Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

[Objekt]

Kubuntu 8.04 has issues. While I can run it off a live DVD, if I install it to a hard drive, it doesn't work.

When I install Kubuntu, I only have one hard drive in the system. It's an 80 GB (nominal, works out to around 60 GB actual) Maxtor IDE. I've tried both Manual config and letting Kubuntu figure out the partitioning - doesn't matter, same result.

After the (very lengthy!) install completes, and I reboot, I get

GRUB Loading stage1.5.
GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 15

and then nothing else happens. I don't even get a bash prompt - things just stop cold. I can type stuff but can't execute any commands, so I have to reboot.

The system is a fairly old one (Athlon XP 3200-based, 1 GB DDR RAM, Radeon X1650 video card, Abit NF7-S 2.0 motherboard) and the only previous version of Kubuntu I've had any luck with was 7.04. 7.10 and 8.40 will both run off a live DVD, but so far only 7.04 produces a usable installation.

FWIW, I've tried this both by overwriting a previous failed install of Kubuntu (that is, keeping the partitions) and also reformatting the partitions.

What's going on here? I can't believe there have been two successive updates to Kubuntu which simply don't work! I have just wasted several hours on the agonizingly slow installation process on both 7.10 and 8.04, so it would be nice if I could somehow "rescue" the Kubuntu 8.04 install I just did.

Fortunately, I have another machine, plus a Windows XP boot volume in a removable hard drive, to use so I can post & read responses in the meantime.

[gnowak]

Re: Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

try googling: result

[Qqmike]

Re: Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

Here's the principles/diagnostics:
How To GRUB Methods - Toolkit
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3081671.0
Reply #23--GRUB Errors -- common errors and what causes them and how to fix them.

You'll have to do some detective work to track down which device (hdx,y) in your boot menu (/boot/grub/menu.lst) is wrong. The Konsole command sudo fdisk -lu is useful.
Please continue to post back here (not under the how-to).

[Objekt]

Re: Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

Er, this is rather interesting. There appears to be no GRUB folder at all where it should be!

I have a nifty little utility that lets me mount Linux volumes in Windows XP. So here's what the Kubuntu 8.04's boot folder looks like (Q: is the letter I've assigned to that hard drive):

Q:\boot>dir
Volume in drive Q has no label.
Volume Serial Number is E443-2A93

Directory of Q:\boot

18-Jul-08 17:08 <DIR> .
18-Jul-08 16:45 <DIR> ..
10-Apr-08 10:51 899,892 System.map-2.6.24-16-generic
10-Apr-08 10:51 422,607 abi-2.6.24-16-generic
10-Apr-08 10:51 79,964 config-2.6.24-16-generic
22-Apr-08 17:30 7,765,635 initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic.bak
28-Sep-07 04:06 103,204 memtest86+.bin
10-Apr-08 10:51 1,904,248 vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic
18-Jul-08 17:08 8,166,405 initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic
7 File(s) 19,341,955 bytes
2 Dir(s) 13,338,820,608 bytes free

That's not all. I checked the md5 sum of my Kubuntu 8.04 live DVD .iso against the official one. No match! I guess I have to download it again. Ugh.

[Qqmike]

Re: Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

Yes, try a fresh download.
I've heard of this before--a bad CD/download causing no /boot/grub files.
The GRUB thing is a big one! -- You should definitely have them GRUB files! And if they are not present, you have to wonder what other files or directories might be messed up or missing.

[Objekt]

Re: Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

I Bittorrented Kubuntu 8.04.1 overnight, and just calculated the md5 hash. This time, it's a good download. So, I think this story will have a happy ending. Thanks!

[Qqmike]

Re: Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

Good. Let us know.

[Objekt]

Re: Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

The install took a VERY long time, but it did finish, and booted just fine.

Today I tried to set up multiple OS booting with GAG, the graphical boot manager. BIG mistake! The damn thing apparently fried my Linux boot volume, because now when I try to boot from it, I get the old "Boot sector not found" error.

I rebooted from the Kubuntu 8.04.1 live DVD & ran Gparted. The proper partition (happens to be sda1) is flagged as "boot" yet it WILL NOT boot.

How do I fix this?

(FWIW, GAG is useless. It claimed there was "no boot sector" on my Linux boot partition, and wouldn't boot Windows XP either.)

Obviously, I need a different tool for my multi-boot setup. My menu.lst contains some suggestions on editing it for multi-boot under GRUB, but I'm not sure of the exact text to use for my particular system. I assume "HD0" is the first hard drive according to BIOS, which in my system happens to be the first IDE drive. However, I also have two SATA drives, one of which contains my Windows XP boot volume. I'm pretty sure it's the first one (probably number 0). So what would this be called under GRUB?

[Qqmike]

Re: Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

First, I had very bad luck with GAG,and I avoid it.

