Grub Error Collection [Part 5]

Message

paulposition · Post by **paulposition** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 11:43 am

thanks neddy!!! it's working now!!!

but what is the correct value of "mem" if have 4GB of ram?
ciao

Paul

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:29 pm

paulposition,

That shows your kernel is mostly good. Since 1024M (1Gb) works, try 2048M and 3072M for 2G and 3G respectively.
In a 32 bit machine, or a 64 bit machine with a 32 bit kernel, you cannot use all 4Gb without some paging tricks because 4Gb is the full 32 bit address space. There would be no space left for memory mapped hardware, or RAM/ROM on cards.

You say you have a dual opteron, does it use the NUMA or SMP multi-processor model ?
NUMA is like two seperate systems, connected by Hypertransport, each CPU has its own local memory.
SMP connects both CPUs to the same memory pool. With Optorons, the second CPU is oftern connected to the memory pool through the first CPU.

What sort of hardware do you have and have you made a kernel to match ?

There is another snag with 4Gb memory too. The PCI bus is has only 32 address bits and some of it needs to be mapped into memory. Depending on your hardware design, you may find you cannot use much more than 3Gb of RAM.
Play with values of mem=

ronin78 · Post by **ronin78** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 4:12 pm

Hi everyone and thanks in advance for the help. This is my second Gentoo install, but my first Gentoo install on RAID. I have been following the manual and http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Gentoo_Ins ... tware_RAID.

I read that a RAID 0+1 was the best combination of speed and reliability, so that is my architecture. I have four SATA drives with three partitions each.

md1: RAID 0 composed of two RAID 1s (md5 and md6), each of which is composed of the first (boot) partitions of two drives
md2: RAID 1 swap of the second partitions of two drives
md3: Same as md2
md4: RAID 0 composed of two RAID 1s (md7 and md8), each composed of the last (large, data) partitions of two drives

You may already see the problem; I have not been able to figure out how to install GRUB on the boot partition(s). The wiki tutorial explains how to install GRUB on each drive of the RAID 1, so I thought I could do that for both of the RAID 1s below the RAID 0 and it would work out fine (GRUB can't see RAID arrays, only physical drives, so I did not think the RAID 0 would interfere). However, both grub-install and the grub> commands listed in the wiki cause grub to lock up, so I suspect the RAID 0 is throwing a wrench into the works.

Does anyone know how to install GRUB on a stacked RAID? I would really like to keep my current configuration if possible. If, for some reason, this does not work, is there a way that I can change the configuration without doing the entire installation over again? I do not really know how to kill an existing RAID, especially one currently mounted on /boot, but I would be happy to try and make one or both of the RAID 1s into my /boot partition.

cyrillic · Post by **cyrillic** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 4:43 pm

ronin78 wrote:The wiki tutorial explains how to install GRUB on each drive of the RAID 1, so I thought I could do that for both of the RAID 1s below the RAID 0 and it would work out fine (GRUB can't see RAID arrays, only physical drives, so I did not think the RAID 0 would interfere).

Yes, it does interfere.

During the boot process, GRUB expects to find its files all on 1 physical device. Since RAID0 splits the filesystem across multiple devices, this configuration doesn't work. RAID1 is ok because 100% of the data is on each physical device.

ronin78 · Post by **ronin78** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 2:20 am

cyrillic wrote:Yes, it does interfere.

During the boot process, GRUB expects to find its files all on 1 physical device. Since RAID0 splits the filesystem across multiple devices, this configuration doesn't work. RAID1 is ok because 100% of the data is on each physical device.

Okay, thanks for clearing that up. I should have known better than to try to be creative this early in my gentoo career. Any advice on how to change the /boot partition to one of the RAID1 arrays without redoing the installation?

jmbsvicetto · Post by **jmbsvicetto** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 2:46 am

Hi.

You just need to boot with the live-cd, mount your partitions, chroot and install GRUB again. I would suggest you use md5 or md6 and delete md1. Although you install GRUB into /dev/md5 or /dev/md6, on the grub.conf file and when running grub you use hd(X,Y) to refer to one of the partitions that is part of the array. In other words, you can't tell GRUB to use the /dev/mdX devices.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 11:18 am

ronin78,

Change your 4 partitions that contribute to /boot to being a single raid 1.
Repopulate the new /boot, Install grub on all the MBRs, no you can boot from any of the 4 drives.

ronin78 · Post by **ronin78** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 1:50 pm

jmbsvicetto wrote:Hi.

You just need to boot with the live-cd, mount your partitions, chroot and install GRUB again. I would suggest you use md5 or md6 and delete md1. Although you install GRUB into /dev/md5 or /dev/md6, on the grub.conf file and when running grub you use hd(X,Y) to refer to one of the partitions that is part of the array. In other words, you can't tell GRUB to use the /dev/mdX devices.

