troubles on install - seems hardware issue

[mastablasta]

So we have this old maschine that was upgraded and upgraded since the windows 98 era until all that was left form the first build was a 10 GB hard disk and the box. the disk was devided into two parts about 50/50 and long time ago it even had a dual boot between Red hat and win98 (red hat was dropped as we couldn't get dial up modem to work). later the 5GB part was taken by windows xp home. computer also had another disk about 150 GB WD. all was FAT32 format (no NTFS). in spring this year the computer started to behave strange. shutting itself down running out of system disk space (yeah XP was really cramed in there). we bought a new one eventally (with Suse that got replaced by Kubuntu). At the same time we found this old one cought a virus so it got a bitdefender rescue disk full clean and was then put to rest - temporarily. computer was behaving a bit strange once before when we tried to build in a brand new 750 GB hard disk and clone system drive to it or install a fresh copy of the OS on it.

i've been on holidays with a bit of time on my hands and decided to have another look at it. the computer had about 23GB unformatted disk space on the 150GB drive, has 1GB DDR2 ram and AMD 64 Athlon 3800 - 2.4Ghz single core. the GPU is ATI Radeon 9200 128MB. i think there is also nvidia onboard GPU but it's turned off. BIOS to boot of course. the idea was to put Kubutnu on empty unformatted disk space on the larger disk and then add a boot loader to the smaller disk where when i have more time windows XP could maybe get repaired (computer has an old scaner and printer on - while printer likely works in linux i am not sure about the scanner)


first 13.04 64bit Kubuntu from USB - it's what i had on the stick. installer crashed when at about 66% of install. no data why exactly crashed. crashed 2 times.i wasn't really watching the whole process.

then a day later 13.10 64bit from USB - it didn't want to boot kernel panic, said it can't extract the image. file error and what not. checked the stick on netbook works fine.

i forgot to take 64bit image of 13.10 with me to create a DVD but i did have a 32bit 12.04.3 LTS already burned on DVD. since i plan to use it for watching youtube it doesn't matter if it uses older stuff (though i have to say in KDE it would be goot to have latest version as it good a bit of imporvement in speed and i am not sure if the improvements are implemented in 12.04). install goes ahead and crashes only this time i see where it crashed. it crashed when it was copying GRUB to the smaller disk (sda). so i ran it again but this time putting grub on sdb. this time install finished. BIOS recognised the disk as first boot and booted form it. "funny thing" install suddenly recognised windows XP on sda (before sda was just unformated disk space - it didn't recognise FAT32 parittions there)

my questions
- is the small HDD dead? the grub seems to be there but is corrupt i mean it couldn't boot when i tried to.
- why installer in 13.10 and 13.04 didn't say exactly what went wrong for it to crash or at leats at what step? it would save me a couple of hours of fiddling.
- why it couldn't boot from 13.10 image (could not expand the image file) but could do it form 13.04 before - is something wrong with USB stick? or does this indicate some motherboard hardware issue? note i did change that casper file name and removed the.efi in the end otherwise it just gets stuck. i told the Lili creator that according to ubutnu developers that's a bug in USB image creating program.

anyway we'll see how it goes. hopefully this one works well enough to watch an occasional you tube video. and perhaps act as openVPN server. if it has more issues it will get canibalized for parts and his long and glorious 14 or 15 year career will come to an end.

[oshunluvr]

Shot in the dark here: Could be a problem with the way your MBR has been abused by Adobe. Short version: Adobe used to use part of the MBR (sector 32) that windows didn't use to store customer info. If it's there, grub-install fails because the space should be blank and usable but isn't. This wasn't an issue with earlier versions of grub because this space wasn't used then.

Assuming this is the actual problem, you can backup your MBR, wipe sector 32 (or everything except the partition table), and try again. I did it without any trouble. Problem is the potential to lose data if you aren't very sure of your actions. You've been warned!

From a LiveUSB stick with persistence (so you can save a backup file):

Backup MBR:
sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=~/mbrbackup bs=512 count=63

Erase everything except the partition table:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=62 seek=1

After this, re-install grub on sda and see if it works.

To recover previous state, restore old MBR:
sudo dd if=~/mbrbackup of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=63

Please remember, they call "dd" data destroyer for a reason!

[Frank616]

computer was behaving a bit strange once before when we tried to build in a brand new 750 GB hard disk and clone system drive to it or install a fresh copy of the OS on it.

Not sure if I am understanding this correctly or not. However, I do remember that I had to retire an old box similar to what you are describing as it would not accept HDD over about 300 something GB. BIOS issues. All kinds of strange things happened on it as well when I put in a bigger disk, as the BIOS could only count so high for sectors on the disk, then the counter would roll over to zero, and it would start again, merrily writing who knows where.

What is your BIOS capable of seeing on that machine? If it is a BIOS issue, Windows may get around this using a device driver?

Now, with that said, mine too is a shot in the dark, as I am most certainly not an expert.

