Grub Error Collection [Part 8] [POST GRUB QUESTIONS HERE!]

Message

marrowhk · Post by **marrowhk** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 8:52 am

Alternative route.

1. use a livecd if you can, you'll find the usb bus doesn't get twisted by the boot device usb address.
[ use modprobe raid(n), MAKDEV md whilst in /dev, edit /etc/mdadm.conf to your flavour and then mdadm --assemble --scan to rebuild your raid. ]

2. compile your own kernel (make sure to build-in raid capabilities). Check /etc/fstab given livecd startup and redit /boot/grub/menu.lst to reflect changes [EDIT] and of course setup grub again! (see next message)

Then reboot!

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 9:41 am

bhagany,

You do not appear to be using your fakeraid controller but if you have changed its BIOS settings since grub was installed to the MBR, then the grub install is broken. You need to redo the install to the MBR.

As it hangs at the loading Grub stage 1.5 ... message, the system has not got as far as reading grub.conf.

The liveUSB can be an issue for you. Some BIOSes will detect it before hard drives, others won't. This can make it impossible to install Grub to the MBR properly as Grub writes its (hdx,y) partition in the stage1.5 ... and that will change at the reboot.

gentoo_fan · Post by **gentoo_fan** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 12:07 pm

Hi,

I almost finished my 10th or so gentoo install. (about the 3rd dual booting with windows).

To begin, I booted the live cd, cleared my partition table, and created a new one. I then rebooted, and installed windows xp onto hda6, everything is ok up to this point, windows installed its bootloader onto hda1 as can be expected.

I then booted the live cd again, switched hda1 back to type 83 and proceeded with the install. When I rebooted, it went right to windows, and I realized I hadnt remade the ext2 file system on hda1. Fine, fixed that, reinstalled grub and the whole bit (no errors this time).

Tried booting into linux, error 15. Checked to make sure grub was pointing to the right kernel in /boot, and it was. I even recopied the existing bzImage to /boot/test so I definitlely wouldnt screw up the entry. Tried booting into windows, gave an error 17. I thought it might have been the version of grub that was causing the problems (0.97-r3) so I emerged -r2. Same thing.

I added the splashimage line, and when I booted with that, it would give a black screen and spit out the error 15. when I would hit a key to continue, it would bring me to the boot list (which I didnt see initially), but it would be barely legible (and splash.xpm.gz exists under /boot). I've tried reinstalling grub to the mbr, using tab to complete the field, or using grub-install, but to no avail.

grub.conf (without windows portion):

Code: Select all

default 0
timeout 10 

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

title=Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/test root=/dev/hda3

output from fdisk /dev/hda:
(hda3 is the gentoo install I'm working on)

Code: Select all

Device             ID        System
/dev/hda1    *     83         Linux
/dev/hda2          82         Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda3          83         Linux
/dev/hda4           5         Extended
/dev/hda5          83         Linux
/dev/hda6           b         W95 FAT32
/dev/hda7          83         Linux

Let me know if you need any more info..

Thanks
-Matt

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 12:13 pm

gentoo_fan,

Welcome to the forums. I'll move your post to our Grub Sticky

Can you post your

Code: Select all

ls -l /boot

please ?
I suspect you are missing the

Code: Select all

boot -> .

symbolic link.

Moved to Grub Sticky

hoacker · Post by **hoacker** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 12:23 pm

gentoo_fan wrote:

Code: Select all

Device             ID        System
/dev/hda1    *     83         Linux
/dev/hda2          82         Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda3          83         Linux

gentoo_fan wrote: grub.conf (without windows portion):
Code: Select all
title=Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/test root=/dev/hda3

If I understood you right, hda1 is /boot and hda3 is / ?
The entry "kernel /boot/test" makes grub look for "/boot/test" on hda1, which would be "/boot/boot/test" in your filesystem.
You can do one of the following:
- remove all "/boot" from your kernel paths in grub.conf
or
- create a symlink in /boot named "boot" linking to "."

bhagany · Post by **bhagany** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 1:54 pm

Thanks for the reply, Neddy.

I did reinstall grub after messing with the RAID in BIOS, so this shouldn't be a problem.

I suspect the problem you cited with USB drives is the culprit (incidentally, why is it an option to boot to USB first, if it won't actually do it? That's infuriating). Is there any way to correct this other than installing from a CD?

