Unable to Install SuSE 9.0 on two disk system

Gmorning, sbogus

As to your post before your last, yes, you can leave the MBR untouched. In that case, you have to use yet another boot loader (e.g. of Windows-provenience) to load the Linux boot loader (I do it frequently on my machine with the WinNT-loader loading via boot.ini my GRUB), else it must be a universal bootloader which is able to load Linux directly itself.

#your last post:
boot via CD or your old installation and type at a console

fdisk /dev/hdb

and look what file type(s) are listed (05 is vfat if I remember correctly and that is wrong for GRUB).

You also might have a BIOS problem, i.e. enabling hdb as boot device doesn't work . That's why I suggested the "map" command in the menu.lst of GRUB (you did read the documentation concerning that, didn't you...).

For the rest, I'm running out of ideas (hm, is your /boot directory above 32 GByte on your disk?). I got my own installation to work only after numerous attempts to install via Yast2 and have no true clue, why it worked, when it worked . I did definitely have problems installing the boot loader -- and it works despite an error pop-up after final installation...?...?...?

Also read "The SuSE boot concept" in the documentation on your disks...

Good luck

Thanks JZL240I-U ,

Yes I did read the whole documentation about GRUB, the map xx to yy command does not help much as it invokes the LILO from the hda drive with the choices for Linux (SuSE 7.3) and Windows XP (the dead corpse of the killed Windows installation). I actually did manage to have GRUB running on my hdb, that's say I get the boot menu and I can go into the grub shell, but if I chose the Linux installation from the boot menu then I receive this "Error 17". I think the HDD-1 (hdb) goes now properly referenced by BIOS in the start sequence, otherwise it were impossible to get in the grub boot menu, isn't it that?!

I'm goind tonight to test these steps in the grub boot shell

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
grub> find /boot/grub/menu-lst
grub> find /boot/grub/grub.conf

to see wich partitions grub recognizes and why it thinks my reiserfs hdb2 root-partition is vfat one....
Probably the MBR of hdb stills messed up and does not contain 100% correct information about the partition table. Do you know how I can, under Linux, fix the MBR so that it then contains really correct information?!

I did not figured out how I can use the Rescue: mode... I booted from the boot CD and I can boot the installation on hdb2 without problem, also I can boot in Rescue: mode without problem, but I'm stuck on the Rescue: prompt. What I should do there?!

I'm sure (not 100% though) that my /boot directory is below 8 GB boundary on the hdb disk. the hdb1 partition has 1GB, then there are 40 GB for the primary linux partition (and therein is the /boot directory, one of the firsts in the "/" structure) and there are the rest 55 GB as logical partition. Probably I should re-install SuSE on shrinked hdb2 partition, say 30 GB or so?!

So do you think, the menu-lst settings I posted previously are okay for the GRUB and there could be a hrdware problem thaat prevents GRUB from booting the instalation at hdb2?

Many thanks in advance.

Kind regards,
sbogus

Originally posted by sbogus ... Yes I did read the whole documentation about GRUB, the map xx to yy command does not help much as it invokes the LILO from the hda drive with the choices for Linux (SuSE 7.3) and Windows XP

Well, what? GRUB or LILO? I meant the mapping of drives hda -> hdb and hdb -> hda with GRUB in the menu.lst...

Originally posted by sbogus ... I think the HDD-1 (hdb) goes now properly referenced by BIOS in the start sequence, otherwise it were impossible to get in the grub boot menu, isn't it that?!

Yesss...

Originally posted by sbogus ... Do you know how I can, under Linux, fix the MBR so that it then contains really correct information?!

Well, you can get a defined state with everything set to binary zero by

dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/hdb bs=512 count=1
prior to that do "man dd"

Be warned! dd knows no mercy, if you have a typo (wrong disk / stating a partition instead of the whole disk) you are in deep trouble. You might want to save your old MBR by something like

dd if=/dev/hdb of=/boot/grub/DiskB.MBR bs=512 count=1

or where ever you want to save it.

2. Warning: Find out what writes a new MBR first, I'm not sure fdisk does it under Linux. You might wipe your entire disk though and let Yast do it. In that case set the dd option count=10000, then the partition table is zeroed as well.

Originally posted by sbogus I did not figured out how I can use the Rescue: mode... I booted from the boot CD and I can boot the installation on hdb2 without problem, also I can boot in Rescue: mode without problem ...

