Grub Error Collection [Part 1001]

reneviht · n00b Joined: 09 Aug 2006 Posts: 53

Hello, all.

I recently replaced the motherboard and CPU in my desktop computer, and failed to upgrade properly. I eventually gave up trying to fix my old Gentoo installation and just start with a fresh Gentoo install. Unfortunately, I've run into a problem working with GRUB after compiling the kernel.

After the BIOS splash screen, I'm sent to a screen which only says:

kyng · n00b Joined: 14 Jul 2011 Posts: 10 Location: Estonia

Have problem with grub. Followed the Handbook guide. I don't know what excactly went wrong, but after i installed grub there was no /boot/grub nor grub.conf. Ok, big deal, created them myself. What I didn't think of was splash image, that was missing now from /boot/grub directory. So when i rebooted i got to some very basic grub interface, that i don't know how to use. Tried to copy the splash image to right place, using knopix, but couldn't find files i created anymore. So I rebooted to Gentoo liveUSB again ant tried intstall grub again, but it's not working: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/444859

System info: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/444854

I'm new to Gentoo so I probably make mistakes easely.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 3:24 pm Post subject:

kyng,

Tribue · n00b Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 13

I am using this guide:
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Install_LiveDVD_11.2_to_hard_disk_drive

And I get the error:

http://i52.tinypic.com/2mot5ef.jpg
http://i56.tinypic.com/2hqw8s8.jpg

How can I solve it?

gsfgf · Veteran Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 1266

Hey all,

Long time, no see. I'm doing a gentoo install on my Mac Pro. I'm using reFIT for the multi-boot and grub as the linux bootloader. Gentoo will be going on its own drive (/dev/sdc)

When I try and boot with grub, it gives me an "error 17: filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x83."

However, when I go into grub and do a find (hd2, [tab], it displays

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 6:12 pm Post subject:

gsfgf,

Are you booting from the MBR on what appears to be /dev/sdc ?
I say "appears" as on many systems the boot drive becomes the first discovered drive, which makes, installing grub to the MBR interesting.

Go to boot normally but press e at the grub menu.
edit the line that says

gsfgf · Veteran Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 1266

That did it! Thanks man!
_________________
Aim:gsfgf0

finarfin · n00b Joined: 20 Sep 2011 Posts: 62

Hi all,

i'm installing gentoo on my laptop.
I installed grub following the instruction.
But after reboot i have a bios error: "Non system disk found, please replace and ..."

The partition table contains one extended partition and 3 logical partitions.
The partition scheme is that:
/dev/sda5 root
/dev/sda6 home
/dev/sda7 swap

The file system for root and home partition is ext4.

I tried:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 7:15 pm Post subject:

finarfin,

Welcome to Gentoo.

Your error is because your BIOS thinks that your hard drive is not bootable.

Some BIOSes check that the bootable flag is set on exactly one partition on your hard drive. Other don't check at all, yet others check that one or more partitions have the bootable flag set. You have one of these BIOSes that checks. When you partitioned your drive with fdisk, right at the start of your install, you didn't set this flag.

No harm done. You can do it now without harming your install.

Boot your install media and run fdisk. If you have a /boot partition, set the bootable flag on it. If you don't, set the flag on the root partition.

This will allow you to move ahead to your next Gentoo learning experience.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

finarfin · n00b Joined: 20 Sep 2011 Posts: 62

Hi neddyseagon,

unfortunately i double checked to have the boot flag on for the root partition, and it didn't helped.
I also tried to add a /boot partition with no luck.

I tried to install another linux (to check if the problem is of my hd) removed all partitions added only one root partiotn (primary) and grub worked.

Now i'm trying ti reinstall gentoo with at least one primary partition, my fear is that a partition table with only one extended partition and and 3 logical partition could cause some problem to grub install.
_________________
printf("hello world")

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 9:26 pm Post subject:

finarfin,

Grub and Linux works just as well from Logical partitions as it does from Primary partitions.
The only constraint is that your BIOS must be able to read all the files required to boot the system as grub makes BIOS calls to load the kernel and initrd.
Its unlikly you have an issue here. You can tell by looking at your HDD in the BIOS. If it is really bigger then 137G but the BIOS reports it as 137G, you have this issue and need a /boot partition entirely within the first 137G of the drive.

However, your error was from the BIOS - it could not identify your drive as bootable, so nothing was loaded. No grub, no kernel, nothing.

