Grub Error Collection [Part 4]

reify · n00b Joined: 31 Jan 2005 Posts: 18 Location: UK 55DegN

Thanks for the replies
The /dev/hda has nothing on it; it's a new disk. Grub is in the mbr of /dev/hdb, I think. I don't understand the line root (hd0,0), (the extra bracket is a typo not in the file) I thought it should be root (hd1,0) which if i get it is /dev/hdb1 which is where the /boot is. Grub complains if I use that and I can only proceed if I edit the root entry using the grub command line back to root (hd0,0). I will have a look at the grub.conf.example as you suggest but I am well confused as to what points at what.
ectospasm, I didnt add the windows boot bit as if I don't understand the grub syntax I cannot get the map line right on the windows entry or the one for the /dev/hdc optical drive where the windows intsall disk will boot from.
Reify

ectospasm · Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 10:26 pm Post subject:

Generically, (hd1,0) refers to /dev/hdb1, so if /boot is something else (or if there's no separate /boot partition), you'll need to adjust accordingly.
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jmbsvicetto · Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 3:10 am Post subject:

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 3:17 am Post subject:

reify,

try using the following grub.conf configuration, after setting your BIOS to boot from the first disk:

reify · n00b Joined: 31 Jan 2005 Posts: 18 Location: UK 55DegN

Thanks for the help. I had to do several stupid things first but jmbsvicetto's advice got me there. The most stupid was trying to remove the active flag from the linux disk. I did the toggle but never wrote it back :-(

... but eventually

dezydery · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 23 Jul 2004 Posts: 87

I have the weirdest problem, grub is not even starting to boot on my system - i.e. no stage 1 error (or beyond), no output from grub at all, almost no evidence for grub even existing except that the system normally has a 'no boot device found' error, but when trying to boot from the hard drive you don't get that.

Here are the drives/partitions:

/dev/sda1 - data

/dev/sdb1 - data

/dev/sdc1 - /boot
/dev/sdc2 - swap
/dev/sdc3 - /
/dev/sdc4 - /home

/dev/sdd1 - data

The last drive (sdd) was newly added today. It's the same model as sdc (Seagate 500Gb SATA II) and connected to the SATA II controllers on my Asus SLI Premium. The other two drives (sda and sdb) are older Seagate 400Gb models (SATA I) and connected to the SATA controllers.

I think the grub drive positions 'change' depending on whether I boot from the live CD vs booting from the hard disk. If this is caused by my BIOS I can see no obvious way to change it - I just get to choose whether to boot from CD or HD, and which HD has priority. Only the SATA II drives show up in this list, which I suspect is the problem: first drive in the list is (hd0) when booting, however booting from the live CD it's (hd2).

Somehow before I must have stumbled blindly onto a solution whereby grub was physically installed on /dev/sdc (which it sees as (hd2) at install time) but when booting managed to figure out that everything needs to be referred to as (hd0) now.

About the device.map - should it reflect how things are at the time grub installs, or at the time when grub actually boots?

I've been through the Gentoo install process a few times, had a good look in the Grub manual (the install command might just help but could I can't see how). I even tried LILO at one point, which also fails completely to have an impact.

ectospasm · Posted: Sat Apr 08, 2006 3:50 am Post subject:

It has been my experience that grub does not play as nicely with SATA as it does with PATA. I do know that grub-install will probably not work. You'll have to use the grub console.

Are all of the SATA drives seen by the BIOS? I'd make device.map have the same order. In the grub console you can generate a device map, but that may not be what you want because you mention that it seems to have a different order when you boot from the LiveCD.

Here's what I'd do, at the grub console:

grub> root (hd2,0)
grub> setup (hd0)

Assuming that's the order the BIOS sees the drives. If it's different, you may need to do some funky mapping stuff like you'd have to do if Windows was not on (hd0,0).
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dezydery · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 23 Jul 2004 Posts: 87

Thanks for your response.

I tried what you suggested (along with many other things) and had no luck.

It seems the problem is quite fundamental, given the steps I've gone through (using grub-install and grub command line, trying lilo, trying all sorts of combinations).

For whatever reason the system really didn't like booting with the new hard drive installed. When I took the drive out, it booted. Although, the drive itself works fine - I'd created the single partition, formatted it, copied a movie onto it, played it in Knoppix and deleted it.

The original configuration in more detail was this:

SII SATA Raid controller (using JBOD - the disks just come up individually in Linux):

Disk 1 - 400Gb
Disk 3 - 400Gb

Nvidia SATA II controller:

Disk 4 - 500Gb (the one with my system on it)
Disk 2 - 500Gb (the new one)

Originally, without that last disk, I'd been able to get the grub boot screen just fine, although it took some tweaking - basically it's (hd0) in the grub config, even though I installed it on (hd2).

