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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 10:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

aero,

add noapic to the end of the kernel line in grub.conf
You can do that as you boot, for one boot only. When the grub menu appears, press e for edit.
Make your edit, press return, then b for boot.
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 11:17 am    Post subject: [GRUB] Configuration problem Reply with quote

Hey guys, I have a weird problem with Grub. I have followed the partitioning scheme of the Gentoo Linux x86 Handbook, and I use the Grub config from that handbook, that looks correct to me. But when booting with Grub I get the error Error 15: File not found.
My /dev/hda1 is my boot partition, my /dev/hda2 is my swap partition and /dev/hda3 is my root partition. My grub config looks like this (exactly from the guide) :

default 0
timeout 30
title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.17-r5
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.17-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/hda3

I have mounted the /boot partition during the install so I can verify that the kernel really is on the boot partition and not on /dev/hda3/ . What can be the problem?
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 11:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

When I change
Quote:

kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.17-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/hda3

to
Quote:

kernel /kernel-2.6.17-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/hda3

the kernel boots but I get a Kernel Panic: VFS: Cannot open root device hda3 or unknown-block(0,0). Please append a correct root= boot option.
But my root is /dev/hda3/ so what's wrong? The partition is ext3 and ext3 support is compiled into the kernel, so that shouldn't be the problem?
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 11:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

G F0rce 1,

I've moved your posts here, since its a grub issue.

Since
Code:
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.17-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/hda3
fails but
Code:
kernel /kernel-2.6.17-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/hda3
you are missing the recursive symlink in /boot that says
Code:
boot -> .
Its purpose is to allow the same grub.conf to work regardless of the existance of a real /boot partition.

Your
Code:
unknown-block(0,0)
error means the kernel cannout communictae with the disk at all. Its not started looking for a filesystem.

You need the IDE high level driver, the IDE driver for your chip set (low level driver) amd MSDOS Partition table support all built into the kernel.
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 2:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon wrote:
G F0rce 1,

I've moved your posts here, since its a grub issue.

Since
Code:
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.17-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/hda3
fails but
Code:
kernel /kernel-2.6.17-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/hda3
you are missing the recursive symlink in /boot that says
Code:
boot -> .
Its purpose is to allow the same grub.conf to work regardless of the existance of a real /boot partition.

Your
Code:
unknown-block(0,0)
error means the kernel cannout communictae with the disk at all. Its not started looking for a filesystem.

You need the IDE high level driver, the IDE driver for your chip set (low level driver) amd MSDOS Partition table support all built into the kernel.

Thank you for moving my post. I've failed to notice this topic up sticky. I'm sorry.
I will check if I've got the things you say compiled into the kernel. I also tried lilo but that ended up in the exact same error. What can I do to create the symlink you mentioned? Did I forget a step from the installation manual?
When I boot from the installer CD, I mount /dev/hda3 on /mnt/gentoo , /dev/hda1 on /mnt/gentoo/boot and dev and proc offcourse and I chroot, do the env-update and the source /etc/profile. That shouldn't be the problem right?
Thanks for your help!
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 12:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi.

All you need to do to create the boot symlink is to mount the /boot partition, change to it and do:
Code:
# ln -s . boot

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 11:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

G F0rce 1,

The symlink is no longer your problem. You got past that issue by removing the /boot from your grub.conf kernel line. That part of my post was just for information.

Something is missing in your kernel, or you have fixed the kernel then messed up copying it to boot, so you are still starting the old kernel.
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 5:42 pm    Post subject: Installing Grub Reply with quote

Hi, in a recent move to college I decided to take my harddrive from my computer and turn it into an external drive for my laptop. Linux is installed on the external drive and I would like to install grub on this drive to be able to use linux without touching my laptops MBR. (the former setup had grub installed on the primary while linux was on the slave) To do this I booted up knoppix and chrooted into my linux environment. From there I mounted boot (sda1) and then proceded to install grub using the grub shell. From grub shell I issued the following

<----->
root (hd1,2)
(This returns the proper disk partition for my root which is on sda3)
setup (hd1)

<----->

This errors out with ERROR 15 telling me that it cant find the proper files. I checked to see that the files were in fact there on my boot partition and I can see them using ls. I also checked to make sure boot was mounted as rwx which it was. Any ideas on why I am unable to install grub? Thanks in advance

AJ
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 6:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

JugglingSuns120,

Close ...root (hd1,2) should be the root for grubs files, your /boot. not the root of the kernels filesystem.

The kernel and grub use the term root to mean different things
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 6:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon wrote:
G F0rce 1,

The symlink is no longer your problem. You got past that issue by removing the /boot from your grub.conf kernel line. That part of my post was just for information.

