Hi everyone,

I tried to install Debian AMD64 on my HP laptop using the business-card-sized installer. Everything went smoothly until the reboot: on my GRUB menu there was only a listing for "other operating systems", which in my case is Windows xp. I can boot into windows fine...what might be the problem, and is there anything i can do to "find" my Debian installation again?

Thanks!

MH

use a knoppix disk to correct the /boot/grub/menu.lst (or whatever the config file is called in your distro).

a correct debian grub file needs the full kernel name, and initrd name as well... which you should find in your os's /boot dir.

there are plenty of examples of a 'good grub' file, one if which should be right on the knoppix disk.

here is mine:

default 0
timeout 15
color cyan/blue white/blue
foreground ffffff
background 0639a1
#gfxmenu /boot/grub/boot.xpm.gz

title MAIN Debian Sarge - ver. ALL on hda7
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-1-386 root=/dev/hda7 ro noapic nomce noapci
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.12-1-386

title Knoppix 3.9 LiveCD
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/isolinux/vmlinuz-2.6.11 root=/dev/hda2 ro lang=us APPEND ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init apm=power-off
initrd=/boot/isolinux/initrd.img-2.6.11

title Knoppix LiveCD From HD Install - kernel 2.6.11
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11 root=/dev/hda2 ro ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off nomce
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.11

title Backup of MAIN Debian Sarge- all Versions on hda6
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-1-386 root=/dev/hda6 ro noapic nomce noapci
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.12-1-386

title Windows at hda1
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

---end of my menu.lst from grub.

* note the first line for linux always has the actual partitian one # less than the actual one... so 1 would be 0, 2 would be 1, etc.

good luck.

Hey thanks a bunch Halvy! Just a couple more questions: I tried to use Knoppix to rewrite the menu.lst file, but the system told me i did not have the permission to. So I tried to "chmod 666 /mnt/hda3/boot/grub/menu.lst", the system said that file is read only. So how did you manage to rewrite the menu.lst file?

I picked up a copy of "Linux Cookbook" and under the "Discovering boot parameters from the GRUB command shell" it told me how to find root devices and kernel images. I found my root partition on (hd0,2) with no problem, however when I tried "kernel /boot/vmlinuz <tab>" to find the correct parameters for the boot kernel, I got a error message: "Error 15: File not found".

Does that mean the kernel is not installed on my system at all?

Help...

i'm not familiar with a 'business card' install.

that may where your problem originated with.

i'd be careful about trying again with that approach since it didn't do tooo well the first time.

i know some folks will say it was your fault, but i still beleive a good programmer will protect users from themeselves as much as possible.

eo /rant.. lol

knoppix is good for somethings, but try here for a livecd with grub the installer

http://www.sysresccd.org/systools.en.php

i'v never used it, so don't yell

you need to look and see if your boot files are still there.

it is always better to NOT use links when using grub.

if you want to try lilo (boot loader), knoppix has it.. but i only remember nightmares trying to get it to work from the dvd drive.

keep us tuned in..

I downloaded the daily build of the business card installer and everything went OK this time! Maybe it's just a bug in the beta 1 version...

Thanks for being there