LiveCD issue and GRUB question

[komega]

Hello all,

I've had a lot of issue installing Kubuntu on an external hard drive but I've almost got them all worked out.

The first problem that I need to ask is about restarting or otherwise shutting down my computer from Kubuntu. I'm specifically referring to when I'm running of the LiveCD (actually, it's a LiveDVD). Everything works fine until I tell it to restart or turn off. Then, after going through some graphics, it gets to a point where the CD tray pops out and I'm told to remove the CD, close the tray and press enter. I do all of that but nothing happens. It just hangs. The text doesn't even go away.

The other problem is that after I successfully install Kubuntu on my external USB hard drive I get a GRUB error 15. I do not know why that is happening, I install GRUB to hd1 (which is my external) and GRUB actually boots up at launch (since it's higher than my computer's normal hard drive) but when I select Ubuntu (no idea why it's not Kubuntu) it gives me the error.

I plan on going through this: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub-er....xml#doc_chap4

I just have a few questions:
1- when it says, "Next, chroot into your Gentoo system and do a listing of the available files to see what kernel images you have available:" What does it mean by chroot into my system (obviously Gentoo is what whoever originally asked was using)? Just type chroot or is it a function that I don't know? Also, is it still chroot in Kubuntu?

2- It says, "If your kernel is missing make sure that you compiled a kernel (using genkernel or manually):"
A- how do I know if my Kernel is missing?
B- can someone give me explicit instruction to use genkernel or manually compile my kernel?

3- It says, "Also make sure that the kernel line in your grub.conf file is referring to that partition (either explicitly or implicitly)." How?

4- It says that a problem can arise if BIOS ignores the disk that the kernel or GRUB stages resides on. Can I assume that since GRUB is on the same disk as the kernel and GRUB at least starts that this is not the issue?

I'm sorry for the very newb questions but that's what I am. I was proud of myself because I had several other issues that I fixed on my own (i.e. Windows could no longer boot).

Thanks very much.

[askrieger]

Re: LiveCD issue and GRUB question

Sorry for the delay in responding to your questions. I suspect that the hanging behavior when the live DVD tries to reboot your system has to do with the current contents of your MBR (the Master Boot Record on your hard drive). Can you boot up in windoze from a cold start with no DVD in the drive?

Your second problem has to do with the location of your Linux files. Grub error 15 "File not Found" means that GRUB, the "GRand Unified Bootloader" was unable to find the Linux kernel image in the location that it was told by the entry in your "/boot/grub/menu.lst" file. This may be due to the fact that you're trying to run Linux from an external drive. Normally, external drives have to be "mounted" by Linux AFTER the system comes up. In this context, "mounted" means that the file system has to be recognized, and a place for it has to be allocated. The boot loaqder knows how to do this for normal hard drives, but it may not be able to do that for an external drive (e.g. a drive that connects through a USB or parallel port. If Linux itself is located on an external drive, you've created a Catch 22 situation. Grub cant find Linux because Linux has to be read in, uncompressed, and started before it can mount the file system that holds the files that have to be read in and uncompressed.

I would suggest that you stop wasting your time with the Gentoo document that you're using for two reasons. Most important, Ubuntu is not Gentoo. Much of the infromation in the Gentoo manual will be irrelevant or wrong when you try to apply it to Ubuntu. Second, Gentoo is probably the least "newbie friendly" distribution in the entire Linux universe (as you might have surmised from the jargon level in their manual).

In order to give us some information to work with, I suggest that you take the following steps:
(1) Boot your system with the live DVD.
(2) Start Konqueror, click on "home folder" and when Konq comes up press the F9 key to get a directory tree in the left sidebar.
(3) See if you can find your external drive. You may not find very many entries at all, that's because (in their infinite wisdom) the Ubuntu developers decided to hide a lot of things that you need to do even the most elementary level of trouble shooting from the tender sensibilities of new users. If not, enter "/etc/" (without the quotes) in the location at the top of the Konqueror window. Then, please post the contents of the file "/etc/fstab" so that someone here can tell you what to do next.

[komega]

Re: LiveCD issue and GRUB question

Sorry that I took so long to do this. College is taking a lot out of me and exams are just...

Anyways. I can start Windows without a problem without a DVD.

I had difficulties before but that was because GRUB was installed on the Windows partition of my IDE hard drive. I used the repair function from a Windows CD to fix that.

I did what you said but could not find the external hard drive. That seems odd because when I plug in the USB cable it automatically mounts itself and it's recognized by fdisk -l. Also, the installer knows it's there because I can install to it.