Sorry. The way to do this is: run CD1 during boot up -> select install (don't worry, nothing bad happens) -> the next popup will ask install new system / boot from system already there / check old installation / repair installation. Select the (lowermost?) repair. The next popup will ask automatic repair / selection to repair / expert. Take one of th last two and grab GRUB with "alter configuration" and even when you do nothing Yast will then re-install GRUB. Do that a few time, cross your fingers and hope for the best...

Originally posted by sbogus ... I'm sure (not 100% though) that my /boot directory is below 8 GB ... Probably I should re-install SuSE on shrinked hdb2 partition, say 30 GB or so?!

No leave it be, that should be okay.

Originally posted by sbogus So do you think, the menu-lst settings I posted previously are okay for the GRUB and there could be a hrdware problem thaat prevents GRUB from booting the instalation at hdb2?

Yes, either that, or problems of Yast (my guess), or rather a BIOS problem like I wrote earlier -> "map" comand in menu.lst

Again, good luck. I'll be back on Monday.

If you simply need to remove an entire partition, or all partitions on a drive, find the utility DELPART and use that. It is run from a DOS boot disk, and lists the drives and their partitions. You simply select the partitions to remove and save the changes. This results in a raw drive, the same as when you purchase it new. This is needed to remove, for example, an NTFS partition when you have no access to an OS that is running at least that revision of NTFS.

Note - The following page provides a link to the DELPART utility. I have used this from this source, and it is Virus Free.

http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart.htm

To ima,
thanks, I've a running SuSE distro on my old HDD, there's no problem to repartition the drives... My problem was how to install correctly a boot loader, the MBR of hdb seem to be messed up so that no bootloader can be looked up... Anyway, thanks for the info and for the helpful link!

By the way, I'm running now this SuSE 9.0 and... and it rocks!!!

To JZL240I-U,
Hi and Guten Tag...
I whish you very good and successful week.

Well, what? GRUB or LILO? I meant the mapping of drives hda -> hdb and hdb -> hda with GRUB in the menu.lst...

Okay, what I meant was, if I use directly the map commands, say
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
then I go chainloaded to the bootloader of my old distribution. I really do not have any explanation to this, because simply replacing the (hd1) with (hd0) in the GRUB's configuration file did work perfect!

Yes, either that, or problems of Yast (my guess), or rather a BIOS problem like I wrote earlier -> "map" comand in menu.lst

Yes, you're correct - the YaST was doing all the crap there on the disk. I've got it installed usind directly the grub-install application. Many thanks for your help, it was really from great aid for me.

Now I have a running SuSE 9.0 distro, and it boots without any problem, exactly as I want.
Thanks again!

Kind regards,
sbogus

PS: By the way, I'll post latter another tread with simple description of how I did resolved this proble, so it can be reviewed quickly from other peoples having the same or similar problems.

Originally posted by sbogus ... I'll post later another tread with simple description of how I did resolved this problem...

Better do it here and include some good keywords for the search function of this site ... thus this thread is complete with the entire information, an unrelated thread will only confuse people -- or you might write a users guide / HowTo .

Glad you found a solution .

Okay, you're probably right,
I'll do the resumee here... Thanks for your great help JZL240I-U!

Here we go: As keywords for the search utility I'd write these:
It all goes about dial-boot of the OSes Windows XP or Windows 2000 and SuSE Linux 9.0. For the Linux distro I guess I could be any other distro using GRUB or LILO as bootloader. The major cornerstone is that, the one may not use YaST2 to configure the dual-boot settings, but rahter than to do the job alone himself, by hand. Automate instalation and setup from, say the bootloader, is one of the weak points in the YaST2 application.

The Problem into wich I ran a week ago:
I've had an old dual-boot configuration WinXp + SuSE 7.3 placed on one 40 GB disk. I decided to install SuSE 9.0 instead of the old one, but using another physical disk. The old one should remain as whole for a new Windows installation. Okay, no sooner said than done, I installed the new SuSE on the hdb disk choosing as bootloader from the setup menu the LILO one and telling him to boot from the hdb2 partition. The hdb disk was separated in these partitions:

• hdb1 - 1 GB for the swap
• hdb2 - 40 GB for the /
• hdb3 - 117,8 GB extended partition
• hdb5 - 55 GB for the /usr/extended

Well, I've done a reboot but I saw one scree full of "L01 01 01 01 01..." and the machine freezed. The same configiration (boot at partition hdb2) also failed with GRUB, I saw the word "GRUB " on the screen and the machine freezed again. The I tried to install the bootloader to boot from the MBR of hdb - for no avail again. The system was not bootable.

