Grub Error Collection [Part 1001]

[NeddySeagoon]

hcc,

Some BIOSes make the boot drive (hd0) regardless of which drive you choose. Grub uses the BIOS detected drive order.
You can check this as follows.

When you get into the grub menu, press e, to edit grub.conf. It only edits the copy in RAM, so changes are not permanent.
Change the

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 root(hd1,0) 

to

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 root(hd0,0)

and allow the boot to continue.

If your kernel loads, the problem is confirmed as the BIOS calling the boot drive drive 0

[hcc]

the tirck is to switsh the boot order in the BIOS and set root (hd0,0) instad of hd(1,0)

but i dont understand why grub is not abel to do it the other way! i see no problem in that, if the first disk has no MBR than look into the second disks MBR and run there Grub! Because i think it was that way before whit CentOS. But now its working! THX all

[squares16]

I have used Gentoo in the past about 5 to 6 years ago and haven't touched it since. I am now starting a fresh install and probably made a mistake during the install of Grub.

Here is my partitioning scheme:

• hda1 - windows partition
  
  hdb1 - windows partition
  hdb2 - /boot
  hdb3 - swap
  hdb4 - extended (holds partitions 5,6,and7)
  hdb5 - /root
  hdb6 - /usr/portage
  hdb7 - /home
  
  sda - windows partition

I boot the sata drive for windows and the other two drives are for storage(both IDEs). Would this make the MBR reside on the Sata drive?

/boot/grub/grub.conf looks like this:

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default 1
timeout 30
splashimage=(hd1,1)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title Gentoo Linux 2.6.36-r5
root (hd1,1)
kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.36-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/hdb2 nofirewire
initrd /boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.36-gentoo-r5

title Windows XP Pro SP3
rootnotify (hd2,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Grubs device.map

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(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/hda
(hd1) /dev/hdb
(hd2) /dev/sda

I have been following the handbook. Now I don't think I was paying attention to things when I tried to install Grub manually. The next set of codes I typed in were:

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grub> root (hd1,1)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

I rebooted the machine and went to windows right away. I then realized that hd0 is probably not where the MBR is located, dumb mistake. I went back into grub and tried using hd2,0 with the tab completion.

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grub> setup (hd2,0)

It then put out something that it had failed trying to do something but said it wasn't a big concern. I exited out of grub and went back in to try

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grub> setup (hd2)

That way completed successfully all the way. I rebooted and after the POST was complete, the message"GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB...." and so on appeared on the screen and grub never loaded. I suspect I did something wrong and that was probably installing grub in many places. Is there anything I can do to fix grub so it loads properly or can I uninstall grub to get back into my windows build?

[andre0991]

Hi,

the "timeout" option in grub.conf does not work. The grub only boots an OS if I choice the system and press enter.

Here´s the file:

tux andre0991 # cat /boot/grub/grub.conf
# This is a sample grub.conf for use with Genkernel, per the Gentoo handbook
# http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...p=10#doc_chap2
# If you are not using Genkernel and you need help creating this file, you
# should consult the handbook. Alternatively, consult the grub.conf.sample that
# is included with the Grub documentation.

#default 0
#timeout 3
#splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

#title Gentoo Linux 2.6.24-r5
#root (hd0,0)
#kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.24-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/ram0 real_root=/dev/sda3
#initrd /boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.24-gentoo-r5

# vim:ft=conf:




################################################## #####################



# Which listing to boot as default. 0 is the first, 1 the second etc.
default 0
# How many seconds to wait before the default listing is booted.
timeout 5
# Nice, fat splash-image to spice things up
# Comment out if you don't have a graphics card installed
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title Gentoo Linux
# Partition where the kernel image (or operating system) is located
#TROQUEI hd0 por sd0
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37-ck root=/dev/sda1

title Gentoo Linux 2.6.34-r1 (rescue)
# Partition where the kernel image (or operating system) is located
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.34-r1-gentoo root=/dev/sda3 init=/bin/bb

# The next four lines are only if you dualboot with a Windows system.
# In this case, Windows is hosted on /dev/sda6.
#title Windows XP
#rootnoverify (hd0,5)
#makeactive
#chainloader +1

What´s wrong?