The contents of /etc/fstab

unionfs / unionfs rw 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nosuid,nodev 0 0

I didn't know if this was relevant too so I'll post it anyways-
The contents of /etc/fstab.pre-uuid
# UNCONFIGURED FSTAB FOR BASE SYSTEM

I'm not sure if you're right about the catch 22 situation. My reasoning is that the USB drive can be seen by BIOS. That means the computer can at least recognize that it's there. Also, I purposely keep installing GRUB to the external drive (that way I can actually take the drive with me and have my OS anywhere, which is the whole point of this). GRUB keeps starting up (even if I don't get a command screen for GRUB) which means that the external hard drive is being read. Perhaps GRUB is looking in the wrong place.

So, I would greatly appreciate any help that people would be willing to give.

Sorry for the delay in responding to your questions. I suspect that the hanging behavior when the live DVD tries to reboot your system has to do with the current contents of your MBR (the Master Boot Record on your hard drive). Can you boot up in windoze from a cold start with no DVD in the drive?

Your second problem has to do with the location of your Linux files. Grub error 15 "File not Found" means that GRUB, the "GRand Unified Bootloader" was unable to find the Linux kernel image in the location that it was told by the entry in your "/boot/grub/menu.lst" file. This may be due to the fact that you're trying to run Linux from an external drive. Normally, external drives have to be "mounted" by Linux AFTER the system comes up. In this context, "mounted" means that the file system has to be recognized, and a place for it has to be allocated. The boot loaqder knows how to do this for normal hard drives, but it may not be able to do that for an external drive (e.g. a drive that connects through a USB or parallel port. If Linux itself is located on an external drive, you've created a Catch 22 situation. Grub cant find Linux because Linux has to be read in, uncompressed, and started before it can mount the file system that holds the files that have to be read in and uncompressed.

I would suggest that you stop wasting your time with the Gentoo document that you're using for two reasons. Most important, Ubuntu is not Gentoo. Much of the infromation in the Gentoo manual will be irrelevant or wrong when you try to apply it to Ubuntu. Second, Gentoo is probably the least "newbie friendly" distribution in the entire Linux universe (as you might have surmised from the jargon level in their manual).

In order to give us some information to work with, I suggest that you take the following steps:
(1) Boot your system with the live DVD.
(2) Start Konqueror, click on "home folder" and when Konq comes up press the F9 key to get a directory tree in the left sidebar.
(3) See if you can find your external drive. You may not find very many entries at all, that's because (in their infinite wisdom) the Ubuntu developers decided to hide a lot of things that you need to do even the most elementary level of trouble shooting from the tender sensibilities of new users. If not, enter "/etc/" (without the quotes) in the location at the top of the Konqueror window. Then, please post the contents of the file "/etc/fstab" so that someone here can tell you what to do next.

[komega]

Re: LiveCD issue and GRUB question

Has anybody successfully installed Kubuntu to an external USB hard drive?

I know that GRUB is loading, but is it possible that GRUB is looking in the wrong place?

It seems odd that that would happen. If it looks in my only other hard drive it should find Windows and try to boot that. Or, it should look at the external hard drive and try to boot that.

I try going into my BIOS and change the hard drive boot order to put the external first but that doesn't seem to do anything. It seems unlikely to me but I'm not experienced in these areas, but could GRUB just be looking at whatever is first on my boot order? That would mean that GRUB would first look for a floppy drive (and not find one), then a CD-ROM drive (find one with no CD), and then look for the external. Could that be what's wrong.

I'd appreciate any help and/or advice you can give me. I will also definitely try to respond faster when people ask for information, I was just slow due to the stresses of making it through college.

Thanks.

[askrieger]

Re: LiveCD issue and GRUB question

I'm glad to see that my notion that a damaged MBR might be the cause of your problem rebooting from the Live-DVD was incorrect. Although that leaves me with no notion as to why you can't reboot once you remove the DVD.

It's also not clear to me what's happening when you try to boot from the external drive. The /etc/fstab that you quoted is the one on the Live-DVD, the file of interest for your Grub problem is the one on your external hard drive. If you have successfully installed Linux on the external drive, that drive will have a file system with an /etc directory which will have an fstab file which should have an entry for the external drive if you are to have any chance at all of booting from that drive.

Neither the fact that the BIOS knows that you have an external drive, nor the fact that a booted up Linux from your live CD can find the external drive is sufficient to allow GRUB to find the external drive EVEN IF GRUB WAS ACTUALLY LOADED INTO MEMORY FROM THAT DRIVE (by the BIOS). Grub will look at the /boot/grub/menu.list file (if it can find it) to try to load Linux (from the listed device) if the file system on the external drive has been mounted and if it has been identified correctly in the menu.list file.