Frank.

[SteveRiley]

Given the continued number of reported problems not only here but on other forums too, I'm convinced that the current state of GRUB is quite bad. It seems to croak on anything other than simple partition configurations and frequently renders machines unbootable.

Fortunately, as more and more machines are replaced with those running UEFI, we can ditch GRUB for good and replace it with the simple and reliable rEFInd. Its configuration file is a dream, and rEFInd's boot loader automatically detects all operating systems on all partitions.

[oshunluvr]

Given the continued number of reported problems not only here but on other forums too, I'm convinced that the current state of GRUB is quite bad. It seems to croak on anything other than simple partition configurations and frequently renders machines unbootable.

Fortunately, as more and more machines are replaced with those running UEFI, we can ditch GRUB for good and replace it with the simple and reliable rEFInd. Its configuration file is a dream, and rEFInd's boot loader automatically detects all operating systems on all partitions.

Haters gonna hate...

...seriously: I found out about this little problem when trying to dual install to my old Dell lappy. To be fair: Adobe and Flexnet pulling this shenanigan is more irritating than having to re-install GRUB. Personally, I found GRUB to be somewhat of a PITA, but once set properly I rarely have to mess with it. Admittedly, I don't rely on GRUBs default behavior per se. Instead, I have a dedicated install to manage GRUB and all subsequent installs I either don't install GRUB at all if that option exists, or I install it to a secondary drive so my working GRUB isn't fscked.

[SteveRiley]

Haters gonna hate...

Who, me?

Adobe and Flexnet pulling this shenanigan

I had no idea about this nasty little trick. No part of the MBR has ever been set aside for "vendor" use. That's terrible behavior.

I have a dedicated install to manage GRUB and all subsequent installs I either don't install GRUB at all if that option exists, or I install it to a secondary drive so my working GRUB isn't fscked.

What's noteworthy about your setup is that, even though you're introducing multiple instances of GRUB, your end result is that each GRUB instance behaves in a "simple" way, thus eliminating many of the complexities that confuse it.

[oshunluvr]

What's noteworthy about your setup is that, even though you're introducing multiple instances of GRUB, your end result is that each GRUB instance behaves in a "simple" way, thus eliminating many of the complexities that confuse it.

Precisely.

Rather simple to maintain and setup as well. I just installed Ubuntu server with bare minimum packages. Removed as many other packages as I easily could. Setup a 41_custom that points to grub.cfg on the other installs. Reduced the time-out to 3 sec.

As any single install gets updated, it updates it's own grub.cfg but leaves the "master" alone. If I wipe any one install and re-install, the master GRUB is unaffected. I only mess the the master GRUB when I add or remove a bootable device or partition. I boot directly into the master GRUB install once or twice a year to update the kernel.

Also; I used to have to go through 3 reboots to boot to a USB device from my BIOS. With the above setup, I also added a USB boot stanza to the master GRUB so now a single reboot gets me to the USB boot.

Cake.

[mastablasta]

well soem itnerestign thoughts and advice here...
it seems grub on sda got written but only partially. i am thinking (when i have time again) to do try and to a boot fix on windows (restoring MBR), see if i can get windows to boot. it seems windows was recognised by Kubuntu but the space there is still shown as unformatted. wonder if the data on those two fat32 partition is sitll there.

interesitng thing about this adobe...

another thing if i can get windows up is to search for bios upgrade and perform it. hopefully this will get widnows XP back. it can still be good for some games. :-D
linux should have full support for this card and the card is running well in the OS (kubuntu is very responsive with effects turned on) but is doing poor job when watching flash on you tube or in some games.ok the games i trie dmight not be optimised well. not all opensource are.

printer was recognised. scanner was recognised and is supposed to have good support but needs windows firmware file. camera is working, sund is good. all in all quite good experience.

as fo rthe odl disk it oculd be that it was dying as i had issues appearing in windows (random freezes, reboots) which we attributed to posisble viruses (seems to be confirmed with bitdefender rescue disk scan) and also old age. i stopped maintaining it when i moved out of that place...which was quite a few years ago.

mashcine might need a bit bigger disk though for any more serious use. for now we will just let it be as it is. possibyl try to save winXP so the kids can play a game or two on it. morrowind ran just fine and plenty of other old, but good ones.

[Buddlespit]

You can look into wine, which will run almost anything Windows related in Linux. I run World of *Tanks, Warplanes and Warcraft* and EVE Online. The wife runs World of Warcraft and an old 16-bit photo restoration program that she refuses to let go of (I also had to install a VBox with XP on her Win8.1 laptop to run her prog). Wine is the only reason I single boot today. I also tried PLayOnLinux, but found that everything ran much slower than on just straight wine. WineHQ can let you see how others set up their wine systems to run a particular Windows prog.

[mastablasta]

i know. when i have the time i am thinking Diablo or Diablo 2 they work well.