Note: the BIOS only sees the Nvidia controller in its list of boot devices.

After last night's fun and games I tried to attack this from the hardware angle:

Attempt 1: move the 500Gb disks around on the Nvidia controller so the system drive is on controller 1 and the new drive is on controller 2.
Attempt 2: move the new 500Gb drive from Nvidia controller 4 to SII controller 2 - i.e. get it out the way so the BIOS only sees the system drive in the boot list.
Attempt 3: move all drives on to the Nvidia controller, with the system drive being in controller 1.

Only attempt 3 actually worked (which makes sense, because it was the most difficult cabling arrangement to plug in!)

So with everything on the Nvidia controller, the system boots up just fine. This hasn't really solve the problem, but it's worked around it. It clearly doesn't like the drives being on different controllers, so if I ever want to install a 5th drive the problem is going to come back.

One more very weird thing: my system drive is still /dev/sdc even though all the positions swapped around and it's the boot drive. Is this because my system remembers the individual drive somehow, or is it because my grub.conf points it to /dev/sdc and grub corrects things for me at boot?

robinswan · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 139

I had successfully emerged and seted up grub on my machine -- Athlon64 + SATA disk,
and configure it with:

roxor · n00b Joined: 04 Aug 2004 Posts: 26

hey guys

it may have been answered before but didn't find any topic about that, rather embarassing, problem. =)

well, I simply can't find my grub.conf anymore? First of all, I'm a linux/gentoo noob, so forgive me if I'm a bit confused.

- I've searched for it using "find /* grub.conf" --> no result
- the directory /boot/grub/ does not exist anymore? Could it be somerwhere else?

Any help is highly appreciated!

regards, rox

_loki_ · l33t Joined: 18 Dec 2003 Posts: 680 Location: in the shell

sure you have mounted your bootpartition before searching?
try

roxor · n00b Joined: 04 Aug 2004 Posts: 26

omg, u're right!

thanks, everythings working now!
regards, rox

biogentoo · Posted: Sat Apr 08, 2006 5:20 pm Post subject:

Hi robinswan:

Post your partition table, and was your Windo$s working before this?

Bye

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Sat Apr 08, 2006 9:40 pm Post subject:

Hi.

You need to post the info biogentoo asked and you should let us know how you installed GRUB into the MBR.
If you made this misteadk

robinswan · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 139

robinswan · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 139

mark_alec · Posted: Sun Apr 09, 2006 7:11 am Post subject:

Merged above 5 posts.

penetrode

I have just updated my profile to 2006.0 and done an 'emerge -e world'. I rebooted the system and was greeted with the "Grub loading stage1.5" repeating infinitely:

Grub loading stage1.5
Grub loading stage1.5
Grub loading stage1.5
Grub loading stage1.5
Grub loading stage1.5
Grub loading stage1.5
Grub loading stage1.5

like so.

Does this sound familiar to anyone, and what can I do about it?

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:07 am Post subject:

Hi.

Have you tried reinstalling GRUB into the MBR? If nothing else works, you might try deleting the /boot/grub/*_stage_1_5 files.
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penetrode · Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 2:09 pm Post subject:

penetrode · Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 3:04 pm Post subject:

daveman · n00b Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 6

I recently downloaded gentoo 2006.0 for my athlon 64 cpu. I did almost exactly as the installation guide said to do. Anyway, the whole installation went quite well. but when I was done I rebooted and grub loaded up, I tried to get into gentoo but it came up w/ an error message that read:

Booting 'Gentoo Linux 2006.0'

root (hd0,0)
Filesytem type is ext2fs, parition type is 0x83
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.15-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/hda3

Error 15: File not found

Press any key to continue...

I've tried almost everthing to fix it. And after nothing worked I decided that I must have done sothing wrong or careless during the installation. So I then tried wiping out gentoo and installing the whole thing over again, hoping that maybe is I was more careful this time that it would work, but to my surprise I just ended back up at the error :evil:

I dont think that i can take much more, i stayed to 3:30am trying to get it to work. And i dont think that I am alone cuz my friends all complain of the same error message. Help would be greatly appreciated. thanx in advance. (I find grub quite confusing, i'm used to LILO, and this is my first time working w/grub)
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swooshOnLn · Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 3:37 pm Post subject:

Did you set-up grub manually? or with "grub-install"? Also, what is your "grub.conf"? what does "ls /boot" return?

If you dont know how to get in your system, you are going to have to boot with the LiveCD (or somthign that provides the "chroot" command, and chroot to your computer.
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cchapman · Guru Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Posts: 440 Location: Fremont, NE

Try removing /boot from your kernel and initramfs if you have both... that should work