Hi

i am new for linux. i have installed dual booting operating system in my computer windows xp with 2 partation (Primary or logical) and after that i installed fedora 12. when i delete the d drive from windows xp and reboot the system. the i got the message

GNU GRUB Version - 0.97 (................)

(Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported for the first word, Tab lists possible command completions, Anywhere else Tab lists the possible completions of a device/filename)


Not i am unable to boot the os. it goes to grup>

Plez Help me I have data in my windows or Linux Too.

Regards
Abdul Kadir

Hello Abdul,
This problem is less serious that it may appear, and it can be caused by lots of things. My time is limited, so here is how you (probably) can boot into Windows (assuming a "standard" installation of Windows on the first partition of the first hard drive). You may want to write down the steps that work since your fallback solution is to manually edit one or two grub files. From the "grub> " prompt, enter in each line below, pressing <Enter> after each line:

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
boot

If this does not work, the problem is probably in the rootnoverify line. Try the lines again, but change the first line to "rootnoverify (hd1,0)". Continue incrementing the number after "hd" until you reach one less than the number of hard drives attached to your PC. If it works, work in Windows and shutdown normally. Write down and save the steps that worked
Off to work I go. I will try next to tell you the steps on booting into Fedora. Fedora probably has a more elegant way of doing all this, but I am unfamiliar with Fedora. Good luck, and don't panic.

Bill W

1 members found this post helpful.

Hai,

When I was installing fedora operating system for first time I got the same problem, my suggestion is that Just put your fedora dvd and select the Upgrade option , then click next, next, until it completes.reboot your system . then every thing will boot normally ...

Hi Bill W

Thanks for your support. i go through your process and boot from windows xp but i want to boot from fedora becz i have data in fedora os and i can't open fedora drive in windows xp.

plz help

waiting for your replay.

Regards
Abdul Kadir

Boot from your Fedora CD. Open a terminal, log in as root and run the following command to get partition information to post here:

fdisk -l (lower case Letter L in the command)

What was on the "D drive" you deleted? Was that a windows data partition?

It was 'D_drive' windows logical partation.

when i run fdisk -l command in terminal. The report is here

[root@localhost liveuser]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00240024

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 3187 25599546 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 6375 9704 26744237+ 83 Linux
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 9704 9729 204800 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/dm-0: 3221 MB, 3221225472 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 391 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 3221 MB, 3221225472 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 391 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Hi Abdul,
I will assume that the D: drive you deleted was simply a Windows data drive that was reused for Fedora. Before I proceed, I _highly_ recommend you try asifbasha's suggestion. Doing so quite possibly will fix whatever problem exists with your grub setup. Secondly, my suggestions serve primarily to assure you that Windows and Fedora are both still there on your system and to show one way to fix your problem if everything else fails. But it is preferable to have Fedora fix itself. Now, onward....
To manually get to Fedora, boot your PC and wait for it to get to the grub prompt. Then, enter this grub command, pressing <Enter> afterwards:

find /boot/grub/menu.lst

This will return the location of the above file (your grub boot menu) in the format of (hdx,y). On your system, this will probably return:

(hd0,1)

Next, enter the following line (replacing "(hd0,1)" with whatever the previous line returned) and press <Enter>:

configfile (hd0,1)/boot/grub/menu.lst

If all is well, you should now be staring at the grub boot menu that Fedora installed. Just make sure the Fedora entry is highlighted, using the up and down arrow keys, then press <Enter>. With a little luck you will soon see Fedora's login screen. Once you are in Fedora, there may be some way to let Fedora repair its grub setup. But, again, I would try asifbasha's suggestion before trying anything else to fix this.

Bill W

Hi Bill W

I am unable to boot fedora 12. through boot menu. I go through your process that was well done.

First I run this command $ find /boot/grub/menu.lst (and i got the result)

(hd0,1)

Then I run this commnad $ configfile (hd0,1)/boot/grub/menu.lst

and i got the menu the selected the Dual boot menu. when i select the other and i got windows xp desktop. but i select fedora 12 then I got following Error.


Boot 'Fedora (2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE)'

root (hd0,2)

Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x82

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-127.fc.12.i686.PAE or root=UUID=c0c1b59c-bdcd-4fd6-85a4-052c7eb84a06 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet

Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition

Press any key to continue.......


I got the following error message when i go through Fedora 12 boot menu. or When i press this enter key then i returned to the boot menu.