Thanks and sorry for the bad english

[krinn]

grub timeout stop when a key is press, so your keyboard might press the key itself, or your booting grub.conf isn't the one you are showing (because i see no problem with timeout command in it) or your grub doesn't support the timeout command (i'm dunno from what version grub start using timeout command, or if grub2 still use the time out command as "timeout")

[desultory]

Merged the preceding two posts.

[beguiledfoil]

Greetings, I'm trying to emerge GRUB but every time I do so it marks my boot partition as read only (ro) and fails. Here is the result of "mount" before emerging grub:

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/dev/sda3 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext2 (rw,noatime)

And the output from emerging grub:

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>>> Installing (1 of 1) sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10
 * 
 * To avoid automounting and auto(un)installing with /boot,
 * just export the DONT_MOUNT_BOOT variable.
 * 
 * 
 * Your boot partition, detected as being mounted as /boot, is read-only.
 * Remounting it in read-write mode ...
 * 
 * 
 * Automatically remounting /boot as ro
 * 
mkdir: cannot create directory `//boot/grub': Read-only file system
 * ERROR: sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10 failed:
 *   //boot/grub does not exist!
 * 
 * Call stack:
 *     ebuild.sh, line   56:  Called pkg_postinst
 *   environment, line 3940:  Called setup_boot_dir '//boot'
 *   environment, line 4286:  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

>>> Recording sys-boot/grub in "world" favorites file...

 * Messages for package sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10:

 * Fallback PaX marking -m
 *      /var/tmp/portage/sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10/image//sbin/grub
 * 
 * To avoid automounting and auto(un)installing with /boot,
 * just export the DONT_MOUNT_BOOT variable.
 * 
 * ERROR: sys-boot/grub-0.97-r10 failed:
 *   //boot/grub does not exist!
 * 
 * Call stack:
 *     ebuild.sh, line   56:  Called pkg_postinst
 *   environment, line 3940:  Called setup_boot_dir '//boot'
 *   environment, line 4286:  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'
>>> Auto-cleaning packages...

>>> No outdated packages were found on your system.

 * Regenerating GNU info directory index...
 * Processed 73 info files.

Afterwards I run mount again and see this:

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/dev/sda3 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext2 (ro,noatime)

I know how to remount /boot as rw (mount -o remount,rw /boot). Should I just do that and try running with DONT_MOUNT_BOOT set? I'd be more comfortable knowing why grub is failing to install.

UPDATE: Figured this out, grub is finding a boot partition used by my live cd (SystemRescueCd 2.0.0, /livemnt/boot is the directory), noticing that it is read only, and then trying to make /boot rw and "restore" it to ro later.

Still not sure how to fix this, maybe run without the mounting step? Does anyone know of a guide that would tell me how to install grub with DONT_MOUNT_BOOT set?

The offending check in /eclass/mount-boot.eclass is the following:

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local proc_ro=$(awk '{ print $2 " ," $4 "," }' /proc/mounts | sed -n '/\/boot .*,ro,/p') 

This fails, finding the wrong /boot.

UPDATE2: So here's what I've done so far:
1. After failure, remounted drive as rw:

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mount -o remount,rw /boot

2. Added DONT_MOUNT_BOOT=true to /etc/make.conf
3. Emerged grub again, no errors

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emerge grub

4. Had to remount /boot as rw again:

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mount -o remount,rw /boot

5. Install grub

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emerge --config =grub.97-r10

6. Select /boot when prompted for directory

Hoping this works, haven't booted yet.

thanks

[jsketch]

I have been re-allocating and moving some hardware around. I tried getting back into (booting up) my two drives I previously had running with Gentoo and XP but each time I reinstall the drives I get Loading Stage 1.5 Grub Error 5.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

J.