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 3:32 pm

bhagany,

The USB should boot but, depending on the BIOS, it will become (hd0) and your real hard drive will be (hd1).
When you remove the USB stick to boot normally, grub is broken because you installed it for (hd1), which is what it was at the time you installed grub. Not all BIOSes behave this way.

bhagany · Post by **bhagany** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 3:35 pm

Neddy,

I manually installed grub for hd0. That should work, right?

bhagany · Post by **bhagany** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 3:38 pm

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood what you said. If I manually install grub for hd1 when booting from USB, would that work?

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 5:09 pm

bhagany,

It will work only while the USB drive is fitted. Then the hard drive becomes (hd0)

bhagany · Post by **bhagany** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 5:25 pm

Okay, so I went about doing this just to get the thing running for the time being, but now I think our diagnosis is wrong. Trying to manually install grub for hd1 tells me that there is no partition table there. To double check, I used grub's tab completion. Doing "root (hd1<tab>" gets me nothing. However,

Code: Select all

grub> root (hd0,
 Possible partitions are:
   Partition num: 0,  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
   Partition num: 1,  Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x82
   Partition num: 2,  Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83
   Partition num: 4,  Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83
   Partition num: 5,  Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83
   Partition num: 6,  Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83
   Partition num: 7,  Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83
   Partition num: 8,  Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83

It seems that grub already things that my hard drive is hd0. Any other ideas about what might be wrong?

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 5:48 pm

bhagany,

Thats good!
Reinstall grub to the MBR manually

If you have a floppy drive start grub with

Code: Select all

grub

otherwise use

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grub --no-floppy

Then its

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root (hd0,x)
setup (hd0)
quit

where x is grubspeak for the partition where grubs files are stored.

bhagany · Post by **bhagany** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 6:03 pm

Neddy,

Well, I have already done that, but I did it again just to make sure. Same result as before. I saved this just so you could see that it appears to work:

Code: Select all

grub> root (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

grub> setup (hd0)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"...  18 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+18 p (hd0,0)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/menu.lst"... succeeded
Done.

Anything else I can try?[/code]

barrymac · Post by **barrymac** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 7:32 pm

I've been trying to boot over the network and discovered that grub 0.97 doesn't support the following:
Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5704 Gigabit Ethernet

I find it strange that it needs a driver if it has already transferred grub itself over the network to give this error! I don't even want to bring a kernel over the network I just wanted to get the machine into grub (without USB media or CDrom) and do the rest from a local disk anyway. Beware, the box in question (HP StorageWorks NAS1000s) has been a real pig with grub, geometry errors with the messy hot pluggable IDE RAID setup and all sorts.

It will give an error referring to the RTL8139 driver and complains about latency timer, which is quite misleading.

I found that there are some patches available but I@m going to try using PXELinux instead as people have reported that the tg3 patches don't work for them.

When I was looking at the build options for grub to see if I needed to add support for the card I found that the list of supported cards is not very long. Would anyone know if it would be possible to create an adapter that might allow support for any linux kernel module netcard driver to be patched into grub?

The following supported card flags are enabled with the netboot USE flag:

--enable-3c509 enable 3Com509 driver
--enable-3c529 enable 3Com529 driver
--enable-3c595 enable 3Com595 driver
--enable-3c90x enable 3Com90x driver
--enable-cs89x0 enable CS89x0 driver
--enable-davicom enable Davicom driver
--enable-depca enable DEPCA and EtherWORKS driver
--enable-eepro enable Etherexpress Pro/10 driver
--enable-eepro100 enable Etherexpress Pro/100 driver
--enable-epic100 enable SMC 83c170 EPIC/100 driver
--enable-3c507 enable 3Com507 driver
--enable-exos205 enable EXOS205 driver
--enable-ni5210 enable Racal-Interlan NI5210 driver
--enable-lance enable Lance PCI PCNet/32 driver
--enable-ne2100 enable Novell NE2100 driver
--enable-ni6510 enable Racal-Interlan NI6510 driver
--enable-natsemi enable NatSemi DP8381x driver
--enable-ni5010 enable Racal-Interlan NI5010 driver
--enable-3c503 enable 3Com503 driver
--enable-ne enable NE1000/2000 ISA driver
--enable-ns8390 enable NE2000 PCI driver
--enable-wd enable WD8003/8013, SMC8216/8416 driver
--enable-otulip enable old Tulip driver
--enable-rtl8139 enable Realtek 8139 driver
--enable-sis900 enable SIS 900 and SIS 7016 driver
--enable-sk-g16 enable Schneider and Koch G16 driver
--enable-smc9000 enable SMC9000 driver
--enable-tiara enable Tiara driver
--enable-tulip enable Tulip driver
--enable-via-rhine enable Rhine-I/II driver
--enable-w89c840 enable Winbond W89c840, Compex RL100-ATX driver
--enable-3c503-shmem use 3c503 shared memory mode
--enable-3c503-aui use AUI by default on 3c503 cards