Something is missing in your kernel, or you have fixed the kernel then messed up copying it to boot, so you are still starting the old kernel.

Could you please tell me where to find the driver you specified (the low and high level IDE drivers) , because I am unable to find them. Thank you very much!

--edit--
Ms dos filesystem support is build in to the kernel so that should not be the problem.
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 6:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

G F0rce 1,

I need to know your IDE disk drive chipset driver for that. Using the liveCD, not in the chroot, run the lspci command.
It will show you all of the hardware attached to PCI interfaces.
Post the line that show your IDE interface. Post it all if you are not sure.
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 6:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you very much, I read the documentation wrong when I refered back to it. That should get me back up and running. Thanks for your help

AJ
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 6:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey NeddySaegoon, that would be this, seems pretty standard:
Quote:

livecd ~ # lspci | grep IDE
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801AA IDE (rev 02)

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 7:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

G F0rce 1,

Thats it. Its an Intel ICH something. You need these settings in your kernel
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 9:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon wrote:
G F0rce 1,

Thats it. Its an Intel ICH something. You need these settings in your kernel

You just made me the most happy person in the world, thank you so much! :)
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 2:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hello, all.

I two hard drives in my computer: a SATA drive that I boot Gentoo off of, and an IDE drive from an old Windows computer. Gentoo was working well for the most part until wanted to experiment with booting off my IDE drive. I edited my grub.conf to include the code from the Gentoo Handbook (except with the (hd0,0) changed to match my system). When I did, I got error message 17. It is not exactly the same as error message 17 detailed in the Gentoo Grub Error Collection, as it does not print out any segment of grub.conf, nor does it print the explaination of the error message. Assuming I've read the Grub manual correctly, this means the problem occurs in the stage 1.5.

At any rate, I assumed the problem caused by the new commands I stuck in, so I booted on the installation CD and chrooted in to remove them. However, after I did this, the problem still remains. I'm not sure what I broke in the process. If anyone has any suggestions, I would appreciate it.

Incidentally, if it is possible to gain root access from the graphical live CD so I can mount my drive to edit the files and use graphical web browsers to look for help, I would also appreciate instructions for this. Switching between the tty's and using links doesn't come natural to me yet.
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 2:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi.

To get root access on the GLI all you have to do is open a console and type sudo su -. That is somewhat hidden in the Sticky su on this forum.
How did you install GRUB into the MBR? Please post the exact commands. Have you changed your BIOS to boot from IDE and back to SATA?
Post your grub.conf file so that we can try to help.
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 2:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey all, I've got a strange one here. I'm creating a firewall/file and print server for my fiance (she's on a laptop, saves plugging in the printer, etc) on an old Pavilion 4535. Grub.conf is pointed to hd(0,0), and the startup chatter recognizes the hard drive correctly as a Quantum Fireball. However, boot then spits back that VFS is unable to mount root on unknown-block(3,3). I re-installed grub and double-checked the BIOS, fstab, and mtab. Everything is in order as far as I can tell. I don't understand why it would be pointing to 3,3...
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 3:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you for your prompt reply.

My grub.conf is as follows.
Code:
default 0

timeout 30

title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.17-gentoo-r4
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.17-gentoo-r4 root=/dev/sda3

title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.17-gentoo-r7
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.17-gentoo-r7 root=/dev/sda3
I don't recall the exact commands I used to install GRUB. The commands I used should have been simply those outlined in the Gentoo Handbook, since I followed those instructions (as best I could) when I installed GRUB on the MBR. I haven't changed the installation since; I've just edited grub.conf. I didn't install GRUB on the IDE drive, I just edited my grub.conf from a preexisting installation to include a reference to the IDE drive. I haven't tried reinstalling GRUB since I got the problem, nor have I yet attempted to change the BIOS settings. Incidentally, I suspect it was foolish to try to boot from the drive in the first place (it complained about problems starting Windows when I just changed the BIOS settings, so I don't know why I thought altering GRUB would help) so I'm not worried about adding it to the GRUB boot list.

Just to make it clear, I managed to fix the problems I was having in these two threads. jmbsvicetto, thanks for your help with the second one, by the way; I don't believe I thanked you properly for that.

Again, thank you for your reply and your suggestions.
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 4:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi.
Jarhead wrote:
However, boot then spits back that VFS is unable to mount root on unknown-block(3,3).