[mikegpitt]

According to the Grub documentation the error is:

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5 : "Disk geometry error"
This error is returned when a read is attempted at a linear block address beyond the end of the BIOS translated area. This generally happens if your disk is larger than the BIOS can handle (512MB for (E)IDE disks on older machines or larger than 8GB in general).

What type of machine are your installing on (is it old/new)? Can you post the output of `fdisk -l` (that's a lowercase L)?

[kinkyslayer]

I have the MBR set as gentoo on /dev/sda1 and I emerged grub and now i'm having some trouble with the kernel location.

title Gentoo Linux 2.6.36-gentoo-r5
root (hd0, 0)
kernel /boot/linux-2.6.36-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/ram0 real_root=/dev/sda1

And here is where the kernel file is

livecd boot # ls
grub linux-2.6.36-gentoo-r5
livecd boot #


When i installed grub it was of course blank but it needed something to boot from in /boot so i grabbed the kernel file at /usr/src/linux-2.6.36-gentoo-r5 and moved it to boot.

However i figured it wouldn't work. The default GRUB menu.lst looks like this

title Gentoo Linux 2.6.24-r5
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.24-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/ram0 real_root=/de$
initrd /boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.24-gentoo-r5

But i can't figure out how to get the file for /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.24-gentoo-r5

I didn't use genkernel but did manual configuration.

[jburns]

If you did it manually use

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kernel /boot/linux-2.6.36-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/sda1

and there is no initrd line.

edit
To copy the kernel
Mount the /boot partition if not already mounted.

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cp /usr/src/linux/arch/x86_64/boot/bzImage /boot/linux-2.6.36-gentoo-r5

[kinkyslayer]

If you did it manually use

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kernel /boot/linux-2.6.36-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/sda1

and there is no initrd line.

I would but it would give me a file not found error 15 in grub because my /boot is blank except for grub so thats why i copied the kernel file/folder from /usr/src/ to /boot and couldn't use the default setup.

edit: fixed it and found information i was missing

[desultory]

Merged the five preceding posts.

[mikegpitt]

Merged the five preceding posts.

I don't mean to sound like a pain, but merging grub questions into threads like this makes it really hard to search for answers (probably caused more threads to be created) and are hard to help people with questions, when their posts get buried.

[KayZee]

New Gentoo install using RAID-1 on two SATA disks.

Following http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Software_RAID_Install


/dev/md1 is composed of /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1. Since this is RAID-1 I want to install grub to the MBR of both drives.

Still in the chroot.

grub installs OK, but it fails to install on the MBR of sda and sdb.
When I run grub to locate the drives

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grub> find /boot/grub/stage1

Error 15: File not found

I exect it to return

(hd0,0)
(hd0,1)

If I continue on ignoring the error, just to see what happens

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grub> device (hd0) /dev/sda

grub> root (hd0,0)
File system type unknown, partition type 0xfd

grub> setup (hd0)
Error 17: Can not mount selected partition

With fdisk I defined all the partitions as type fd to autodetect them as RAID.

/dev/md1 is formated with ext2 and is defined in /etc/fstab

I noted when the /dev/md* devices were created that the superblocks were 1.2. If I understand correctly, the kernel should correctly detect this. The kernel is from Gentoo sources and version 3.6.36-gentoo-r5.

[NeddySeagoon]

KayZee,

The kernel will only auto assemble raid superblock version 0.9 raid sets.
Grub 1 cannot read filesystems on raid superblock version >=1.

The problem is grub just ignores raid. This works with raid superblock version 0.9 but the data is moved around for later super block versions.

You either need to remake your raid set or use another boot loader and an initrd to assemble the raid before root can be mounted.

---- edit ----

Kernel raid autodetect is depreciated and will be removed sometime.

[KayZee]

Thank you. I have, for now, used --metadata=0.90 when re-creating the arrays. I will need to watch this superblock issue with mdadm and grub. Does grub2 work with the newer superblocks? I am trying to understand how this will all get resolved. There are likely a fair number of installs out there that will be impacted.

[NeddySeagoon]

KayZee,

There will indeed be a fair number of installs impacted - mine included.

