Grub, FC1, XP and 2 hard drives

[JoeyJoeJo]

I have a desktop w/Xp on a 30 gig hdd and an extra 120 for storage. Today I made a 20 gig partition for FC1 on the 120 gig hdd. Now when I boot, all it does is say "Grub." Just a black screen and white letters, no menu. I booted with the FC1 disc in Linux Rescue mode and did fdisk just to look. On the 30 gig hdd, WinXP is marked as bootable. On the 120 gig, /boot is marked as bootable, obviously.

/dev/hda2 = WinXP partition
/dev/hdb2 = /boot

I was thinking the problem had to do with 2 things trying to boot. For the time being, I think I will disconnect /dev/hdb and just use windows until I get this figured out.

Thanks for your help!

[EnigmaOne]

Well, the so-called "normal" and probably easiest way to deal with grub would be to put it into the MBR on /dev/hda. That way you can boot either xp or FC from the grub menu.

How did you install grub, and where is it supposed to be currently located?

[Icarus]

Sounds like you didn't set GRUB up very well, no reason to give up until you 'feel like it'

Get a boot disk, mount your Linux partition (should be /dev/hdb2 it looks like), chroot to the install, mount your /boot partition (Fedora installs this seperate by default, probably /dev/hdb1),grub-install /dev/hda, reboot

Don't be afraid of 'messing up Windows' by installing the bootloader to the MBR, it doesn't hurt the drive at all and if you ever want to restore the boot sector it's real easy with a WinXP boot CD or even a Win98 boot disk.

Don't ph34r the penguin...the penguin is your friend...he's here to help

[JoeyJoeJo]

I did what you said mahdi, with some luck. Now I get the message "Grub is loading..." (or something like that). Then it says "Error in stage 1.5 Error number 21." I looked up error 21 and it says that grub failed for an unknown reason.

I did the chroot, /boot was already mounted, ran grub-install /dev/hda and it reported no errors. It also showed this:

(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hda) /dev/hda
(hdb) /dev/hdb

and told me if it's wrong I had to change it. that should be correct, right?

[mdwatts]

Did you modify your Grub config so it now points to the mbr of hda instead of the /boot partition of hdb? Post the contents of your Grub config so we can have a look.

[JoeyJoeJo]

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd1,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hdb2
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hdb2

default=1
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.4.22-1.2115.nptl)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl ro root=LABEL=/ hdd=ide-scsi rhgb
initrd /initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.img
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1


/dev/hda1 = dell recovery utility
/dev/hda2 = windows
/dev/hdb1 = /boot?
/dev/hdb2 = /
/dev/hda3 = swap

[knute]

You might try commenting out the splashimage line.

Last I heard that patch wasn't fully supported yet, but that was a while ago. Otherwise it looks ok.

[Icarus]

Originally posted by knute
You might try commenting out the splashimage line.

Last I heard that patch wasn't fully supported yet, but that was a while ago. Otherwise it looks ok. It's fully supported, if the image fails to load, you'll get a black text (functional) Grub screen. I've got a nice Grub screen with Shodan's face from System Shock :)

When Grub comes up do you get the two options?

Fedora Core (2.4.22-1.2115.nptl)
Windows XP

I don't think so at stage 1.5, that's where it loads the boot directory and grub.conf...

Make sure /boot is hdb1, if that is incorrect it won't load

It looks like a default Fedora install so it probably is...

Try this for the grub-install

grub-install --root-directory=/boot /dev/hda

[knute]

Well, Ok. Show's how much I've kept up with grub. :D

Thanks for the heads up. :cool:

[JoeyJoeJo]

No dice with the command grub-install --root-directory=/boot /dev/hda. I still get the stage 1.5 error 21. I've tried commenting out the splash image and changing the (hdx,y) numbers, but I still ge the same message. I dont get to the point where I get a choice of which OS to use, it just tries to load and then gives me the error.

[JoeyJoeJo]

Ok, so I changed the boot sequence in the BIOS from fd0 being the first to hda to being the first. It's a crappy dell bios, so I can't pic specifically which hdx I want. Now I get the grub command line on boot. I know how to make os's boot from this. Linux will get so far and give me a kernel panic. It wants me to pass an init= into the kernel. When I boot windows, it tries to boot and just brings back up the grub command line. So, I'm making progress.

[mdwatts]

See if these changes work

default=1
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.4.22-1.2115.nptl)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl ro root=LABEL=/dev/hdb2 hdd=ide-scsi rhgb
initrd /initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.img
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Actually there is no reason to have a separate /boot partition unless it resides on the primary HD and is set as the active partition.

You should install Linux on hdb (without /boot) and then install Grub in the mbr of hda.

[DMR]

You said:
Originally posted by JoeyJoeJo
/dev/hda2 = WinXP partition
/dev/hdb2 = /boot But in your grub.conf you have:splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
.
.
root (hd1,0)
If your /boot partition is truly hdb2, you need to change (hd1,0) to (hd1,1)

[JoeyJoeJo]

Well, I didn't get it running 100%, but heres what happened. Aparently something screwed up XP's ntfs partition and changed it to the RAW file system. I think it was the grub-install command, but I can't be sure. So I downloaded knoppix-std and ran ntfsfix. I got my ntfs partition back with all data in tack, but still no booting. So I just popped in the XP disc and told it instead of formatting to use the current file system (no changes). This just deleted the c:\windows dir and made it new. So I have windows back, but no linux for now. I think that I'll just worry with this later.