Second, you should be able to fix this by re-installing GRUB.
You do so using three GRUB commands: root, setup, quit.

The how-to shows how.

Herman's GRUB page is also good for GRUB and dual booting, as is psychocats.

Bigpond, home: http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/
Click on his GRUB page.
BTW, he talks about GAG -- I'd ovoid that.

Psychocats: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/index.php


BTW, GRUB is the best thing I can think of for setting up a dual or multi-boot.
Many of us do it to an extreme, booting half a dozen distros or more, from internal hard drive, from flash drive, from external drive, and from combinations thereof.

You will have to find out the device naming for your drives, the (hdx,y)'s.
(At Konsole) sudo fdsik -lu
will help, as will
sudo grub
grub> geometry (hd0)
grub> geometry (hd1)
grub> geometry (hd2)
or use TAB clompletion
grub> geometry (hd<Press the TAB key now>
(see the how-to linked in a post above, which also explains the (hdx,y) notation for GRUB)

Another idea:, set up a separate GRUB partition. See Reply #10 of my how-to. It contains ONLY GRUB files (no kernel files) and is an easy way to manage the booting of several Linux distros on any number of hard drives).

You can do this.

[Objekt]

Re: Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

I tried "sudo fdisk -lu". There is no * under the "boot" column for either of my Linux partitions on the IDE hard drive. So fdisk doesn't think it's a boot volume.

Wonder why gparted did? It clearly shows a "boot" flag for the volume in question. Odd.

For grub, I think you mean to type "sudo grub" because if you run grub in non-sudo mode, all the "geometry" commands get you is errors.

I'm posting this from the Live DVD version of Kubuntu 8.04.1, seeing as my installed version won't boot. That means the hard disks are all mounted as read-only by default. Next, I have to figure out how to mount the volume in question (which Grub refers to as "hd2" it turns out) in such a way that I can make the necessary changes to cause it to boot.

[Qqmike]

Re: Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

"For grub, I think you mean to type "sudo grub" because if you run grub in non-sudo mode, all the "geometry" commands get you is errors"

Yes. In my post above, I said:
sudo grub
grub> geometry (hd0)
etc etc


You don't have to mount the drives to do GRUB work with
sudo grub
In fact, it can be argued that it's better not to.
However, if you want to edit menu.lst, then you must mount that partition.
(Again, see the how-to for that.)

Strange that sudo fdisk -lu didn't show a "*" as the boot flag on those partitions.
You might try removing that flag then putting it there again (doing this in GParted live CD).


One cautionary note: BIOS & GRUB sometimes get mixed up a bit when you have a mixture of drives that are IDE and SATA (instead of having all IDE or all SATA). But geometry should keep them sorted for you. dibl has a post here about dealing with such; maybe I can find it for you. But I would plow ahead with geometry and re-installing GRUB and forcing it to go, by trial and error if necessary.

[Objekt]

Re: Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

sigh. This is really frustrating.

I just tried rebooting after I thought I fixed the Linux volume. No such luck. I got another look at the error message - actually, it's "No active partition found - reboot your system." I expect that's the BIOS's way of saying "WTF?"

I didn't see anything on those pages about restoring an active partition. It was all very confusing. I'd really like to fix the install I have, but it's looking like I'll have to just reinstall Kubuntu altogether.

[Qqmike]

Re: Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

"No active partition found - reboot your system."

That usually means that the correct drive is not set in BIOS (to be the first bootable drive--the one with your GRUB installed to its MBR and the one where GParted set a boot flag on your Linux partition).

You shouldn't need this, but I'll mention it: I believe Super Grub Disk has an option in it to set/make a partition active. But first, I'd suspect the BIOS setting is incorrect. (At least, that's the case on my Intel 915GAVL board when I get that error message-- that BIOS is trying to boot the wrong drive.)

[Objekt]

Re: Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

Super Grub fixed it. Tomorrow I'll get GRUB set up so I have the option of booting into Windows XP also.

But now I'm having another odd problem: I can't see anything on any of my NTFS-formatted drives, including the Windows boot volume. Weird.

It's probably something to do with permissions, as in the drives aren't getting mounted correctly when I use the Storage Media explorer in Kubuntu.

[Qqmike]

Re: Can run from Live DVD; install; Grub Error 15 on attempt to boot

"Super Grub fixed it. Tomorrow I'll get GRUB set up so I have the option of booting into Windows XP also."

Good.


As for Windows drive, mine is mounted "Automatic" (Disk & Filesystems, right-click, Modify, at the top there's the option). I have no entry in fstab. It just works in HH. Search here as there have been many posts on that (ntfs-3g, mount Windows, etc.). You need ntfs-3g, maybe try the Automatic in D & F, maybe edit fstab. It's fixable.
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...action=search2