Provided you use --metadata=0.90 all that will be needed when raid auto detect is removed from the kernel is an initrd to do the raid assembly.
Grub 1 and --metadata=0.90 raid sets will continue to work.

I can't answer for Grub2 as I've not tried it.

[tme]

Hi,

I've almost completed my first Gentoo installation. All seemed to have worked like a charm. However, my experience with Grub is limite, and I run into a problem.

My computer boots into Grub, then stays there. Grub can be encouraged to boot regularily by specifying kernel and initrd manually, then using "boot". I'd expect that's what the file /etc/grub/grub.conf and "grub-install" in the installation was for. So I'm guessing this is not expected behaviour.

My /etc/grub/grub.conf looks like this:

default 0
timeout 30

title Gentoo Linux 2.6.36-r5
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.36-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda3
initrd /boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.36-gentoo-r5

Almost copypastad 1:1 from the installation guide. My hard disk layout looks as suggested in the installation guide as well:

/dev/sda1 as /boot, with bootable-flag enabled, type Linux
/dev/sda2, type Linux Swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 as /, type Linux

Calling grub-install seems to work just fine:

Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script "grub-install".

(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdb

Can anybody spot the mistake?

Thank you.

[NeddySeagoon]

tme,

Do you really mean /etc/grub/grub.conf ?
It should be /boot/grub/grub.conf

grub-install does not set up a grub.conf file. All it does is to install the parts of grub that must be on the hard drive outside of any space belonging to a file system. This means that they cannot be installed with normal filesystem commands like cp or mv.

[tme]

tme,

Do you really mean /etc/grub/grub.conf ?
It should be /boot/grub/grub.conf

Right you are. A simple misread on my part. Strange that it did not worry me that /etc/grub did not exist while the rest of the installation documentation was spot on. I just created it myself. Should have read it again maybe Moved the file, grub-install'ed again, works like a charm. Thank you.

[wildmanne39]

Hi, everyone can someone please help me, I installed gentoo but it does not find the root partition. I ran several commands that another post suggested but I think it was closed so I am posting here, the results are at http//paste.pocoo.org/show/367627. Then the other numbers are 367628,367629,367630,627631. Thanks for any help I have been working on this for days and I just have to get it working.

[Edweirdo]

I'm trying to install Gentoo on a few systems.

I've tried to install it on VMware Fusion, VirtualBox (for Mac), and a Real DELL Optiplex 755 and I got this same error:

After doing the install, I try to install grub and I get the following error:

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grub> root (hd0,0)

Error 21: Selected disk does not exist

grub>

Here is what my grub.conf looks like:

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default 0
timeout 10

title Gentoo Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz-2.6.38-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/sda3

When I am in the boot CD and do an fdisk -l I get this:

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Disk /dev/sda: 8589 MB, 8589934592 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1044 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 8x3ad578ae

  Device Boot         Start                  End             Blocks     Id   System
/dev/sda1                 1                   14             112423+    83   Linux
/dev/sda2                15                  276            2104515     82   Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3               277                 1044            6168960     83   Linux

When I am in the chroot environment and I do an fdisk -l I get nothing at all.

lspci says the disk is an LSI Logic / Symbios Logic 53c1030 PCI-X Fusion-MPT Dual Ultra320 SCSI (rev 01) (this is from VMware Fusion).

The same thing happens on my real computer that has a SATA Controller: Intel Corporation 82801IR/IO/IH (ICH9R/DO/DH) 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02).

I've made my grub.conf files the same for many years, so I don't know why it is suddenly not working.

[Aquous]

I think you forgot to do this (assuming your chroot is mounted at /mnt/gentoo):

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mount none -t proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev

You may also need to:

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cat /proc/mounts|grep -v rootfs>/mnt/gentoo/etc/mtab

though I'm not sure about that.

[zazxxx]

Hi, i new here!

I have an issue with booting. I followed the instructions, but every time i boot the system. I got same issue.
I installed gentoo on VMWARE!
Picture here: http://ocz-gaming.com/download/pics/err ... o_boot.PNG

It stuck there and nothing happen

Please help!