Plz Help Me.

Waiting for your Regards
Abdul Kadir

Hi Abdul,
Very good -- the problem is clearer now: it is in the line you wrote that says "root (hd0,2)". In other words, your grub menu file shows that your Fedora is located on the third partition of the first disk, which is impossible since it is your swap partition. I know this from your post #7:

[root@localhost liveuser]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00240024

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 3187 25599546 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 6375 9704 26744237+ 83 Linux
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 9704 9729 204800 82 Linux swap / Solaris <<== This is (hd0,2) in grub-speak


With luck all you need to do is edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst file to get past this issue. The bad news is that this can be an intimidating task for a Linux newbie. Here is an outline of the steps required. You'll need to boot off of a Linux CD or DVD, like your Fedora installation disc or any live Linux CD like Knoppix or Damn Small Linux. Then you'll need to mount /dev/sda2 (hint: "mount /dev/sda2 /mnt -t auto" as root from a command line), find the file (e.g. "cd /mnt/boot/grub; ls menu.lst"), edit menu.lst, save, reboot. I need to return to work now. Let me know if you can boot from a Linux CD (look for options like "Rescue", "Repair", or "Expert"). In the meantime, I will put together some instructions on editing the file. If you can get a Knoppix disk, even an older version, that would probably be the easiest.

Hi Abdul,

One thing I think we can do pretty easily is to get the grub boot menu to come up by default when you boot your PC. I don't think this will be too hard. Try this:

1. (re)Boot your PC and get to the grub prompt (grub> )
2. At the prompt, type in each of the following lines, pressing <Enter> each line:
a. root (hd0,1)
b. setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --force-lba (hd0,1) (hd0,1)
c. reboot

The last command will reboot your PC. With any luck, you should soon see the grub boot menu and, at least, be able to more easily boot into Windows. If the grub menu does not appear, the grub prompt should. Just reenter the above three commands, but this time do not enter in the "--force-lba" part of the second command.

If you are having trouble getting a Knoppix CD or DVD, let me know. I can write up instructions on using your Fedora installation disk and the vim editor. Learning how to do basic text editing using vim will be very helpful to you.

Hi Dear

Thanks alot

Accourding to your help i fixed the problem and got my dual boot OS.

Now I want to increase my linux file system disk space.

Problem.

[root@localhost nsingh]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 26G 24G 148M 100% /
tmpfs 1002M 272K 1002M 1% /dev/shm


I have 26 GB free disk space in my hard disk and want to increase the linux size.

Plez Help Me.

Regards
Abdul Kadir

Great -- congratulations. Are you sure that you have 26 GB of free disk space (i.e. not used by anything, including Windows)? Based on your fdisk -l output from above:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 3187 25599546 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 6375 9704 26744237+ 83 Linux
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 9704 9729 204800 82 Linux swap / Solaris

you have 26 GB total space on your Linux partition, which is all used (based on your post #12), and 25.6 GB total space on your Windows partition, part of which is used by Windows. Your 204 MB swap partition should not be made smaller. So, the only free space you possibly could have on this disk is on the Windows partition. Perhaps the two dm-x devices shown in post #7 are what you are referring to. I am unfamiliar with logical volume management under Linux.

If you do have free space on your first drive, I would recommend using the gparted live CD (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php) to shrink the Windows partition and allocate the recovered space to the Linux partition. If you have ever used Partition Magic, gparted works very much the same way. Before running gparted, you'll need to defragment your Windows C: drive. I go all the way when I do this by deleting the Windows swap file using the System applet Advanced Settings; rebooting into Windows Safe Mode (to minimize system activity), defragmenting; rebooting into normal Windows and re-enabling the Windows swap file. At this point, I boot the gparted live CD, shrink the Windows partition (leaving enough free space for me to use Windows0, then expand the Linux partition into the newly freed space.

If the free space is on the dm-x devices, then they need to be configured through Linux into one or more partitions, then parts of the Linux filesystem should be moved to them (e.g. everything under /home could be moved to them), then your Linux needs to be configured to mount these new partitions appropriately, hopefully by using a user-friendly GUI utility, or you'll need to edit as root your /etc/fstab file.

Hi Dear

Thanks A lot i have increase my file system of fedora 12 through Gparted Software Accourding to your instruction but now i want to increase my fedora 12 swap partition i have 200MB swap in my system ow 200MB free space in my disk.

Plez Help Me

Regards
Abdul Kadir