[komega]

Re: LiveCD issue and GRUB question

Ah, I misunderstood what you asked me to do.

When I get back home (I'm on my lunch break at work right now), I will try to find the /etc/fstab for the external hard drive.

In the meantime, I have a question. Does GRUB trying to load an OS not mean that GRUB was loaded into memory by BIOS? If GRUB trying to load an OS means that GRUB was loaded into memory then it seems most likely that (from my admittedly very limited knowledge) that /boot/grub/menu.list isn't being directed to the right place. How would I go about changing that if that is the problem.

Again, thank you for the assistance. One day I will have my OS on an external hard drive and I will be proud.

Thanks.

[askrieger]

Re: LiveCD issue and GRUB question

Grub was loaded into memory by the BIOS, but I'm not sure whether that means that Grub can find either /bbot/grub/menu.list or /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.*. If Grub found the menu file, you should get a boot menu giving you something between 3 and 10 seconds (I always change it to 30) to choose between one or more Linux choices and windoze. In that case, the "file not found" error refers to the kernel. If you don't see the boot menu, the file that was not found was the menu. These would be two different kinds of errors. If Grub can't even find the menu, then (as I feared) the external drive can't be used by Grub. On the other hand, if you do see the menu, but Grub can't find /boot/vmlinuz* that just means you've got a typo in your menu.list file.

[komega]

Re: LiveCD issue and GRUB question

I, unfortunately, do not get a boot menu.

I don't understand how the drive couldn't be used by GRUB. It used to be a Mac hard drive but I reformatted the whole thing so that shouldn't matter. If you think it might help I could reformat it again more slowly so that everything is deleted rather than just a quick reformat.

I tried to find the /etc/fstab folder but was unable to. My external hard drive (after installing Kubuntu on it) doesn't even show up in the home folder.

I went into a terminal and checked that it was being found. fdisk confirmed that it was there. I tried to mount it but got this error:
can't find /dev/sdg in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

I also tried sdg1, sdg2, and sdg5 (the names of the specific partitions) with the same results.

Any ideas would, of course, be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[askrieger]

Re: LiveCD issue and GRUB question

I'm afraid that the news is bad. From the fact that the drive is named "sdg", or (at least) WAS "sdg" on one occasion when you started the computer, I surmise that the drive is now installed in a USB or eSATA housing. The problem is that such a drive will not ALWAYS be "sdg", depending on the random order in which signals are handled during startup it might be anything from "sda" to "sdz". Substitute the alphabetic equivalent of the total number of attached usb devices for 'z'. That is why you can't use an external drive as a boot device, at least, not on a Linux distribution (like Kubuntu) that uses a program called "Udev" to handle devices.

I'm not familiar with all the Linux distros out there, but the only one that I can think of offhand that MIGHT not use udev is Debian Sarge with a 2.4 kernel. Sarge is the recently obsoleted version of Debian. Unfortunately, Debian is a distribution for pros, or advanced amateurs. It is the basis for many other distros, including the *buntus, but they all use 2.6 kernels and udev.

Why not put the second hard drive into the computer itself? That way you can build a standard dual boot system. You will lose the capability to carry your OS with you, but you can store all your "stuff" on an external drive and at least carry that with you. If you want a portable Linux, I'd suggest Knoppix or Kanotix. Knoppix is a live CD based on Debian and has the reputation of running on almost any hardware that you can imagine.

[komega]

Re: LiveCD issue and GRUB question

This is probably a rather noobish question but I'm going to ask it anyways.

Is it possible that you're wrong about the problem being that my hard drive could be any letter from a to z? The reason I ask is because I'm booted up Linux probably about 50 times now to reinstall and change one or two settings hoping that it would work that time. Every single time, both according to the installer program and fdisk, my external USB hard drive was listed as being /dev/sdg. It was always g. And when I let the installer make the partitions itself it was always partition numbers 1, 2, and 5. It never changed.

I know it's a long shot, but perhaps you're wrong and there's some other problem.

I found this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=80811

I'm going to try doing that to see what happens. I've got nothing to lose.

Please tell me if you see something in that link that might need changing for Kubuntu or for this version.

Again, many thanks for all the help.

[komega]

Re: LiveCD issue and GRUB question

Hello all,

Unfortunately, I still have yet to find success with anything. Here's what I've done and what happened.

