Grub Error Collection [Part 1001]

ASID · Apprentice Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 195

NeddySeagoon,
first of all, thanks for the quick reply.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 5:03 pm Post subject:

ASID,

That all looks good.

In your BIOS, you will have options to Boot from SCSI/SATA or IDE first - be sure you choose IDE.
Then choose the first hard drive.

The first option controls how the drives are enumerated, the SATA ones first or not, thus your IDE drive can be (hd0) or (hd2)
If you have to change anything in the BIOS, you may need to reinstall grub to the MBR.

I suspect that your IDE drive is swapping between (hd0) and (hd2) depending on how you boot.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

moya · n00b Joined: 20 Sep 2008 Posts: 4

hello,
I apologize for reposting this but i think that my post has gone unoticed.
I compiled my kernel, but the kernel image does not appear anyware in the /boot directory. Do i need to recompile and build my kernel again and what may have caused this problem?
Thanks in advance!

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 8:30 pm Post subject:

moya,

If you compiled the kernel yourself, its for you to copy it from the build location to /boot.

If you used genkernel, then genkernel copies both your kernel and initrd files to /boot

Its also possible that your kernel is actually in /boot but you can't see it. By default, gentoo does not mount your boot partition to the /boot mount point and what you see there is the content of the /boot directory on the root filesystem, which should be empty.
When you mount /boot you can see the content of the boot partition there but you will need to explicitly mount it.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

me_and_linux · n00b Joined: 21 Sep 2008 Posts: 12

Hey guys!

This is my first experience with installing Gentoo and everything went just fine, but I'm stuck with Grub.
I can't boot first primary partition(hd0,0) where root FS and kernel image is located. It recognizes the FS but it won't list any files.

I also have Suse installed on the same laptop and there's no problem with mounting that partition ( /dev/sda1 ).

Here is the output from Grub:
-------------------------------------------------------
grub> root (hd0,0)
root (hd0,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
grub> kernel /boot/vmlinux
kernel /boot/vmlinux

Error 2: Bad file or directory type
-------------------------------------------------------

And this one is from Suse:
------------------------------------------------------
Linux-DRM:/home/drm # mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/tmp_mnt/
Linux-DRM:/home/drm # ls -l /mnt/tmp_mnt/boot/
total 6684
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1 2008-09-20 22:37 boot -> .
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2008-06-11 19:44 .keep
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6830090 2008-09-21 01:13 vmlinux-
------------------------------------------------------

Why???

me_and_linux · n00b Joined: 21 Sep 2008 Posts: 12

ooh crap..I didn't finished the subject title :oops:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 6:55 pm Post subject:

me_and_linux,

Welcome to Gentoo. You can edit your own posts - including the subject, thats how posters add solved to the title when their issue is solved.

Suse shows an extra hypen

me_and_linux · n00b Joined: 21 Sep 2008 Posts: 12

ASID · Apprentice Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 195

moya · n00b Joined: 20 Sep 2008 Posts: 4

NeddySeagoon,
Thank you for the reply.
I encounter now a problem that i think is similar with the one that me_and_linux is describing above.
I found vmlinux inside the directory that i build the kernel (/usr/src/linux), and i copied it to the boot directory. When i try to boot my system i get the following error:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 7:02 pm Post subject:

moya,

Grub is looking for a compressed kernel image. vmlinux is not compressed.
You need either vmlinuz (notice the z) or /usr/src/linux/arch/<your_arch>/boot/bzImage, which is the more usual kernel file to copy to boot.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

me_and_linux · n00b Joined: 21 Sep 2008 Posts: 12

I'm still unable load the kernel from the Grub.

I can mount that partition, which is also a root partition, from another Linux installation, but Grub, even dough it recognizes the FS type, can't see any files in that partition.
So after the <root (hd0,0)> command recognizes FS type, I type <kernel /> and press tab key to get list of all files the in root directory, but that doesn't happen. Instead it outputs: Error 2: Bad file or directory type

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 9:53 pm Post subject:

me_and_linux,

Explain your partition layout I need to know partition names and filesystems abd what each partition is for.
Explain also where all your kernels for all of your distros are.

To avoid going insane, its a good idea to have a single shared /boot for all your distros but its not essential.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

me_and_linux · n00b Joined: 21 Sep 2008 Posts: 12

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 6:16 pm Post subject:

ASID,

As you are using the AHCI driver, you need to select Enhanced, then from the submenu, AHCI.
Look at your lspci output ... it mentions AHCI and IDE on the SATA line.
Your kernel should already have the AHCI option selected.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 6:31 pm Post subject:

me_and_linux,

As SUSE was there first, its grub is installed the the MBR of /dev/sda and it reads the grub.conf in

me_and_linux · n00b Joined: 21 Sep 2008 Posts: 12

Nope...I doesn't work!

Problem still stands. Grub knows that first partition is 0x83, but for some strange reason it won't list any files in it...

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 8:07 pm Post subject:

me_and_linux,

0x83 as a partition type is just the value from the partition type byte in the partition table.
Its not linked to any filesystem that may be installed on the partition

me_and_linux · n00b Joined: 21 Sep 2008 Posts: 12

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 8:41 pm Post subject:

me_and_linux,

Grub can read exactly one filesystem type - the one that the stage1.5 was installed for.
It cannot read any other filesystem type unless you reinstall it to the MBR.
ext2 and ext3 count as one the same type.

Thats why I suspect that sda1 and sda6 use different filesystem types.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

me_and_linux · n00b Joined: 21 Sep 2008 Posts: 12

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 9:20 pm Post subject:

me_and_linux,

Its not that then ... and sda1 is right at the start of the disk, so its not that your BIOS cannot read it.

Copy or move your gentoo booting files to /dev/sda6, so grub does not need to read /dev/sda1.
Thats skipping the problem rather than understanding it though and I don't really like that.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

me_and_linux · n00b Joined: 21 Sep 2008 Posts: 12

Georg Kraml · n00b Joined: 22 Sep 2008 Posts: 2

Apologies if this has been asked before; Google doesn't seem to turn up anything immediately pertinent:

I have an old x86 box with one drive split in two partitions. My (hd0,0) is an ext2fs boot partition; (hd0,1) is an ext2fs root file system. I can mount and work with these partitions. I can even boot from them, just not with grub: grub recognizes the file systems themselves but claims to be unable to find any files on them:

me_and_linux · n00b Joined: 21 Sep 2008 Posts: 12