gentoo_fan · Post by **gentoo_fan** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 7:43 pm

NeddySeagoon wrote:gentoo_fan,

Welcome to the forums. I'll move your post to our Grub Sticky

Can you post your
Code: Select all
ls -l /boot
please ?
I suspect you are missing the
Code: Select all
boot -> .
symbolic link.

Moved to Grub Sticky

Thanks, I didnt even know this was here.
The symlink sure isnt there, how do I get it back?

-Matt

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 8:30 pm

gentoo_fan,

Code: Select all

mount /boot
cd /boot
ln -s . boot

It allows the same grub.conf to work regardless is your /boot is a read partition or a directory on /

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 8:34 pm

bhagany,

Go into your BIOS and check that your hard drives are set to use Logical Block Addressing (LBA)
Other choices have problems do to 'geometry issues'

Grub will have used logical block addressing when it was installed, its essential to read it back the same way or bits may be skipped or put in the wrong place in memory.

gentoo_fan · Post by **gentoo_fan** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 7:37 am

NeddySeagoon wrote:gentoo_fan,
Code: Select all
mount /boot
cd /boot
ln -s . boot
It allows the same grub.conf to work regardless is your /boot is a read partition or a directory on /

Awesome, worked like a charm, thanks! Will this affect the booting of windows, because I added the section, and I'm still getting a grub error 17. I just wanted to check before I go cruising the posts on those errors.

-Matt

keenblade · Post by **keenblade** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 10:03 am

I have upgraded my motherboard bios and now I can't boot my gentoo. Knoppix works fine, winxp fine but gentoo can't. I can see grub menu. Whatever kernel I choose, screen goes black and no grub error. I can see some colorful pixels at the top. Reset button can restart.
What can I do other than downgrading bios? Thanks.
Info:
~amd64, mobo asus A8N-SLI, athlon64 3200+, kernel-2.6.23-gentoo-r5 r4 r3

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 1:07 pm

gentoo_fan,

Nope, this has no effect on windows loading.
Error 17 suggests you used root (hdx,y) rather than rootnoverify ((hdx,y) in your Windows boot Stanza.
Look in the grub.conf.example file.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 1:12 pm

keenblade,

Updating your BIOS removes all your carefully set options and sets them back to the default.

As grub loads but the kernel then fails, I suspect you have an AHCI hard drive chipset and its now set in the BIOS to IDE mode, which makes it compatible with out of the box Windows.

Check your BIOS settings.

keenblade · Post by **keenblade** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 4:47 pm

NeddySeagoon wrote:keenblade,
As grub loads but the kernel then fails, I suspect you have an AHCI hard drive chipset and its now set in the BIOS to IDE mode, which makes it compatible with out of the box Windows.

Check your BIOS settings.

In the bios it is set properly:
First SATA Master WDC WD2500JD
what else can be the problem?

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 4:56 pm

keenblade,

The IDE/AHCI BIOS option

keenblade · Post by **keenblade** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 5:04 pm

NeddySeagoon wrote:keenblade,

The IDE/AHCI BIOS option

there is no such option. The bios is Phoenix one.

Edit: Chipset is NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI MCP

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 5:08 pm

keenblade,

I don't know the Pheonix BIOS. Another possibility ...
The hard drive addressing mode must be set to Logical Block Addressing (LBA) not to Large or ... I forget the 3rd option.

Grub Error Collection [Part 8] [POST GRUB QUESTIONS HERE!]

Grub not booting kernel properly

Re: Grub not booting kernel properly

PXE boot tg3 support