Remark:
First of all I'd mention that the second physical disk (HDD-1 or hdb in Linux) was not proper auto-activated from my BIOS. This means it was there, and the YaST2 setup utility has knowledge of him, the disk geometry was also correct recognized, just booting from this disk was not possible because of improper configuration in BIOS.
So, for informational puproses only - the one should make sure, the disks are activated from the BIOS (the best option is the Device Activation/Recognition option to be set to "Auto" instead of "Disabled").

Although I set the auto-activation, the bootloader still not work, so the true problem was elsewhere.

The solution:
After successful installation of the SuSE system, the YaST2 application asks to reboot for first time in order to complete the instalation. The one should do this as follows.

Step #1
Still set the primary boot device as CDROM (if the BIOS is too old to enable booting from CDROM, then a boot diskette should be used. How to do such diskette is far beyod the scope of this thread.), boot from the Setup CD/DVD or boot from the CD made from the boot.iso image.

Step #2
In the Setup Menu choose Install/Update, then choose Repair Existing Installation, then specify the path to the distribution (the path where the distribution files reside, used by the installation). Boot into the Rescue: console by giving as user name the name root. No ask for password will occur.

Step #3
Mount the root partition of the new installation in the /mnt directory using the following command stroke:

mount -t auto -o rw /dev/XdY# /mnt

Substitute the letters X, Y and the number # with whatever letters and number, appropriate for the actual disk. For example if the installation was made on disk hda (primary IDE channel, master device, in BIOS this is HDD-0), root partition is in hda2 then this command stroke should look like

mount -t auto -o rw /dev/hda2 /mnt

For the second disk (HDD-1, primary channel, slave device), named hdb, root partition is in hdb3, it looks like this one

mount -t auto -o rw /dev/hdb3 /mnt

Step #4
The bootloader configuration file should be changed appropriate. For LILO this file is /mnt/boot/lilo.conf and for GRUB it is /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst

menu.lst must contain at least one section with parameters like these


title Linux
root (hdN,M)
kernel (hd#,n)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/XdY#
initrd (hd#,n)/boot/initrd


See above for the meaning of the letters X and Y and for the number #. The number N means the first drive in the BIOS boot sequence and is not relevant to the device order inside the computer. This means if the machine has one single disk, then N = 0 (hd0), if the machine has two disks, then N = 0 for the disk said as primary bootable device in the BIOS boot sequence.

One example:
BIOS boot sequence is: IDE HDD-1, IDE HDD-2, Floppy
Linux will use these disks as: hdb, hda, fd0
Let say, hda3 is root partition for some distro (distro1), and hdb2 is root partition for another distro (distro2).
Then GRUB references the root partiton on the first boot device (HDD-1 --> hdb --> 2nd partition = hdb2) as root (hd0,1) Also, GRUB will start the distro2 with this reference.
For distro1 the root reference should look like this one:
second boot device (HDD-0 --> hda --> 3d partiton = hda3 as root (hd1,2)

The number M stands for the MINOR (the partition number, starting from 0 for the first one) of a disk. See the example above for explanation.

Note! Since doing this, the first boot device is the CDROM, we've booted into the rescue console, the one should think as if the BIOS boot sequence were without CDROM - imaginating wich disk were at first place, wich one at second place and so on.

Step #5
Install the GRUB bootloader issuing this command stroke

grub-install --force-lba --root-directory=/mnt /dev/XdY

The letters X and Y have exactly the same meaning as explained above. For example if the bootloader should be installed to boot from the hdb, the command stroke shouold look like this

grub-install --force-lba --root-directory=/mnt /dev/hdb
For GRUB hdb will be hd0, hda will be hd1 and so on.


Step #6
Reboot and from BIOS set the boot sequence as desired. GRUB should now display its boot menu and the Linux label should boot directly in the installed distro. Congrats!


lilo.conf I'm really sorry, but currently this branch of the configuration isn't completely tested and thus I can't post it as working solution. I must in order to track down the different steps. Afterthat I'll post it here.

That's all folks.
One more Note: Should here be posted something, in your opinion, wrong, not correct or not working, please excuse me - post your comments, corrections and recomendations. After all I'm still a Linux

In hope, this could be helpful to the other Linux users.

Kind regards,
sbogus

Well done, thank you .