I went to this website: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent
I followed the Windows procedure to the letter without any hiccups and got a GRUB error 17.
I couldn't do the Linux procedure because I'm only running off of a LiveCD and thus unable (to my knowledge) to download and install syslinux and mtools. If someone could tell me how to download and install those packages with a LiveCD then I would happily try again. I would also try the suggestion to use lilo or mbr (at the bottom).

I also got a 2.5" IDE to 3.5" IDE adaptor. I plugged in my external and effectively made it an internal drive and tried to do a regular (via LiveCD) install. Unfortunately, that resulted in a GRUB error (I don't remember which one specifically but I think it was 15 or 18).

I was very hopeful about this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=80811
But that too hit a snag. During step 2 when the InstallCD is copying files and packages (but after it has already copied the OS (according to it)), it gets to about 85% done then says that it can't finish because it couldn't copy a certain file. If I hadn't been doing that at 1 AM I would've thought to write down the file that wouldn't copy. As it is, all I remember is that it was something like cyscopy. But I know that's not 100% right. I also know it's not the CD as I tried burning a completely different downloaded image and got the exact same error (and neither failed the defects test).

I will try to fill in the holes in the information I've just given you, but any more advice would be appreciated.

Tomorrow I'm going to try and get a laptop and plug my external in and install it that way. But by now I don't even hold out a lot of hope that that will work.

Thanks.

[komega]

Re: LiveCD issue and GRUB question

Hello once more.

I went to work today and tried to install Kubuntu on my external by actually putting my external hard drive in the laptop (i.e. I made it an internal drive). Unfortunately, the only available laptop was about 6 years old. I tried to install it but it took forever just to load from the LiveCD. Then, after about 45 minutes of waiting for everything to start up a window pops up that says that the KDE initializer unexpectedly failed will now stop.

I waited and nothing more happened.

So I tried again. First I checked the disk integrity and that was fine. After another 45 minutes of waiting, however, the same thing happened.

So, I would greatly appreciate more advice on what to try now.

Is it possible that just waiting the two days for Feisty Fawn will work? Any ideas on what I posted about last time, why that didn't work?

Thanks for the help.

[komega]

Re: LiveCD issue and GRUB question

Here's more information to work with:

First off, old information:

When I was trying this method: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=80811 the error that came up happened during the "Select and Install Software" phase. It got to 85% "preparing to configure ttf-kochi-mincho." Then it came up with the error, "Configuring cupsys Installationg Step Failed." When I tried to skip it and just install GRUB instead I got this error: "Fatal Error grub-install /dev/sdb failed" (that was after I said not to install over MBR but instead to install to the external hard drive.

Here's some new information. I created a Super GRUB Disk (on my 2 GB flash drive). I installed Kubuntu using the LiveCD.

I tried the installation two different ways. I tried the normal installation where I just let it erase and partition my external hard drive by itself automatically. I also tried creating my own partitions including a 256 MB partition at the beginning of the drive to use to install GRUB. Both came up with the following responses.

I then booted the flash drive. Unfortunately, I was unable to use that to boot the external hard drive because I don't know enough about the Super Disk to get it to overwrite the boot sector.

I went to this site: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=80811&page=49 but even though that person got it to work I didn't. That person had this problem:
"Grub loads, so it is booting off the correct drive, but Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition. Press something"
I was never able to press a button and get to the GRUB menu. I don't know what was different. I followed the same procedure but got a different result.

I think that I've been asking the wrong question the whole time. I don't need to know how to install Kubuntu to an external hard drive. I can already do that. I need to know how to make an external hard drive bootable.

Is is possible that procedures that have worked for other people don't work for me because I have to use the AMD64 image?

I know that's a lot of information, so again thank you for any help and/or insight you can give me.

[komega]

Re: LiveCD issue and GRUB question

I've had an interesting development.

I tried installing Kubuntu using the LiveCD again. But this time I did something new. I created an 5 partitions. The first was a boot partition for GRUB. Then a swap and root partition. Then a FAT partition to share (so I can use my external hard drive to actually back-things up and easily share between any machine), and finally another small FAT partition. On that last partition I put the Super GRUB Disk.

I tried booting from the external hard drive and the SGD loaded. I was able to navigate through the menus and tell SGD to load the external hard drive's GRUB. When I did that the Kubuntu logo came up with a progress bar. But the progress bar never progressed.
Eventually I got this message:
Busy Box v1.1.3 (Debian 1:1.1.3-2ubuntu3) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off)
(initramfs)

I could then enter commands after initramfs.

Now, I don't know what this means but it seems like something someone might have run into before. Any ideas?

Oh, and I'm downloading Feisty right now and will try just a normal installation and everything soon.

Thanks.