GRUB disk numbering is different from SUSE installer
 

Hello! I am trying to multiboot Windows XP and SUSE 10.1 using NTLDR.
I tried this method for Fedora Core 5 and it worked.

There are 4 SATA disks. No IDE disks.

/boot partition was created at the top of sdb and it is called sdb3 which is 50MBytes.
Bootloader for SUSE was installed to sdb3 by SUSE installer.

Using KNOPPIX,
#dd if=/dev/sdb3 of=/mnt/xxx/bootsector.dat bs=512 count=1
xxx is a FAT32 partition.

In WIndows XP, boot.ini was edited to have an entry to this bootsector.dat:
c:\bootsector.dat="SUSE 10.1"

When SUSE is selected at the NTLDR Menu, GRUB was loaded and the famous "GRUB_" was displayed and freezed there.


This motherboard ASUS A8N-SLI Premium has a function to select boot drive and sdb was selected to be booted.
This time GRUB> console appeared and console works.
It seemed like menu.lst did not work.
So manually input command,
root (hd1,2)
error no such partition !
this is exactly what was written in menu.lst created by SUSE installer.
Now, tab was used to find out which partitions were recognized and I found out that (hd1,2) which is sdb3 is (hd0,2) in GRUB.
So, the disk numbering is diffrent in SUSE Installer and GRUB.
then
kernel/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb7 vga=0x31a resume=/sdb5 splash=silent showopts
initrd /initrd
boot

result: kernel panic
In the original menu.lst:
kernel/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb8 vga=0x31a resume=/sdb6 splash=silent showopts

I found this page:
www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/doc/suse/suse9.3/suselinux-adminguide_en/sec.grub.probs.html

In here,
System Containing IDE and SCSI Hard Disks Does Not Boot

During the installation, YaST may have determined the boot sequence of the hard disks incorrectly (and you may not have corrected it). For example, GRUB may regard /dev/hda as hd0 and /dev/sda as hd1, although the boot sequence in the BIOS is reversed (SCSI before IDE).

In this case, correct the hard disks during the boot process with the help of the GRUB command line. After the system has booted, edit the file device.map to apply the new mapping permanently. Then check the GRUB device names in the files /boot/grub/menu.lst and /boot/grub/device.map and reinstall the boot loader with the following command:

grub --batch < /etc/grub.conf

But I do not understand "correct the hard disks during the boot process with the help of the GRUB command line" I would like to know how to do this.
Maybe using map command ? Please advise exactly what commands should be typed in.

Thank You in advance.
pjo

In the grub manual, you will find this:

"If you are not sure which partition actually holds these files,
use the command find (*note find::.), like this:

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1

This will search for the file name `/boot/grub/stage1' and show the
devices which contain the file."

Open a console, then enter the word 'grub' without parameters, to get to the grub prompt. then enter the find command as you see it. It will tell you the correct partition name to use in your grub config file.

Thanks for your reply.

I will try that.

pjo

The disk had to be changed to new one.
There are three SATA disks.
So it has benn completely formatted.

This time

sda1 /boot
sda2 swap
sda3 /
sda4 /home
all primary partions.
sda1 was not set to be active.
no other partitions exists.

bootloader was wriiten in the sda1.

Using BIOS boot disk selector, sda was selected.
This time GRUB> did not come up.

Only GRUB _ came up and did not accept any keyboard input.

So no way to find /boot/grub/

Using Knoppix, it has been shown that sda1 has /boot/grub and grub files.

Is there any way to boot SUSE 10.1 ?

I will try to disconnect other disks for Windows XP so that only sda is connected.

pjo

---------------------------------------------
sda only test: Using BIOS function to select boot disk, same result, GRUB _ was displayed and freezed there.

So it looks like BIOS disk ordering is not the cause.

-----------------------
Is there any IRC channel of linuxquestions.org ? I serached but could not find one.

SUSE boots but .....
 

If esc is hit twice or more during the system boot, now GRUB> shows up !

root(hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/sda3 vga=0x31a resume=/dev/sda2 splash=silent showopts
initrd /boot/initrd
boot

This brings up a GUI SUSE 10.1, asking for username and password.

But in the GUI install process, there was no user creation phase.

How can user be created ?