Do you have a second blank drive in your system or did you have some unbootable USB storage device attached?
USB storage devices are often detected by the BIOS before internal hard drivers, which will make a mess of the boot order set in your BIOS.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

finarfin · n00b Joined: 20 Sep 2011 Posts: 62

finarfin · n00b Joined: 20 Sep 2011 Posts: 62

Ok i reinstalled gentoo.
i changed the partition scheme:
1. Primary partition --> sda1 root partition /
2. Extended partition:
2a. Logical partition sda5 --> home partition
2b. Logical partition sda6 --> swap partition

And now grub is installed correectly and everything seems to work properly.

I know that grub works fine with primary and extended partition, but could it be that if there is only one extended partition grub could have some problems installing itself? maybe a bug?

Thanks,
finarfin
_________________
printf("hello world")

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2011 5:12 pm Post subject:

finarfin,

I have not tested grub with the only primary partition as an extended partiton but I have several installs where /boot is in a logical partition.
Grub installs to the empty space before the first partition, which is the same regardless of any partition types.

Unless grub gave you fatal errors during installing, it will have installed properly.
The non fatal errors grub generates as it searches for its component parts are normal and should be ignored.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

robdd · Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 8:29 am Post subject:

Hi All,

I'm an old Gentoo user, but recently tried Ubuntu and OpenSUSE after getting fed up with the difficulty (nay, impossibility) of trying to update a system that's more than a month or two out of date. But now, after getting fed up with the rigidity and complexity of those distributions I'm back to installing Gentoo. So I bought a new Intel DH61CR motherboard and i3 processor, and booted off an old 160 Gb disc that has 2.6.22-gentoo-r2 installed - then proceeded to install the latest linux-2.6.39-gentoo-r3 sources and grub 0.97 with patches grub-0.97-patches-1.11.tar.bz2 to a 1Tb Samsung. Grub installed OK, but when I boot off my 1Tb Samsung SATA disk as /dev/sda I get the usual "GRUB Loading stage 1.5" and "GRUB loading please wait", and then I wait, and wait, and wait.

I've tried booting off an old grub CD, and grub then recognises the disk OK, lists the partitions and their types OK, but when I use the auto-complete to find bzImage it says that it can't read the filesystem. I've already tried dd'ing the partition table with zeros, and then re-partitioning the 1Tb disk but that doesn't help.

In the meantime I'm going to try fitting the 1Tb disk as sdb, and use the working grub on my old disk to boot. But does anyone have any idea as to what could be going wrong ? I've tried google'ing the problem but nothing turned up, and it's frustrating not having any error messages or anything to give me a clue.

Thanks in advance - Rob.
_________________
Rob Diamond
Gentoo Hack, hack, hacker
Sydney, Australia

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

robdd · Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 10:22 am Post subject:

I have now booted the new gentoo installation off /dev/sdb:

robdd · Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2011 11:26 am Post subject: Hangs on boot -SOLVED !

Well it turned out to be simple, but I don't really understand the details - I initially used fdisk to partition the 1Tb disk, and I didn't bother to turn off the DOS compatibility mode. I've never had a problem with that up to now, so how would I know it would cause problems ?? Anyway, I re-partitioned the disk using cfdisk, having done a dump beforehand and a restore after to save all my installation work. Then re-emerged grub 0.97, and it all works like a charm.

I was seeing some really weird behaviour with the "old" fdisk partitions. In desperation I had emerged grub 1.99, and that semi-worked on the first attempt at booting, i.e. I could enter the grub boot commands manually and boot that way. But after a reboot I would get no menu options, and when I tried the "linux /boot/bzImage root=/dev/sda1" line grub would just hang. So maybe this story of woe will help someone else !

Regards - Rob.
_________________
Rob Diamond
Gentoo Hack, hack, hacker
Sydney, Australia

Arthorn · n00b Joined: 25 Nov 2011 Posts: 9

*edit*

Nevermind, Gonna retry it using the longer instructions as the shorter instructions tell me to!

E001754 · Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:39 pm Post subject:

I'm not sure this is the right place to post, but anyway, I do encounter a grub problem on dual boot Gentoo/Windows 7.

The SATA0 is a physical hdd for Gentoo
The SATA1 is another physical hdd for Windows 7.

