need help with grub

[toad]

Re: need help with grub

Oops, I missed that!

You installed grub into hd0,0, i.e. sda1

It pointed to something called /boot which it was looking for in /, i.e. sdc6 - NOT sdc1

[aged hippy]

Re: need help with grub

.... i really ought to try and use two fingers when i type...

[jwebster8]

Re: need help with grub

Oops, I missed that!

You installed grub into hd0,0, i.e. sda1

It pointed to something called /boot which it was looking for in /, i.e. sdc6 - NOT sdc1

Yeah, that seems like a pretty accurate statement

which brings us full circle to my original post in which I was trying to run Grub within the live CD to fix it, but the "find" command wasn't working

[Qqmike]

Re: need help with grub

I only quickly scanned this.
Sometimes, the installation is faulty and the GRUB files do NOT get installed into /boot/grub. That usually means a bad CD.
But if you say they are there (in your Kubuntu root filesyste, under /boot then /boot/grub), then re-check your syntax/typing in this statement:

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1

Looks like you have some spaces there. The only space should be after the word "find:"
grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
No other spaces.

What I know about 15 is here:
How To GRUB Methods - Toolkit
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3081671.0
--- GRUB Errors -- common errors and what causes them and how to fix them, Reply #23

[jwebster8]

Re: need help with grub

Yeah, the files were in /boot/grub

I could mount the directory after i booted into the live CD

I'm pretty sure my find syntax was ok, i tried it about a dozen times

I also installed and reinstalled intrepid several times with the same problem each time

so who knows...not me

[aged hippy]

Re: need help with grub

I also installed and reinstalled intrepid several times with the same problem each time

.... Possibly a Bad Burn?

[Qqmike]

Re: need help with grub

Hmmm...
Did you actually open /boot/grub and see stage1?
Now, during the install of Kubuntu, GRUB files would have also gone into the same partition as Kubuntu is in.
Then, later, you would manually copy those grub files into sdc1 and set up your boot from there.
In sdc1, you must have
/boot
(which has the kernel & initrd files)
and under that
/boot/grub
and in /boot/grub
those several grub files you copied from Kubuntu /boot/grub.
All correct?

You might just explore your drives (to pass the time).
Live Kubuntu CD
Konsole
sudo grub
grub> geometry (hd<press the TAB key now
and you'll get a list of them
(or, explore each one and just do each one grub> geometry (hd0), grub> geometry (hd1), grub> geometry (hd2), etc.)
Just to see what you might see, see the device naming for yourself (i.e., how both BIOS and GRUB see your drives).

[jwebster8]

Re: need help with grub

Hmmm...
Did you actually open /boot/grub and see stage1?
Now, during the install of Kubuntu, GRUB files would have also gone into the same partition as Kubuntu is in.
Then, later, you would manually copy those grub files into sdc1 and set up your boot from there.
In sdc1, you must have
/boot
(which has the kernel & initrd files)
and under that
/boot/grub
and in /boot/grub
those several grub files you copied from Kubuntu /boot/grub.
All correct?

yeah, the files were in /boot/grub

Let me see if I can explain it better...

I installed kubuntu 8.10 into my existing partitions that I was using for previous kubuntu installs, which were all on hard disk sdc

when i ran the installer, I chose to manually configure the partitions mainly because i wanted to preserve my /home partition.

in the manual dialog, i chose to mount the existing partitions as
sdc1 = /boot
sdc5 = swap
sdc6 = /
sdc7 = /home

I've done this many times without incident before

Then I hit continue and Intrepid installed without any problems, it never mentioned grub, so i assumed that it just did it automatically as it had in the past.

when the install was finished, I rebooted. But the boot halted at Stage 1.5 with error 2.

It didn't make it to the screen where you choose which OS to load, so I couldn't hit 'c' to get to a grub console. The only way I could get into anything was using the live CD

now, when I booted using the liveCD, kubuntu came up and I could get a konsole going.

the livecd doesn't mount all/any of the hard drives, so to see if grub was installed into the /boot partition, I had to mount it, so I

sudo mkdir /media/boot
sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /media/boot

At this point I could cd into /media/boot and the kernals were there and the grub directory was there and the stage files were in it etc...
that was all ok as far as i could tell

Then I started grub and tried to follow the directions in the GrubHowto that i linked to in the first post.

when I ran Grub>find /media/boot/grub/stage1, it returned a File not Found error. I assume that what 'find' does is point grub to the directory where all the files are that
grub needs in order to properly configure the mbr. The 'find' command kept saying 'File not found'...

which is where I came in.

Then from toads suggestion, i got a cd of supergrub and ran it. I chose the option to search for and use any existing grub configuration files, i ran it and it worked, now I'm booting fine.

You might just explore your drives (to pass the time).
Live Kubuntu CD
Konsole
sudo grub
grub> geometry (hd<press the TAB key now
and you'll get a list of them
(or, explore each one and just do each one grub> geometry (hd0), grub> geometry (hd1), grub> geometry (hd2), etc.)
Just to see what you might see, see the device naming for yourself (i.e., how both BIOS and GRUB see your drives).

I did this, and everything is as i expected except maybe this...

when i was doing the manual partitioning, I chose ext3 for the linux filesystems. Grub>geometry (hd2) says that the filesystem type is ext2fs. Is ext2fs he same as ext3?

[jwebster8]

Re: need help with grub

I also installed and reinstalled intrepid several times with the same problem each time

.... Possibly a Bad Burn?

Maybe, i didn't check it, I'll do that if i get some time

[Qqmike]

Re: need help with grub

and without the "media" in the string:
grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
?

I see sdc1.
But again, back to Kubuntu in sdc6, is there a /boot/grub and all files there, too?

[jwebster8]

Re: need help with grub

OK, this is interesting

Grub> find /boot/grub/stage1

Error 15: File not found

#ls /boot/grub/

default
device.map
e2fs_stage1_5
...
stage1
...

Does this seem to support the theory that the grub that came with intrepid is buggy?

[jwebster8]

Re: need help with grub

to answer your other question

I only have one /boot folder and it's mounted from sdc1

here's the entry from mtab

/dev/sdc1 /boot ext3 rw,relatime 0 0

[Qqmike]

Re: need help with grub

I don't know, yet, what's wrong.

Of course, it looks like you are doing the find correctly--
(from the GRUB Manual 0.97):

find filename
GRUB searches all mountable partitions and prints the list of the devices which contain the file. The file filename should be an absolute file name.

[jwebster8]

Re: need help with grub

Hey, I've been busy and haven't been able to fiddle around with this, but to continue...

Qqmike gave me an idea, 'Grub>find' can be used to find any file right?

So I tried searching for a file on my / partition that I knew was there...

grub> find /etc/mtab
 (hd2,5)

It apparently works fine on my '/' partition, but...

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
 Error 15: file not found

The grub that came with kubuntu doesn't seem to be finding my /boot partition (the partition I mount at /boot).

The grub that came on the supergrub CD apparently did see it.

Since my system is working now this isn't a huge issue for me, but it's curious, and if anyone is interested in troubleshooting it let me know what I can do to help.

[Qqmike]

Re: need help with grub

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3099193.0

I think that's it, my friend. Sorry to imply that you might have been imagining things! See my post there; there's a good chance that your case falls somewhere in that. I had to install 8.10 myself into an existing multiboot configuration (separate GRUB partition setup) to see this up close, as you did.