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Old 10-27-2006, 08:42 AM   #1
jfraymondpa
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Question FC5 Clean Install causing Grub problem


Well I really got things in a tangle now. I started off doing an upgrade from FC4 to FC5, this caused a Grub problem, couldn't get passed the Grub prompt.
So I decided to get FC6 and do a clean install, forgot my win drive didn't have enough space.

So back to FC5 and tried a clean install. The install went okay, now I'm back to the Grub command line.

When I try: "grub-install /dev/hdb" this is the error: "/dev/hdb does not have any corresponding BIOS drive"

Now I haven't touched the BIOS and when I do a "df -f" I see the hdb drive partitioned as I laid out.
"/dev/hdb1 /boot
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /
01 swap
02 /home
03 /pgms

My windows drive is the /dev/hda and I had Grub install to MBR

What is my problem? Does it have something to do with the LVMs?

Thanks,
John
 
Old 10-27-2006, 08:48 AM   #2
camorri
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You don't need grub on hdb. You need gurb on the mbr of hda to point to the boot partition on hdb. That should be it.
 
Old 10-27-2006, 02:51 PM   #3
jfraymondpa
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Cliff --

Sorry I didn't make it clear in my original post.

I did select put Grub on MBR on hda.

Do you have any suggestions that I can use to verify this?

-- John
 
Old 10-28-2006, 06:31 AM   #4
camorri
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At this point I'm a little confused. Could you clarify a few things please?

Does your windows system boot? I'm guessing yes, unless you are posting from another system.

Where did you have grub installed before you started re-installing? Was it on MBR on hda ?

On my system "df -f" is an invalid option. Could you post cut and paste the results of that command? On my system a df -h or a df -a works.

My best guess at this point is grub has not been updated correctly. As far as I know, Fedora and Red Hat both try to update grub with a script during the install. It would appear at this point that did not work with the various installs you have done. I think the fix will be to manually edit the menu.lst file, and fix up the boot to linux section.
 
Old 10-28-2006, 12:09 PM   #5
jfraymondpa
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Cliff --

"Does your windows system boot? I'm guessing yes.... " Yes it does.

"Where did you have grub installed before you..." Yes it was MBR on hda.

"On my system "df -f" is an invalid option..." Same here that was a typo, I did use the -h.

"My best guess at this point is grub has not been updated correctly..." That is what I think also, but I'm having a dickens of a time getting GRUB set up. I'm using the instructions in "Linux in a Nutshell" by O'Reilly. Starting on page 510. Tried to build a boot floppy using the directions on pg 511. but can't seem to get the control key to work on the command "/sbin/brub --batch <<EOT"

I belive "EOT" is control - d, but it dosen't give me a continuation line to enter the rest of the commands.

If you can give me some better directions that would be great.

Thanks,
John
 
Old 10-29-2006, 05:28 AM   #6
camorri
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How goes the battle? I have a copy of O'Reilly ch04 fifth edition. I suspect we have different versions. I found this chapter on a web site.

There are several ways to go about fixing this up. What O'Reilly has documented in great detail, I'm sure will eventually work. However, there are ways I think may make things easier.

Since you can not boot linux at this point, it is not possible to edit the menu.1st.

May I suggest if you have assess to a cd burner, download a copy of a live linux distro. There are many to choose from. My favorite is Knoppix. It has very good hardware detection, and will boot most systems. Once you boot Knoppix, there will be icons on the desktop, one for each harddrive. To mount the drive, you click the icon. It will mount read only. Then you change to read/write mode. At this point you navigate to your menu.1st file and edit it with any of the editors Knoppix provides. Once you have the changes saved, restart the system, minus the Knoppix cd, and if you have your changes right, you FC system should boot.

This may seem a little complicated, but Knoppix has an extremely good web site and forum for support. As a tool in your tool bag for linux, I wouldn't live without a live bootable CD. I recently fixed a screwed up windoze system with a Knoppix CD. I rescued some critical files with Knoppix, and yes it was a NTFS system.

There are lots of other live cd distros. Ubuntu and Mandriva both have them. My experience found Knoppix has the best hardware detection. I run a ThinkPad I series ( it is a Acer relabeled ) on Knoppix, even run wireless with it.

If you don't have a burner, you may want to look into the possibility of some kind of 'rescue mode' on your FC install CD's. I don't run FC, so I'm not familiar with any options there. It may be possible to re-install grub from the CD without re-installing the entire system.

If non of this will work for you, I guess we can forge forward with O'Reilly.
 
Old 10-29-2006, 05:10 PM   #7
jfraymondpa
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Thumbs up

Quote:
How goes the battle?
Well, yesterday I picked up O'Reilly's lasted book "Fedora Linux". There was some new information on Grub. Used it and now I've go FC5 up and am in the process of downloading the dvd iso for FC6 so making progress.

I used the grub cmd line:
find /grub/stage1 this returned (hd0,0)
root (hd0,0) this returned Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
setup (hd1) this returned a bunch of info and DONE
reboot

So I guess all is well for now, I'm not going to mess much with FC5, going to go right to FC6 now.

Thanks for the help.
John
 
Old 10-30-2006, 06:04 AM   #8
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Glad you got it going.
 
  


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