the same system, and hiding a
partition is no good. Basically the idea is to put in the partition table only data about
the partitions you want the systme to see, so that everything else looks like
unpartitioned space. GREAT CARE is required! but it works wonders, you can have many
separate PCs in one. But I'm digressing, for details on RPM search the web,
you'll find it :lol:.
Anyway, I had used RPM to create a partition for my linux and I set it as
"linux", without worrying too much (type 0x81, I reckon). Installation went
smooth, I only asked to manually configure the partition layout, because what anaconda
thought was unpartitioned HD space was actually full of my data! I also went for advanced
config of GRUB, because I don't want my MBR, which contains RPM, overwritten; there I
asked to install GRUB in the boot record of the installaion partition. I also asked to
format the partition I had created in RPM with ext3. There was also a swap, but no
matter.
Bottom line: GRUB and also fdisk were still giving type 0x81 for that partition, even if I
asked anaconda to format it as ext3 (which I think should be 0x83). My guess is that this
prevented grub from working. Alternatively, it simply didn't get installed in the boot
record of the partition (sorry, I didn't test to check this).
Solution: I set the partition type to 83 (with fdisk?). Then I installed manually grub:
First I checked that everything was ok with
<code>
GRUB>geometry (hd0)</code>
which gave this info:
<code>Part #0, ext2fs 0x83</code>
Then:
<code>GRUB>root (hd0,0)
GRUB>setup (hd0,0) </code># that's to make sure it goes on the boot record of
part#0, rather than in the MBR of hd0
And the problem was solved! (although setup gave 2 not fatal errors)
Then I installed FC5 also on my laptop. This time I decided to create a partition of
different type (I can't leave it unpartitioned or I won't know where my other
partitions start...). I made a Win FAT32 partition, ready to savour its destruction later
on. During installation of FC5 I did like before, asking to format that as ext3. But
again, it didn't boot! fdisk and GRUB showed again that the partition where I
installed FC5 was still of type FAT32 ! and yet FC5 was there! I did the same as above
(i.e. setup GRUB) and everything was fixed.
<b>My deductions, from partial experiments? That during formatting of the partition,
anaconda doesn't change the partition type, and maybe this causes trouble to
grub.</b>
I'm still not sure if I have the partition type right. Am I ext2 or ext3? I don't
know how to check. How much the part type, as receorded in that little byte placed
somewhere, matters? I'm actually tempted to change it back to fat32 and see if it
still works...
Hope this helps someone. If I have been imprecise or wrong anywhere, feel free to correct
me, thanks!
El Fantin
"Riding ahead"
--
This is an email sent via the webforum on http://fcp.homelinux.org
http://fcp.homelinux.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=96176&to...
4:15 a.m.
Hi,
From: el_fantin <no-reply-gw(a)fcp.homelinux.org>
Subject: Re: FC5 fails to boot after install
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 11:01:29 +0200
I'm quite new to Linux, just eagerly moving my first steps.
I have read this thread while searching for an answer to an issue that arised when I
installed FC5 on my machine: it would read the MBR from the HD (where I have Ranish boot
manager), but then fail to load grub, and go for the second entry in the BIOS. So it's
not exactly what described by dpeck, as grub never got launched. Yet, I think this might
be of help, and it still goes under the heading: "FC5 fails to boot after
install". So here it goes:
FC5 installed fine, but would not boot. I tried a manual boot after starting the FC5
installation DVD in rescue mode. I mounted my installation under /mnt/sysimage/ as done by
default by the rescue DVD. I was pleased to see that everything was there. From grub
command line,I specified the location for kernel and initrd but the command 'boot'
gave nothing at all. Using 'geometry (hd0)' I noticed that the partition of
installation was not recognised. (thanks so much to Mike for his brief 'tutorial'
on GRUB, I had always seen it as an obscure boot loader, but now I see some light!)
I must now give some more details on my hd0. I use the <b>GREAT Ranish Partition
Manager</b>, which allows me to have 8 partitions on my 120 GB hd, with 3 Win2000
installations and 1 Linux. Why so many? well, just to play around. Of course, you
can't see more than 4 partitions at a time, but that's exactly the point: I
don't like having a Win2000 aware of another win2000 on the same system, and hiding a
partition is no good. Basically the idea is to put in the partition table only data about
the partitions you want the systme to see, so that everything else looks like
unpartitioned space. GREAT CARE is required! but it works wonders, you can have many
separate PCs in one. But I'm digressing, for details on RPM search the web,
you'll find it :lol:.
Anyway, I had used RPM to create a partition for my linux and I set it as
"linux", without worrying too much (type 0x81, I reckon). Installation went
smooth, I only asked to manually configure the partition layout, because what anaconda
thought was unpartitioned HD space was actually full of my data! I also went for advanced
config of GRUB, because I don't want my MBR, which contains RPM, overwritten; there I
asked to install GRUB in the boot record of the installaion partition. I also asked to
format the partition I had created in RPM with ext3. There was also a swap, but no
matter.
Bottom line: GRUB and also fdisk were still giving type 0x81 for that partition, even if
I asked anaconda to format it as ext3 (which I think should be 0x83). My guess is that
this prevented grub from working. Alternatively, it simply didn't get installed in the
boot record of the partition (sorry, I didn't test to check this).
Solution: I set the partition type to 83 (with fdisk?). Then I installed manually grub:
First I checked that everything was ok with
<code>
GRUB>geometry (hd0)</code>
which gave this info:
<code>Part #0, ext2fs 0x83</code>
Then:
<code>GRUB>root (hd0,0)
GRUB>setup (hd0,0) </code># that's to make sure it goes on the boot record
of part#0, rather than in the MBR of hd0
.... What was the problem ?
???
// M. Iizuka
11:15 a.m.
On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 03:56 +0200, dpeck wrote:
here is the problem...after finishing the Installation, i reboot
then
Windows XP boots up like normal instead of grub. so i went into BIOS
changed boot priority to :
1. [CDROM]
2. [HDD-1]
3. [HDD-0]
then all i get is a bash line:
GRUB>_
I wonder if you have one of those annoying motherboards that changes the
boot priority by rearranging the way it counts the drives (e.g. hda
becomes hdc), rather than just picking which drive it tries to load the
bootsector from.
I've an ABit board that does that with the second set of UDMA IDE ports.
You rearrange the order of the drives, and it boots the one at the top
of the list.
--
(Currently running FC4, occasionally trying FC5.)
Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
I read messages from the public lists.
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18 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
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Dan Book -
James Wilkinson -
Jeff Vian -
jery_wang -
Kam Leo -
Mike McCarty -
Mitsuho Iizuka -
Tim