Thanks to Jorge and NS for your help on this. I have not decided whether to use all four drives or only two as boot sectors (it depends on if I could find any use for the other RAID1). Originally, my installation had been running non-stop, but due to a power failure last night, I will have to boot from the LiveCD again. If I understand you both correctly, I should restart all of the RAIDs as they were (including md1), copy the /boot to another space on the hard drive, unmount /boot and take md1 offline, delete md1, reinitialize the RAIDs, mount md5 (as two or four drives) as /boot and move the copy back onto it. I can then follow the wiki instructions for getting grub running on each of the drives.

I'll be back to let you know how it turns out.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 3:54 pm

ronin78,

You only need to stop the /boot raid, update your raidtab (or mdadm.conf)
Make you new /boot raid, put a filesystem on it, copy its contents back and reinstall grub on the MBRs of its component parts.

There is no need to stop the other raid sets.

ronin78 · Post by **ronin78** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 4:10 pm

All right, resetting to the RAID1 allowed me to install grub on the drives, so thanks very much for that

Unfortunately, I cannot test my new setup because my motherboard refuses to detect the SATA drives on boot (which is odd, since it was reading and writing from them throughout gentoo installation). I have a Promise FastTrack utility, which I did not set up, but even with the on-board RAID disabled the motherboard does not see the drives. I will have to figure out what is going on; I'm sure I'll be back with more questions.

Thanks again.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 5:25 pm

ronin78,

Some BIOS's are very picky about having a partitkon flagged bootable. Others don't care.
Use fdisk to check that your /boots (each part of the mirror) has the bootable flag set.
Set it if required and try again.

ronin78 · Post by **ronin78** » Thu Jun 29, 2006 1:56 am

NeddySeagoon wrote:ronin78,

Some BIOS's are very picky about having a partitkon flagged bootable. Others don't care.
Use fdisk to check that your /boots (each part of the mirror) has the bootable flag set.
Set it if required and try again.

I double-checked and they are all bootable, but still no luck. The boot partitions are ext3 filesystems of the "fd", or Linux RAID auto-detect type, as per the RAID wiki instructions. I have sent an e-mail to Intel tech support to see if they are any help; good community support for the motherboard would be much nicer.

Thanks for the suggestion.

snakeo2 · Post by **snakeo2** » Fri Jun 30, 2006 1:48 am

im tryint to install gentoo and im getting the error 15 file not found . here is a little background info. i have a sata drive, and i have fedora 5 installed right now. im trying to install gentoo to dual boot. here is some info about my box

df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 18844872 7007988 10864152 40% /
/dev/sda1 194442 13560 170843 8% /boot
tmpfs 640984 0 640984 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda2 74393476 1025916 69527624 2% /home

/dev/sda4 /swap
/dev/sda5 /extended
/dev/sda6 /root for gentoo

now i did not create a /boot partition for gentoo. i used gnekernel to compiled my kernel. i think the problem could be that i did not copy a bzimage to /boot. but the manual does not say to copy bzimage when using genkernel.

boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.16-1.2133_FC5)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.16-1.2133_FC5 ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.16-1.2133_FC5.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img

title= Gentoo Server
root (hd0,5)
kernel /kernel-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.16-gentoo-r9 root=/dev/ram0 init=linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda6
initrd /initramfs-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.16-gentoo-r9

if you need anything else, please let me know

occ · Post by **occ** » Fri Jun 30, 2006 5:37 am

title= Gentoo Server
root (hd0,5)

isn't hd0,5 you swap ?

/dev/sda4 /swap

idella4 · Post by **idella4** » Fri Jun 30, 2006 8:06 pm

To start,
(hd0,5) does refer to the gentoo on partition 6.
You may not have created a boot partition but one appears at /dev/sda1.
I shall take a gues that the causative error

Error 15 file not found

appears at boot up at attempting to boot the new system.
So let us have a look at, as in can you post

/etc/fstab
and
/boot

That should tell close to all we need to know to form a simple solution.
10 to 1 the error means the current settings are pointing somewhere other than the kernel.

Pinpoint the kernel, yay or nay to a boot partition,
all but done.

neysx · Post by **neysx** » Fri Jun 30, 2006 10:27 pm

snakeo2 wrote:error 15 file not found
...
title= Gentoo Server
root (hd0,5)
kernel /kernel-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.16-gentoo-r9 root=/dev/ram0 init=linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda6
initrd /initramfs-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.16-gentoo-r9

(hd0,5)/kernel-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.16-gentoo-r9 does not exist because you probably did not copy your kernel to Gentoo's root. Genkernel copied it to Gentoo's /boot directory, fix your grub entry as decribed in the handbook. Please also note

handbook wrote:Besides, if you chose to use a different partitioning scheme and did not put /boot in a separate partition, the /boot prefix used in the above code samples is really required. If you followed our suggested partitioning plan, the /boot prefix it not required, but a boot symlink makes it work. In short, the above examples should work whether you defined a separate /boot partition or not.

