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Old 09-08-2011, 07:54 AM   #1
kcc0206
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how to handle grub prompt


Just installed Scientific Linux 6.x to my USB and rebooted from USB but I am sitting at GRUB.
What is the corect syntax to boot from USB drive?
 
Old 09-08-2011, 08:46 AM   #2
yancek
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Are you using a flash drive or a USB hard drive?
Did you install the Grub bootloader to the master boot record or to the root partition for Scientific Linux?
Do you have any othe operating systems on the computer? If so, what are they?
You should post partition information. Boot your install CD and open a terminal, log in as root and run this command:
It would help if you posted which version of Grub you are using.

Quote:
fdisk -l
Lower case Letter L in the command. Post info here.

Some info below on scientific bootloader installation

http://www.scientificlinux.org/distr...iguration.html

Last edited by yancek; 09-08-2011 at 08:47 AM.
 
Old 09-08-2011, 09:01 AM   #3
kcc0206
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Thanks for the response.

I have 500GB Western Digital USB drive and I installed SL 6.x on it. I also have windows 7 on the local disk.
After the install of SL 6.x and boot loader, I have rebooted from USB but goes right into GRUB prompt.
 
Old 09-08-2011, 12:00 PM   #4
yancek
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You didn't post your drive/partition information I requested.
Is windows on a separate internal physical drive?
Are you able to boot windows?
Do you see the windows boot menu?
Is Scientific Linux the only OS on the external? If not, what else do you have?
Did you install Grub to the mbr of the USB?

Quote:
What is the corect syntax to boot from USB drive?
You need to post the partition information before anyone can answer that.
Which Grub are you using, Legacy or Grub2?
I don't know your experience level but you can check the Grub version by mounting whichever partition has SL and looking in the /boot/grub directory.
 
Old 09-08-2011, 12:10 PM   #5
Karl Godt
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I have no experience with Scientific Linux but DL it once and could not boot the CD .. perhaps of an insufficient compiled kernel .

I do not know anything about the installation procedure for SL .

I am guessing SL uses a shell-script that also launches grub-setup or similar . There are different grub like grub1 , grub2 or grub4dos .

I always install grub to the MBR of the desired disk .

Grub1 and 2 have a directory called '/boot/grub/' which should contain several files . One of the important configuration files is /boot/grub/menu.lst for grub1 and /boot/grub/grub.cfg for grub2 .

The grub prompt @grub1 contains two useful commands : 'geometry' and 'find' and @grub2 'ls' to check if the drives are detected and if the needed files are copied to the disk correctly : Kernel(vmlinuz) , initrd(.archive) , /boot/grub or /lib/modules/*/* .

It is difficult for me ATM to find sites for grub1 because I just bookmarked once an did not DL/save the pages .

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_GRUB
http://orgs.man.ac.uk/documentation/grub/grub_toc.html

could explain a little .

In the end I would advise to play a little with the grub-shell commands together with the TAB and Enter keys like 'find (hd1,0)/boot/[Tab]' or 'geometry (hd1)[Enter]' .

To make it boot @grub1 I would suggest something like
>root (hd1,0)[Enter] ##harddisk_nr2,first_partition
>kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb1 acpi=force panic=60 debug [Enter]
>initrd /boot/initrd.img [Enter]

and press the appropiate key to boot (ie. b or cntrol+x) assuming SL is installed to the first partition of the second drive .

SL installed to the third partition of the first HD would look like
>root (hd0,2)[Enter] ##harddisk_nr1,third_partition
>kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda3 acpi=force panic=60 debug [Enter]
>initrd /boot/initrd.img [Enter]
 
Old 09-08-2011, 02:18 PM   #6
kcc0206
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Sorry for the confusion.

I have internal disk where I have windows 7 installed and I can boot from windows 7.

I have installed 64 bit version of SL 6.1, I also tried redhat 6.0 trial version and CentOS 6.0.

I can install just fine to my 500GB USB drive. But after the install, when my HP pavillion PC boots, I have selected USB drive to boot from, it goes into GRUB prompt.

My USB drive had only 1 Linux OS each time. Bottom line is, 3 different Linux OS, they all drop to GRUB prompt after successful installation and never asked for GRUB install.

But, I remember installing boot loader.

Not sure I am suppose to install GRUB or OS install should install for me.
My USB drive device name is /dev/sde
 
Old 09-08-2011, 04:30 PM   #7
Larry Webb
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You say you can boot windows, are you changing the boot order in bios or are you plugging and unplugging your usb? Either way you need to install grub to the mbr of the usb drive. You need to answer yancek's question and run "fdisk -l as root from terminal and post the results. Without us knowing your partition layout all we can do is take a wild guess.

Last edited by Larry Webb; 09-08-2011 at 04:36 PM.
 
Old 09-08-2011, 05:54 PM   #8
yancek
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Quote:
they all drop to GRUB prompt after successful installation and never asked for GRUB install.
If you want SL to boot just from the drive you installed it on, you need to install Grub to its mbr.
SL uses Grub so you should have had the option of where to install it during the OS installation.
Again, post the partition information.
 
Old 09-08-2011, 07:21 PM   #9
Karl Godt
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I looked at http://www.scientificlinux.org/

and http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux...386/readme.txt has got - kernel 2.6.9-100.EL
which would be too old for my printer (tried Suse9x) .

http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux...29_rpmlist.txt
only lists grub , but no grub version .

For the later SL5 or SL6 I could not find a kernel information .

About /dev/sde : sda should be your entire first harddisk and sde your fifth . I would suggest to plugout all other USB like cardreaders or pendrives before running the installation process .

After the installer finished , try to open the file /boot/grub/menu.lst in a text-editor and post its content , too . You could alternatively open xterm to run 'fdisk -l' 'cat /proc/partitions' and 'cat /boot/grub/menu.lst' .

I really suspect an old kernel and an old grub1 without support for USB boot or support for the filesystem you installed onto . There may be also a problem because of the partition size beeing too large for external HDs today do have size not supported by the fs drivers of the kernel .
 
  


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