GRUB refuse to boot from floppy when reconnecting Primary HD

perl · 05-06-2005, 03:14 PM

After some messing around and rubbish install/configuring of Mandriva 10.1 I decided to give it up and try SuSE 9.1. As not to touch my XP files, I disconnected my primary HD - set as masetr - whilst installing Linux to my Seoncdary HD - set as slave. When it came to the bootloader i told it to write it to a floppy disk (GRUB).

Now the bootloader disk works when only the second HD is connected to the computer - set as slave - but once I reconnect the power and IDE cables to the primary HD and try to load Linux via the GRUB boot disk, it recognises that their is a boot disk in the drive and then it prints

GRUB

and then just seems to hang and not allow you to type in any commands.

Is there a way of getting the boot disk to load Linux? Or am I going to have to change the bootloader in Linux so that is it on the first part of the root partition of the secondary HD and then create a new floppy disk that will point to this when I want to access linux - if so how?

macemoneta · 05-06-2005, 03:49 PM

Check your BIOS settings. It sounds like the BIOS boot order is set to HD->Floppy, instead of Floppy->HD.

perl · 05-06-2005, 04:19 PM

No the BIOS boot order is definatly set right. Goes Floppy, CD then IDE-0.

When the GRUB boot disk is inserted, its recognises that there is a boot disk in and starts loading the disk as if it were ready to boot but it just comes up with

Boooting from floppy - boot OK
GRUB

and then just hangs at the word grub and no other command prompt. When it does work with out the primary HD conected it does that but right after it says GRUB is starts to print a few other lines and about a second later it loads in to the GRUB boot menu for selecting if you want to boot to linux or into failsafe.

macemoneta · 05-06-2005, 04:38 PM

OK, then the floppy is booting OK. The problem is that You've changed the first Hard drive, and Grub can't boot what you put in. On the floppy, there should be a menu.1st or grub.conf file that you need to update to specify the second drive, instead of the first (or the opposite; it's hard to tell from your description which BIOS drive you are trying to boot after the recable). Change referenced to "hd0" to "hd1" (or "hd1" to "hd0"). For example,

root (hd0,0)

becomes

root (hd1,0)

perl · 05-07-2005, 06:31 AM

Thanks for the info macemoneta.

I have inserted the boot floppy and tried to access it through the my computer icon on the SuSE desktop. What is really wierd is that I there appears to be no files on the disk at all. Just says no files and no folders found along the bottom status bar and I have turned out show hidden files and still no success. Still the disk works to boot linux.

perl · 05-07-2005, 08:14 AM

I have managed to recreate a GRUB boot disk that works to boot Linux.

The directory structure is as follows:
/
/boot/
/boot/message
/boot/grub/
/boot/grub/device.map
/boot/grub/menu.lst
/boot/grub/stage1
/boot/grub/stage2

The disk works fine in booting linux and the contents on menu.lst is

Code:

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Fri May  6 14:35:35 2005


color white/blue black/light-gray
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Linux
    kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb2 vga=0x31a splash=silent desktop resume=/dev/hdb1 showopts
    initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe
    kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb2 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off vga=normal noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0  3
    initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd
~
~
~
~
"menu.lst" 17L, 626C                                          17,15         All

So should I just change the lines with (hd0,1) to (hd1, 1) and it should work or do i need to make changes to this section as well /dev/hdb2?

perl · 05-07-2005, 08:28 AM

PROBLEM SOLVED

Just changed all the instances of (hd0,1) to (hd1,1) and now I can insert the disk when I want to boot into SuSE and otherwise just leave it as normal and it will boot into my old OS.

Thanks for the help macemoneta.