Hth

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Fri Jun 30, 2006 11:01 pm

Above 4 post topic merged here

anasohbet · Post by **anasohbet** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 2:00 am

idella4 thanks

snakeo2 · Post by **snakeo2** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 11:30 pm

let me try again, the last post was not successful. I currently have two sata drives
/sda
/sdb

/sdb is empty and i have fedora 5 on sda. i also have gentoo on sda, however, i can boot into it. whenever i try to boot into gentoo i get " error 15 file not found". one thing i should mention, during the installation process, i never copied a bzImage to my /boot partition. another thing noting, i only have one /boot partition. i was following the handbook and compiled my kernel, using genkernel. now, the h andbook does not mention anything about copying bzimage when compiling the kernel with genkernel. now, i dont know where my bzimage is, i've looked for it, but can find it. i will post some information which may help, i really dont want to start from scratch, so im hoping someone will p oint me in the right direction.

/etc/fstab in fedora

ABEL=/1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=/home /home ext3 defaults 1 2
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=SWAP-sda5 swap swap defaults 0 0

/etc/fstab in gentoo

NOTE: If your BOOT partition is ReiserFS, add the notail option to opts.
/dev/sda1 /boot ext2 noauto,noatime 1 1
/dev/sda6 / xfs noatime 0 0
/dev/sda5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0
/dev/hdab /mnt/cdrw iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto 0 0

# NOTE: The next line is critical for boot!
none /proc proc defaults 0 0

# glibc 2.2 and above expects tmpfs to be mounted at /dev/shm for
# POSIX shared memory (shm_open, shm_unlink).
# (tmpfs is a dynamically expandable/shrinkable ramdisk, and will
# use almost no memory if not populated with files)
# Adding the following line to /etc/fstab should take care of this:

none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0

/boot/grub/grub.conf

boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.16-1.2133_FC5)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.16-1.2133_FC5 ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.16-1.2133_FC5.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img

title= Gentoo Server
root (hd0,5)
kernel /kernel-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.16-gentoo-r9 root=/dev/ram0 init=linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda6
initrd /initramfs-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.16-gentoo-r9

if you need anything else, please let me know. thanks

bdm · Post by **bdm** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 2:04 am

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub-error-guide.xml Should help you.

jmbsvicetto · Post by **jmbsvicetto** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 2:53 am

[mod] Merged above two posts here. [/mod]

snakeo2, update your grub.conf and replace in your Gentoo entry root(hd0,5) with root(hd0,0). Then make sure that you copy your kernel file to /boot and name it kernel-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.16-gentoo-r9. You're also missing the /boot path in the kernel and initrd lines. Your complete Gentoo entry should be:

Code: Select all

title= Gentoo Server
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.16-gentoo-r9 root=/dev/ram0 init=linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda6
initrd /boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.16-gentoo-r9

Khan · Post by **Khan** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 1:29 pm

Very strange thing is happening on my Thinkpad R40. Grub is installed correctly and displays the splash screen with the correct kernel. The problem is that it isn't counting down automatically. I have to hit enter in order to move on which it then does load the config correctly. I have never seen grub pause like this in all of the time I've been running Gentoo. The config is correct since it is a copy of my grub.conf from my P4 desktop and that works as expected. Timeout is set to 4. Any ideas? Thanks.

Code: Select all

default 0
timeout 4
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.16-r9
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.16-gentoo-r9 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/hda3 udev vga=0x317
initrd /boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.16-gentoo-r9

TRG · Post by **TRG** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 9:53 pm

The GRUB will not start up my freshly installed gentoo. It complains that the kernel isn't where I specified.

How do i find out the precise path and name of my kernel? Everything went fine: compiling, downloading, GRUB installation, but after I rebooted, it couldn't find the kernel. I am probably an idiot for trying to install gentoo without doing anything other than playing with the LiveCD and minimal. I have no Gnu/linux experience, and I can get the machine to boot off of the mimimal CD, or into GRUB, although I don't have my LiveCD anymore.

kernel version: gentoo 2.6.16 r9

davascript · Post by **davascript** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 11:02 pm

did you follow the manual for the installation.
and your kenel path would be

/boot/kernelname

please post your grub.conf so that we can take a look at it.

also you should probably search the forum or read the sticky grub error thread located here

there is also a grub document

you need your livecd to fix the errors in your install and any in the future.

TRG · Post by **TRG** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 11:08 pm

Thanks. I hope the info in that sticky will let me get everything straight. I can't test it right now as I swapped the windows and linux drives, so that windows is running, and linux is cold... for a LAN party.