Need Help Fixing Grub
 

Hi All,

I installed PcLinuxOS release 2007 on my IBM T21 and had some problems with the partitions on the hard drive. So I used cfdisk to start from scratch, creating 3 partitions. /dev/hda1 is mounted as /boot. Right at the end of the live CD install, a window popped up and asked some questions about whether to use Grub or Lilo. It also presented some choices for where to install Grub and the choices were:

/dev/hd2 - IBM<extra stuff I don't remember>
/dev/hda1
etc.

The default was the first one and I should have left it, but instead I changed it to the /dev/hda1. The installation completed and I rebooted the machine. Now all you get after the bios launches disk is:

GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB..... over and over until infinity

I think there should be an easy way to fix this without going through the Live CD installation all over again and that's why I'm posting this. I think the solution involves booting something like Damn Small Linux (Knoppix won't run on this machine, but DSL does) and editing something on the disk. Am I on the right track here?

If so, two practical questions:

What would I use to edit the disk to change from /dev/hda1 back to the /dev/hd2 - IBM...?

How do you mount the hard drive after DSL is booted and running?


BTW, this is an experimental machine for learning purposes so there is no need to worry about data loss. It would be very easy to simply re-install the OS from scratch, but I was hoping to gain some insight into partitions, booting, etc. with this posting.

Thanks

Peatmoss/

Yes, you are on the right track. Check your PcLinuxOS Live CD. Most install CDs serve more than one function. It may have a function to boot into an installed system and/or a function to act as a rescue CD.

Use the Live CD to boot into your new system, log in as root, and issue the command:

grub-install /dev/hda

---------------------
Steve Stites

Hey JB,

Thanks for the tip. I tried it and it didn't work, but I think it's because I didn't correctly guess what directory to use. When I ran the

grub-install /dev/hda

command, it prompted me to use the

--root-directory

argument. I incorrectly(?) used the /boot/grub folder. The program took several minutes before it finished. The device map it found had

/dev/fd0, and
/dev/hda

and suggested I change it if it was incorrect. I left it as-is and proceeded to reboot. This time, instead of all the GRUBGRUBGRUB's appearing, it hung after displaying the message

Grub stage 2...

I did a fresh install again and compared the device map in /boot/grub with before. This time, only

/dev/hda

appears in it. So I'm guessing the presence of the /dev/fd0 in the first line is what caused the failure. I might go back and follow the incorrect procedure again to see if I can fix it manually, but just wanted to update this thread and close it off.

Thanks

/Peat

/dev/fd0 is your floppy drive,

/dev/hda is the ide primary master