grub error 18

[Jean]

Hello,

Situation: Compaq Deskpro pentium 2. Windows xp on first harddrive, 40 gig, a maxtor 300 gig ntfs and a dvd burner. The bios has had an update and for that 300 gig I had to use maxblast else windows would not see it whole.

I tried to install another maxtor 320 gig for exclusively for ubuntu. Installation goes well but after reboot I get grub error 18.
I tried to boot first harddisk with live cd and with ultimate boot cd but I also get error 18.

I read this wiki about error 18 http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/GRUB. It says 'This can be circumvented by creating a boot partition at the beginning of the disk that is completely within the first 1023 cylinders of the harddrive. This partition will contain the kernel.'

But I thought if I let it have that whole 320 maxtor for itself that boot partition is already at the beginning of the disk.

Now hardware makes me nervous and I don't want to go trying a lot of things. Waht should I do? I have the ultimate boot disk and it contains utils like maxblast. Can maxblast help me. Or do I need to do something else.

Greatly appreciated.

[dibl]

Re: grub error 18

Not an unusual situation for a first try at putting Linux on an added hard drive.

You may have multiple issues entangled here, so I'll try first to give some general guidance.

1. IDE vs. SATA hard drives. You didn't say, but if the Win XP drive is an IDE/PATA drive, and you're adding SATA drives, that's a very big deal for Linux. You can safely consider your IDE drive to be a "Grub magnet" for the Kubuntu installer. For the noob, I would advise you to not even bother thinking of installing Grub on a SATA drive, when there is also an IDE drive in the system.

2. SATA modes. In your BIOS, you should have some choices for the mode for each SATA drive. Linux likes some modes more than others, apparently. I have good luck with AHCI.

3. Grub vs. BIOS -- counting drives. For reasons that I'm not engineer enough to explain, the sequence you set in BIOS does not always seem to be accepted when the Linux installer sets up Grub. Every time I install, I have to change my Kubuntu boot menu to show it on (hd1) notwithstanding that it is on the drive that is the first one listed in BIOS (but there is also an IDE drive and I think it gets to be #1 no matter what BIOS says). So, you can highlight the menu line that is supposed to boot Kubuntu, press "e" to edit it, and change the drive number one digit up or down from what it says, and maybe learn something that way, regarding where Grub thinks your kernel is.

I hope this sheds a little light for you. Here's a great resource for trouble shooting menu and Grub issues:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3081671.0

[Jean]

Re: grub error 18

Thanks (again) dibl.

These drives are all IDE, the compaq is too old for sata. I first bought a 500 gig but I had to bring it back and got a 320 instead, hardware too old for such a disk.

Say dibl, aren't all my problems over when I let ubuntu install itself on the first harddisk, together with xp? That one has som 30 gig free. That way I would get a dual boot menu too, wouldn't I? And can I just do that or do I need to defrag first?

[dibl]

Re: grub error 18

Say dibl, aren't all my problems over ...

I'd never go that far but that is indeed the "natural" dual boot setup. But, try the experiment I described in #3 above, if you can. If the only problem with your present layout is to correctly ID the hard drive and partition, then a simple edit to the /boot/grub/menu.lst file will fix it and you can proceed with it as-is. I just looked up error 18, and it appears to be related to the formatting of the big hard drive -- it says you've exceeded the number of cylinders that your BIOS can handle. Uh-oh, I think maybe you've got the "old PC/new hard drive" problem there. :P

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...#Stage2-errors

That may not be a fixable situation .... maybe Mr. Google can help -- maybe there's a BIOS update for that model.

[Qqmike]

Re: grub error 18

“Say dibl, aren't all my problems over when I let ubuntu install itself on the first harddisk, together with xp? That one has som 30 gig free. That way I would get a dual boot menu too, wouldn't I? And can I just do that or do I need to defrag first?”

That would seem to be one, we hope safe, way to go. Yep a defrag never hurts and now would be a good time to do it.

Herman has summarized this Error 18 stuff for us here:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/p15.htm#18

We all hate Error 18, a real pita. I get them now and then with flash drives, but so far a GRUB re-install always fixes them (root – setup – quit). Your case is probably different, but it never hurts to re-install GRUB (see the how-to dibl referenced).

EDIT which is this one:
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3081671.0

[AmyRose]

Re: grub error 18

Well, I've found that the best way to use large hard drives in old computers is to skip Windows altogether--just jumper the drive to lie about its size to the BIOS, then install Linux with a small /boot partition being the first on the disk. Windows seems to make things overly complicated.

Sorry this probably doesn't help at all, but it was one of the reasons I gave up on Windows years ago.

[Jean]

Re: grub error 18

Thank you all for your help.

Had a friend helping out here. That drive and that bios just don't work together. Trying to boot with super grub disk to ubuntu on that drive did not work. So dibl, I never got to see any ubuntu bootmenu on that drive.
Trying to resize the windows partition on the c drive failed, gparted and the resize program from the ultimate boot cd both were unable to resize it.
My options then were, repartition the first drive and reinstall windows and then ubuntu on it, or just format the new drive ntfs and keep windows on that machine.

So I choose the latter, saves me a lot of work installing two os'es from scratch. And from my main machine here I am in ubuntu and I can access the whole stuff fine using cifs.

Maybe in the future...

Thanks and a good day to you all.