Hi,

After two days of searching these forums and trying everything I possibly can think of, I need to know if I am just missing something, stupid or what.

I have Fedora Core 1 - after running fine for a month, all of a sudden at boot I get the grub> prompt. This is the only operating system installed on this computer

I searched the forums, tried all the "grub" stuff - and have now gotten to a point that when I boot I just get "Boot sector not found - reboot your system"

I booted from the Fedora install disk one...from there I can go to grub prompt...
When I use

grub> root ( <tab>
I get
grub> root (hd0, *then* <tab>
Prtn 0 - ext2fs, type 0x83
Prtn 1 - ext2fs, type 0x83
Prtn 2 - unknown, type 0x82
*then*

grub> root (hd0,0)/ <tab>
grub> root (hd0,0)/grub/

If i do...
grub> root (hd0,1)/ <tab>
I get all the boot, dev, proc, var...etc and all the rest of the directories so I assume this is my main partition.

If grub> (hd0,2)/ <tab> I get "cannot mount selected partition"

I then do
grub>root (hd0,1)

And I get
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists...no
Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists...no

That is as far as I can go - I searched and searched and it looks as though there is nothing in my grub directory. I also cannot find the kernel...is there a particular place that Fedora looks for it? I also cannot find a grub.conf file or a menu.lst file. I know that my system is still there as I can see a lot of the files that are specific to this system - downloads and all.

I also tried booting as linux-rescue from the CDROM, then doing
chroot /mnt/sysimage
sh-2.05b# grub-install /dev/hda

I get

/dev/hda: not found or not a block device.

Did I totally screw this thing up? Do I need to just bear down and find the kernel so that I can load it, or have I gotten now to a point where that won't do me any good?

At this point I am so frustrated...I am about ready to bag the whole thing and do a reinstall - at least I'll get more practice setting up LAMP and stuff.

Thanks in advance to anyone that can get me out of this mess.

when you get to this point "sh-2.05b#" do you have the /boot/grub/ files?

jon-do...

when I get to the sh-2.05# prompt I do

chroot /mnt/sysimage

then

cd /boot/grub

This directory has the stage1, stage2, device.map files - but no grub.conf file.

Note:when I use grub to view the hard drive there is no /boot/grub directory (before I do chroot /mnt/sysimage.)

If you need any more info let me know - thanks!

This is what I have in my grub folder


-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 82 Feb 27 13:52 device.map
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7584 Feb 27 13:52 e2fs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7248 Feb 27 13:52 fat_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6688 Feb 27 13:52 ffs_stage1_5
-rw------- 1 root root 785 Mar 22 13:00 grub.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8192 Feb 27 13:52 jfs_stage1_5
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 9 Mar 17 01:50 menu.lst -> grub.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6848 Feb 27 13:52 minix_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9056 Feb 27 13:52 reiserfs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3194 Feb 15 00:39 splash.xpm.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 512 Feb 27 13:52 stage1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 104072 Feb 27 13:52 stage2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6336 Feb 27 13:52 vstafs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9128 Feb 27 13:52 xfs_stage1_5

and from your post you do not have a grub.conf under /boot/grub/ what else don't you have from the above list of files

check if you have a grub.conf under /etc

then doing
chroot /mnt/sysimage
sh-2.05b# grub-install /dev/hda

I get

/dev/hda: not found or not a block device.
========================

TreeDragon60:

You issued command grub-install after chrooting to /mnt/sysimage: the correct syntax might be "grub-install /dev/sda since this operation runs OUTSIDE grub not inside. Or if not, try fdisk -l and see how your system uses names of device: sda, hda, sdb, etc. Use its own language for that command.

It seems your only problem is the grub. Using the installer cd try to chroot again to the hardisk system root and REINSTALL grub, certainly creating grub.conf is automatic in this process.

Then, after grub is installed again in the file system this time you may reissue the grub-install command to /dev/sda (or whatever name it is) in order to edify the master boot record.

Under normal conditions, reinstalling grub will not endanger your data, the business is done exclusively within the /boot folder.

I hope this helps. Goodluck.

This thread was FIVE years old before that post. FC1 is dead and buried.

This is what we call a zombie thread - brought back from the dead.

Yeah, hopefully the original problem has now been fixed