All was running smooth until last night when I upgraded Windows 7 with SP1.
As the SP1 continuously refusing to install (error 0x800F0A12), I first followed microsoft saying to solve the point with a mountvol /E.
As it never worked, I did unplugged the Gentoo HDD, booted with Windows7 alone and could flawlessly install the SP1.

Now, having plugged again my Gentoo HDD again (as master drive, so on SATA0), I can't boot Windows 7 anymore : I do receive a Grub error #18, saying that the cylinders that my BIOS supports have reach a maximum limit.
Looking on Gentoo documentation and Googling that, I couldn't find anything relevant.
I only did install a SP1 and now everything is gone wrong on Windows 7 side of grub.

I already did try to reverse the mountvol /E by keying mountvol /N. With no luck.

I really don't know what to do, as it worked perfectly just few days ago and that I didn't change anything to my rig. This can't really be the BIOS, but rather some weird mounting point that has been changed somewhere shall I guess.

Anyone has some idea ?

EDIT : Solved the point. Rebooted from the CD install disk and with the windows HDD left alone. From there, requesting a system repair. Having also tried bootrec /fixmbr, /fixboot and even /rebuildbcd.
Afterwards, the disk was completely unbootable.
Rebooted again on CD, requesting automatic repair, that made windows bootable.
Replugging everything as normal and works now.

Wolfword · n00b Joined: 17 Dec 2011 Posts: 13

Hi there!

I've managed to get to the bootloader-selection part of te installation, but whenever I try to emerge GRUB, I recieve this error message:

* ERROR: sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10 failed (postinst phase):
* //boot/grub does not exist!
*
* Call stack:
* ebuild.sh, line 75: Called pkg_postinst
* environment, line 3617: Called setup_boot_dir '//boot'
* environment, line 3919: Called die
* The specific snippet of code:
* mkdir "${dir}" || die "${dir} does not exist!";
*
* If you need support, post the output of 'emerge --info =sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10',
* the complete build log and the output of 'emerge -pqv =sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10'.
* The complete build log is located at '/var/tmp/portage/sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10/temp/build.log'.
* The ebuild environment file is located at '/var/tmp/portage/sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10/temp/environment'.
* S: '/var/tmp/portage/sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10/work/grub-0.97'

It seems like the program is not using the correct directory...

What can I do?

Thanks

EDIT: Before this message, another one appears:

ln: failed to create symbolic link `//boot/boot/.': File exists
mkdir: cannot create directory `//boot/grub': Operation not permitted
* ERROR: sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10 failed (postinst phase):
* //boot/grub does not exist!
*
* Call stack:
* ebuild.sh, line 75: Called pkg_postinst
* environment, line 3617: Called setup_boot_dir '//boot'
* environment, line 3919: Called die
* The specific snippet of code:
* mkdir "${dir}" || die "${dir} does not exist!";
*
* If you need support, post the output of 'emerge --info =sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10',
* the complete build log and the output of 'emerge -pqv =sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10'.
* The complete build log is located at '/var/tmp/portage/sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10/temp/build.log'.
* The ebuild environment file is located at '/var/tmp/portage/sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10/temp/environment'.
* S: '/var/tmp/portage/sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10/work/grub-0.97'
!!! FAILED postinst: 1

The Sk · n00b Joined: 02 Feb 2008 Posts: 35 Location: Brownsville

Can someone help me? I just emerged grub and it doesn't want to read my kernel image.

I did a grub-install --no-floppy and everything came out fine.

I went inside grub and:
root (hd1,0)
setup (hd0)

My grub.conf looks like so:

title Gentoo
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/kernel-3.2.image root=/dev/sdb4

It reads root(hd1,0) and even shows the image when i do kernel /boot/k"tab-completion" but outputs error 15 can't find file.

I'm going to try to re-emerge grub to see if anything changes.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 3:11 am Post subject:

The Sk,

Welcome to Gentoo.

Re-emering grub will change nothing. Error 15 means you you have told grub to look for a file that does not exist.
We know its not your splash image as you have said you get that.

That leaves your kernel file itself and optionally the in intrd file, if you use one.

Does the file kernel-3.2.image exist in your /boot?
Thats what grub is trying to load.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

The Sk · n00b Joined: 02 Feb 2008 Posts: 35 Location: Brownsville

Thanks for the reply.

For the record, what had happened was I copied the image from /usr/src/linux/arch/x86_64/boot/bzImage but this was hardlinked to arch/x86/boot/bzImage and didn't preserve the link. I copied the one from x86 and it worked