GRUB freezes before displaying a menu.

Cluster

This is my first attempt to install Gentoo. I have a very new machine, AMD 1700+ XP with 512 MB of RAM and two hard drives. My second hard drive has all my backups and primary hard drive is supposed to have GRUB.
I used the x86 CD-ROM to set up three standard partitions (hda1=/boot, hda2=/, hda3=swap)... the installer sized them all for me and I just had to format them appropriately. Gentoo installed perfectly (everything was compiling MUCH faster than usual... nice) -- there were no errors and I was following printed installation instructions exactly, including installation and initialization of GRUB.
After rebooting, I found that it said "Wait, initializing GRUB" (or something to that effect) as the second line on the screen, and that was it. I thought I didn't set up the list correctly, so I reinserted Gentoo's installation CD, mounted my partitions, and rechecked it. Apparently either I didn't mount hda1 the first time or something, but my hda2 partition had /boot, where GRUB and the kernel were.
Here's what I did: I moved the kernel and the entire grub/ directory from hda2's /boot directory straight into hda1. Then I modified the menu list appropriately and reran GRUB, reinitializing it. It said that it was able to find everything and wrote itself to the first 16 sectors of the hard drive.
Rebooting causes the same situation: GRUB hangs before displaying the menu.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, all.

kybber · Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2002 7:05 am Post subject:

Can you post the contents of grub's menu.lst?
I don't think the grub directory should be anywhere but /boot/grub (dunno for sure), so I'd recommend not copying it over to another partition. This may cause problems if you change one menu.lst while grub is actually reading the other.
You did remember to substitute (hd0,0) for hda1, (hd0,1) for hda2 etc. when configuring grub?

koral · Guest

does it completely freezes or it gaves you a sort of prompt? in that case can type the command "configfile /(path)/grub/grub.conf" to load the graphical menu.
i found that when grub switch to stage 2 it looks for the default file "/boot/grub/menu.lst".
but if the system completely freezes i've no other idea than try to play whith "grub-install"

Cluster · Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2002 2:33 pm Post subject:

I am not at home, so I am not able to provide the contents of the grub list file, but it's exactly as the installation instructions have it, except that I commented out the splashscreen line and don't have any dualboot-enabling lines.

GRUB definitely freezes -- there is no prompt, and pressing keys does nothing.

Regarding placing the files in /boot: I thought that /boot is where the boot partition is mounted... /dev/hda1 is mounted into /boot, so /dev/hda1 in fact only has /grub/<whatever>. This is what I did right now. Should I create a /boot directory on /dev/hda1? If I do that, then am I wrong to say that I'll have /boot/boot/grub, since /dev/hda1 will be mapped to /boot ? (I hope that didn't sound too confusing.)

kybber · Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2002 3:27 pm Post subject:

arkane · l33t Joined: 30 Apr 2002 Posts: 918 Location: Phoenix, AZ

Does it really "freeze" or have you left it still for a while?

I know my grub installation right now seems to freeze for 30 seconds or so saying "grub loading stage1.5..." then goes down to "loading grub" for another 30 seconds or so. I admit it shouldn't do that, but at least I'd know you have the same problem I do.

Cluster · Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2002 8:26 pm Post subject:

arkane, it definitely freezes. I let it sit for about half an hour at the same screen.

kybber, no, there is nothing exotic about my setup: just two separate IDE hard drives.
Following your advice, I mounted hda1, deleted grub/, and ran the "grub" to reinitialize it.

Here's my session:

arkane · l33t Joined: 30 Apr 2002 Posts: 918 Location: Phoenix, AZ

no.. the grub directory is dumped from the stage1 file. It needs to be there in order for grub to operate because it has the stage files needed to boot.

If you have deleted it, I would definately redump the stage1 bz2 tarball because you need that. I'm not sure if emerging grub would create it or not, but that's worth a shot.

as far as fixing your problem, I'm definately not sure.

Zu` · l33t Joined: 26 May 2002 Posts: 716 Location: BE

Did you check out the GRUB FAQ?

Guest · Posted: Sat Aug 31, 2002 10:09 am Post subject:

i have the same problem it's about 40 seconds until grub load.

arkane · l33t Joined: 30 Apr 2002 Posts: 918 Location: Phoenix, AZ

I've checked it for my problem, no dice. Don't know, might help this guy out though.

As far as guest, have you tried working it through as I have?
frustrating.
Here is the thread dedicated to the freezing for 30-40 seconds problem:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=5262

scottro · Posted: Sun Sep 01, 2002 5:43 am Post subject:

Quick and probably foolish question--but, during install, did you make a boot partition as suggested in the install guide, and then, this last time when you tried to reinstall grub, forget to mount that boot partition first?

Scott

arkane · l33t Joined: 30 Apr 2002 Posts: 918 Location: Phoenix, AZ

for me, no... mines always mounted.

Zu` · l33t Joined: 26 May 2002 Posts: 716 Location: BE

kybber · Posted: Mon Sep 02, 2002 12:18 pm Post subject:

Cluster · Posted: Tue Sep 03, 2002 3:58 am Post subject:

The GRUB FAQ was not particularly helpful for my situation, so I tried to install Gentoo again, this time with more success. I think my problem was the fact that I did not mount partitions correctly, and so did not save the menu.lst file to the proper location.

Now GRUB works, but I am having another sort of problem, explained in detail here: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=13941.

Thanks to all who replied to this thread.