This is not a GRUB error. This means that you haven't compiled the driver for your storage controller in your kernel <*> and not as a module<M>. In this case, given that the problem is with /dev/hda3, and that you get unknown-block(3,3), instead of unknown-block(0,0), you might have forgotten to compile the support for your / filesystem.
Look at lspci to identify your IDE controller.
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 6:15 pm    Post subject: GRUB Hard Disk Error Reply with quote

I've read all 11 pages of this thread, and an assortment of other stuff, and have yet to see my problem mentioned :!:

I can't seem to get GRUB to recognize my hard drive, as all attempts to boot off it give me the response "GRUB Hard Disk Error". Accordng to the Gnu GRUB manual, this means:
Quote:

Hard Disk Error
The stage2 or stage1.5 is being read from a hard disk, and the attempt to determine the size and geometry of the hard disk failed.


The hardware is a Gigabyte Tech. GA-7N400PRO Rev. 2 NFORCE2/LAN mobo, w/ an Athlon 2500 XP CPU. LSPCI says the IDE driver is an NVidia NForce2, rev A2. The hard drive is a Samsung SP0802N, 80GB, PATA, cabled as master on IDE1. It shows up on boot as LBA, ATA100. The BIOS correctly ID's the drive, using automatic drive ID. There is also a 1.44 floppy cabled on the floppy interface, and a Plextor DVD burner cabled as master on IDE2.

Boot Order is DVD drive, floppy, hard drive. I tried removing the floppy from the boot order, that didn't change anything. I also tried reversing the order of device.map, but that didn't help either.

When I initially built the box, part of my testing involved booting off a DOS (5.0) install floppy, creating a very small DOS partition (w/DOS fdisk, that only saw the first 8G of the drive), installing DOS, and then booting off the hard drive into the new DOS partition. - no problem!

Fdisk -l gives me the following, (I've added the directory assignments at the end...)
Code:

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1          26      208813+   6  FAT16                                   /dos
/dev/hda2              27          31       40162+  83  Linux                                    /boot
/dev/hda3              32         154      987997+  82  Linux swap / Solaris      /swap
/dev/hda4             155        9733    76943317+   5  Extended
/dev/hda5             155        1979    14659281   83  Linux                               /usr   
/dev/hda6            1980        2223     1959898+  83  Linux                             /opt
/dev/hda7            2224        3075     6843658+  83  Linux                             /tmp
/dev/hda8            3076        3927     6843658+  83  Linux                              /var
/dev/hda9            3928        4171     1959898+  83  Linux                              /
/dev/hda10           4172        9733    44676733+  83  Linux                            /home


I have installed per the 2006.0 handbook and livecd (operating from the command line w/ the nox option), using a manually generated kernel. I created entries per the handbook, the gnu grub manual, and other sources, in grub.conf to boot DOS and Linux, with the exception that I am having trouble figuring out the correct framebuffer line, so I have about 15 different "title" sections that boot the same kernel w/ different options. AFAIK this is legal, although I don't think my boot is getting far enough along to actually look at grub.conf.

I have attempted both automatic (grub-install) and manual (grub prompt) installations of grub, both give the expected results, and no errors.

I have looked at the menu.lst -> grub.conf and boot ->. links per this thread, and they are OK (so is everything else I was told to check except that I haven't looked at the kernel internals. Again, I don't think that matters as I'm not getting far enough for it to look at the kernel)

My grub.conf is as follows, note that I've removed most of the duplicate boot lines for the same kernel...
Code:

# what is the default entry, if nothing else selected?  (0=first)
# boot option 2, gentoo w/o framebuffer
default 1
# Fallback entry if primary boot fails
fallback 0
# Time to wait before booting default entry
timeout 60
# Load splash image as background for menu screen
splashimage=(hd0,1)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

# option ZERO
title=DOS
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

# option ONE
title=Gentoo Linux, 2.6.17, ART Rev 1, no frame buffer
#partition where the kernel image is loaded (command says root, but really is /boot)
root (hd0,1)
kernel boot/kernel-2.6.17-gentoo-r7ART-REV1-8-29-06-GANDER root=/dev/hda9

# option TWO
title=Gentoo Linux, 2.6.17, ART Rev 1, w/ vesafb.tng framebuffer, 1024x768, 16bit(64k), 75hz, mtrr 3, ywrap
#partition where the kernel image is loaded (command says root, but really is /boot)
root (hd0,1)
kernel boot/kernel-2.6.17-gentoo-r7ART-REV1-8-29-06-GANDER root=/dev/hda9 video=vesafb:mtrr:3,ywrap,1024x768-16@75
<snip>


I can boot off the CD drive just fine, then read / write stuff on the hard drive w/o problems, including doing the chroot. I can also boot off a bootable DOS floppy, and from there I can switch to the DOS partition on the hard drive.

Thus as far as I can tell the hard drive is good, but grub is confused for some reason, ideas?

