Hi,
I'm having one hell of a problem with my system after I tired to upgrade. Finally I reinstalled the system and moved my root partition to another partition in order to save the data on the old partition (I didn't reformat this partition during the reinstall, all other partions I reformated).
Now grub boots with only a lot of "GRUB" on my screen and I can't access the installed FC4 system.
My main harddisk is at /dev/sda and the current boot partition is /dev/sda5 (which is in an extended partition). My old boot partition was /dev/sda2 which for some reason is still found by the rescue disk as a valid boot partition, although I have cleared all directories except my data from it (how can I clear this ?) I also have an IDE drive installed as /dev/hda. I use this only for data and don't want to boot from it. I hope that's fine with grub.....
I tried to reinstall grub by using grub-install, but it won't work.
Is there any way to fix this issue ?
Regards, Marcel
korgull wrote:
Hi,
I'm having one hell of a problem with my system after I tired to upgrade. Finally I reinstalled the system and moved my root partition to another partition in order to save the data on the old partition (I didn't reformat this partition during the reinstall, all other partions I reformated).
Did you give the old root partition a mountpoint? Or did you not assign your old / partition to anything? The third choice as to mount your old root as / without a reformatting of the partition would leave / as a mess.
Now grub boots with only a lot of "GRUB" on my screen and I can't access the installed FC4 system.
My main harddisk is at /dev/sda and the current boot partition is /dev/sda5 (which is in an extended partition).
It is my understanding that the /boot partition has to be on a primary partition. When you go into rescue mode, does the system find both /mnt/sysimage and /mnt/sysimage/boot? When you chroot /mnt/sysimage is /boot loaded with the kernel and the grub subdrectory. I'm not sure if this is the case since I have one installation that I believe is entirely within an extended partition. I use this partition as the main grub loader, which is installed in the master boot record.
My old boot partition was /dev/sda2
which for some reason is still found by the rescue disk as a valid boot partition, although I have cleared all directories except my data from it (how can I clear this ?)
Reformatting the drive will erase the old data. The volume will still probably have the /boot label assigned to it. Why not use this partition as your /boot partition for a new installation
I also have an IDE drive installed as /dev/hda. I use this only for data and don't want to boot from it. I hope that's fine with grub.....
This is kind of a situation with grub, computer BIOS and Linux. Some with both SATA (recognized as sda) and PATA (recognized as hda) can confuse grub with booting priority. If reading other postings and understading the situation, grub is installed in /dev/hda with anaconda by default. Unless you use the advanced boot options to direct grub to be installed elsewhere.
I tried to reinstall grub by using grub-install, but it won't work.
Is there any way to fix this issue ?
BIOS boot device priorities must be set up correctly with both types of hard drives on your system. I believe your BIOS should have some feature to pick SATA over IDE as boot priority. When you boot from recue mode, you have to change to the directory which will be your new / (root) partition using chroot /mnt/sysimage before running grub-install. For your situation where /boot is installed within an extended partition, I would attempt to install grub to the MBR or the IDE drive (grub-install /dev/hda) after accessing the new installation with the rescue disk or (grub-install /dev/sda) to install it in the master boot record of the SATA drive.
Installing grub in the MBR only puts early stages of grub in it. The main work is performed from data within the /boot/grub directory of your installation. That is to say, it will hand off control to items within the /boot/grub directory. Installing grub in an extended partition directly is beyond me. I think it is BIOS related rather than operating system limitations. Using the MBR instead leaves the OS more in control.
Hopefully I am not relaying any wrong information.
Jim
Regards, Marcel
On Sep 18, 2005, Jim Cornette fct-cornette@insight.rr.com wrote:
It is my understanding that the /boot partition has to be on a primary partition.
Nope, not true. It works just fine as a logical partition.
Once upon a time, Alexandre Oliva aoliva@redhat.com said:
On Sep 18, 2005, Jim Cornette fct-cornette@insight.rr.com wrote:
It is my understanding that the /boot partition has to be on a primary partition.
Nope, not true. It works just fine as a logical partition.
Only if you write GRUB (or some other "smart" boot loader) to the MBR. If you have multiple OSes (or even multiple installs of the same OS), writing GRUB to the MBR is not always a good idea.
On Sep 19, 2005, Chris Adams cmadams@hiwaay.net wrote:
Once upon a time, Alexandre Oliva aoliva@redhat.com said:
On Sep 18, 2005, Jim Cornette fct-cornette@insight.rr.com wrote:
It is my understanding that the /boot partition has to be on a primary partition.
Nope, not true. It works just fine as a logical partition.
Only if you write GRUB (or some other "smart" boot loader) to the MBR.
Again, not true. It works for me on hda5 and hda6, each a /boot for a different installation of Fedora, and each one can chain-load the other, so both work just fine.
Once upon a time, Alexandre Oliva aoliva@redhat.com said:
On Sep 19, 2005, Chris Adams cmadams@hiwaay.net wrote:
Once upon a time, Alexandre Oliva aoliva@redhat.com said:
On Sep 18, 2005, Jim Cornette fct-cornette@insight.rr.com wrote:
It is my understanding that the /boot partition has to be on a primary partition.
Nope, not true. It works just fine as a logical partition.
Only if you write GRUB (or some other "smart" boot loader) to the MBR.
Again, not true. It works for me on hda5 and hda6, each a /boot for a different installation of Fedora, and each one can chain-load the other, so both work just fine.
What is the MBR boot loader? The standard DOS/Windows MBR (on a dual boot system) will not boot a logical partition.
On Sep 19, 2005, Chris Adams cmadams@hiwaay.net wrote:
Once upon a time, Alexandre Oliva aoliva@redhat.com said:
On Sep 19, 2005, Chris Adams cmadams@hiwaay.net wrote:
Once upon a time, Alexandre Oliva aoliva@redhat.com said:
On Sep 18, 2005, Jim Cornette fct-cornette@insight.rr.com wrote:
It is my understanding that the /boot partition has to be on a primary partition.
Nope, not true. It works just fine as a logical partition.
Only if you write GRUB (or some other "smart" boot loader) to the MBR.
Again, not true. It works for me on hda5 and hda6, each a /boot for a different installation of Fedora, and each one can chain-load the other, so both work just fine.
What is the MBR boot loader? The standard DOS/Windows MBR (on a dual boot system) will not boot a logical partition.
Oh, I do have grub installed in the MBR as well, loading the rest of GRUB out of the extended partitions.
Alexandre Oliva wrote:
On Sep 19, 2005, Chris Adams cmadams@hiwaay.net wrote:
Once upon a time, Alexandre Oliva aoliva@redhat.com said:
On Sep 18, 2005, Jim Cornette fct-cornette@insight.rr.com wrote:
It is my understanding that the /boot partition has to be on a primary partition.
Nope, not true. It works just fine as a logical partition.
Only if you write GRUB (or some other "smart" boot loader) to the MBR.
Again, not true. It works for me on hda5 and hda6, each a /boot for a different installation of Fedora, and each one can chain-load the other, so both work just fine.
Interesting thing to test out. I'll have to try chainloading the installation which I have on an extended partition. I always loaded it in MBR because it gave a warning if ever I selected it as the location to install grub. Thanks for the lead.
Jim
On Sun, 2005-09-18 at 08:55 -0400, Jim Cornette wrote:
It is my understanding that the /boot partition has to be on a primary partition.
Only if you write grub to it and use the "classic" MBR.
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Alexandre Oliva -
Chris Adams -
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams -
Jim Cornette -
korgull