Thanks,

Gooserider
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 7:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

jmbsvicetto, thanks for asking about the GRUB installation. It set me right into attempting to re-install GRUB. When I got install errors, I used fdisk to try to find why GRUB couldn't recognize my boot partition's filesystem. Apparently, my boot partition was transformed into a FAT16 partition (or VFAT, or something similar). I can only assume this happened as part of the code I added. Anyway, after using fdisk to delete and re-create the partition and following the installation guide's instructions for installing GRUB, I can once more boot onto my drive properly. Thank you for your assistance.
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 8:47 pm    Post subject: Re: GRUB Hard Disk Error Reply with quote

Gooserider wrote:
I can't seem to get GRUB to recognize my hard drive, as all attempts to boot off it give me the response "GRUB Hard Disk Error". Accordng to the Gnu GRUB manual, this means:
Quote:

Hard Disk Error
The stage2 or stage1.5 is being read from a hard disk, and the attempt to determine the size and geometry of the hard disk failed.

Sounds like your BIOS can't handle large hard drives; you might need to update your BIOS to be able to properly read (and report to grub) your disks.

As it says in the installation handbook, try appending hdx=stroke to your kernel configuration line in grub.conf and reboot.

Also, this Grub error collection thread is actually just one part of 6, each with about 15 pages -- it'll be time-consuming, but you should read through all the other pages of the first five parts to see if you can find a duplicate error. Time spent reading and searching is well spent if it lets you properly boot your system. :!:
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 12:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

nightmorph
Quote:
Sounds like your BIOS can't handle large hard drives; you might need to update your BIOS to be able to properly read (and report to grub) your disks.


Possible, I will look to see if there is a newer version of the BIOS, but I would be surprised if that is the problem. As I mentioned earlier, the CMOS config DOES recognize the drive properly both as to size and other specs when I tell it to do the auto-config routine. Then when the machine is booting it spits out the proper size and specs in the screen that it gives you at the end of post, just before it starts looking for an O/S. Also the vintage of this mobo, (~2003) is such that it should have support for big drives already.

I'll admit that I haven't searched the earlier incarnations of this thread, I wasn't sure if it would be worthwhile given that there wasn't a mention of it in this one, and also not in the "Grub Error Collection" document (I did put in a bug on the missing error per the initial post on this thread....

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 1:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

A further update...

Given that I could boot off a floppy, I decided to see if I could further narrow down the problem - I followed the instructions on Grub from the Ground up on creating a minimal grub boot floppy, then used the floppy to boot the box.

This gave me a grub prompt, and I then followed their procedure for booting from the grub command line. I got a fair number of errors in the boot messages (it appears something is funky in conf.d, alot of services failed to start properly) but I did get to a login prompt and was able to log in to the root account.

Unless I have a bad misunderstanding of the process, that I got to the login prompt means that grub did everything it was supposed to do. I might have other issues, but those are a different problem, not grub related, and not a concern for this thread.

So, it appears the problem is something in the hard drive configuration, perhaps the MBR :?: The system appears to be able to boot as long as it doesn't have to look at the initial hard drive setup. Mount sees all the partitions, which would suggest that Nightmorph's suggestion of the BIOS not supporting bigger drives doesn't work. (also the /boot partition is below the 1024 cylinder limit in any case)

What I'm starting to wonder is if the problem might have something to do with the way I initially fdisked the drive :?:

As you may recall from the earlier discussion, I initially used the MS-DOS 5.0 fdisk to create partition #1, about 200mb, FAT16. That fdisk did NOT properly recognize the size of the drive, it thought it was only 8GB (remember the old DOS drive size limits?)

Then I came back with the Linux fdisk (off the 2006.0 cd) and ADDED the remaining partitions, but I never touched the DOS partition #1

I did it this way in part because I didn't want to destroy the existing partition, and also because I remember from various sources seeing a reccomendation that one should only create partitions for a given O/S using that O/S's native fdisk utility.

Could my problem be that the DOS fdisk put some kind of strange structure on the MBR that wasn't completely cleaned up by the Linux fdisk? Or possibly the drive just doesn't like being fdisked by different programs?

If so, any suggestions as to a fix, preferably something that won't trash the install that I already have?

Thanks,

Gooserider
_________________
Box 1: P2 Celeron 400, 320mb RAM, 80GB HD, Cirrus Logic 4614/22/24 sound card, ATI 3D RAGE PRO AGP 1X/2X (sound & video onboard)
Box 2: AMD Athlon 2500+ 512mb RAM, 80GB HD, Gigabyte K7 Triton (Nvidia) mobo, GeForce2 video
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