Hi all,

I have a problem with GRUB...

I have 2 hd (IDE primary, SATA slave). I have a working WinXP on hda and Kubuntu up and running on sda. NTLDR is installed on MBR of my first drive and GRUB is on /boot of sda.

Boot with NTLDR first (works fine)
If I select Linux I want it to load GRUB, which works fine I think, it only display the GRUB prompt (GRUB> ) and that's it...

I have to type "configfile /grub/menu.lst" to start the GRUB menu. At first I thought it was not that bad, but I'm getting annoyed typing that every time I boot...

So, I want to know if it is possible to keep it the way it is (that is without screwing any OS installation) and boot automatically without having to type the configfile thing every time. Is there any easy way to do this :-) ???

Here is my menu.lst
===================

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.12-10-686
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.12-10-686 root=/dev/mapper/Ubuntu-root ro quiet splash
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.12-10-686
savedefault
boot

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hda1
title Windows XP
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
chainloader +1

===========================

Thank You all !

For starters:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...41#post1208741
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+Win9x+Grub-HOWTO/
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/
http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/grub/grub.htm

And yes, there is a way, I just don't remember it exactly (sitting in front of a Windows box ) it goes like your "root=/dev/mapper/Ubuntu-root ro" but uses boot=...{something}, just look at those links, they should tell.

JZL240I-U,
Thanks for the great references.

• I had never seen #4 before, & it is one of the clearest expositions of GRUB I have ever seen. The rest of his site is pretty cool, too.
• #3, the actual GRUB manual, is worth reading & rereading & rereading & rereading ... Unfortunately, Litt is right -- it's not the easiest document to digest. BTW, I recommend the " HTML (244K characters) - entirely on one web page." because the whole thing can be searched w/ 1 find.
• #2 is OK, perhaps short & dated.
• #1 I found imposible to concentrate on reading simply because it is a post & not a dedicated web page. (Sounds like a personal problem, mine.) Nevertheless, I found a section that may be the short answer to OP's problem:

phleva,
This section from
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...41#post1208741
may be the quick fix to your problem.

However, I would advise answering a few Q's about your system & backing up both MBR's, how would you like to proceed?

Hi,

Thanks for the replies :-)

I did read some of the stuff you suggested and I'm thinking of installing GRUB to the MBR instead of NTLDR... but first I'd like to ask you guys one simple question:

That's what I'm trying to do: http://enterprise.linux.com/article....tid=129&tid=49

Why is the GRUB prompt showing instead of the menu ?
Where did I go wrong ?

If you do this:
open a terminal
$ su
$ root password
$ grub
(prompt or cursor changes to GRUB>.)
$ root (hd0,0)
$ setup (hd0)
$ quit

you will go wrong. change root (hd0,0) to root (hd1,0).
open a terminal
$ su
$ root password
$ grub
(prompt or cursor changes to GRUB>.)
$ root (hd1,0)
$ setup (hd0)
$ quit

The root of your Linux install is on the second drive, and you want to write grub to the MBR of the first drive, with instruction where to find the rest of grub (on the second drive).

With root (hd0,0) in there, first stage grub (on the MBR) is looking in the xp partition instead of the Linux partition for the rest of grub.

Hi all,

It wasn't any installation problem after all ...
I'll explain here for the benefit of all:

OS SUMMARY
==========
WindowsXP => Primary hd (IDE)
Kubuntu => Secondary hd (SATA)

BOOT LOADERS
============
NTLDR installed on MBR of primary drive (as expected by Windows)
GRUB installed on to the first sector of the /boot partition (not MBR; i chose this during OS installation)
I have a binary file of stage1 (dd if=... of=... bs=512 count=1) that I copied in my C:\ for NTLDR to read

WHAT DID THE TRICK
==================
Simply added a symbolic link (grub.conf -> menu.lst) in my /boot/grub directory.
Now my configfile loads perfectly well...

Why is that so... ????
Who is there to blame ?

• My distro (Kubuntu) for incorrectectly setting GRUB during installation ?
• GRUB, for not supplying a link to menu.lst when in fact it looks for grub.conf ???
• Me for not having done I don't know what ???

Should I report this as a bug to the GRUB team and/of UBUNTU ?
It really annoyed me for a long time and I think some people might get borred of this and simply boot WinXP every time... that would be a shame

Thanks all again and I hope this will help some other people !!!

1st, good for you for finding your own answer; & more for posting it.

2nd, I don't (at least not yet) use Kubuntu, so I don't know what its norm is; but I thought all Debian/Debian based distros had long since switched from the old "grub.conf" name to the new "menu.lst". Are you sure that the stage 1 code you copied was working w/ your actual /boot/grub directory?

V. v. strange.

Hi,

The grub version I have was installed as a package by apt (adept, from the distro's repositories) and stage1 dd'd as a binary was the one installed during Kubuntu installation.

btw, all I had to do to load stage2 (and menu) was:

GRUB> /grub/menu.lst

So I assume that stage1 was working correctly (it pointed to the /boot partition)

Has anyone had the same problem while trying to set up a dual-boot system on a separate hard drive configuration ?

The grub source only references menu.lst
Distros that choose to use grub.conf are responsible for cleaning up after themselves.

Simple as that.

Never. OTOH, I have never installed Kubuntu; & I have never had to apt-get GRUB. In my not-so-limited experience *, the distros' installers have always put GRUB where they were told to (MBR or root partition) & GRUB then just worked.

This sounds contradictory: If GRUB, including the stage1 binary, was installed by Kubuntu, why was it necessary to use APT to install it?


What follows is supposed to be as small as I can make it, but font control seems to be broken for Konq. 3.3.2, sorry.
* I have installed 2-3 versions of RH, 1 FC, 3 Debian, 4 MEPIS, 2 or 3 Mandr[ake|iva], 2 or 3 SuSE, not to mention FreeBSD. My multi-boot "record" is close to 10 distros on 1 machine.

Never. OTOH, I have never installed Kubuntu; & I have never had to apt-get GRUB. In my not-so-limited experience *, the distros' installers have always put GRUB where they were told to (MBR or root partition) & GRUB then just worked.

This sounds contradictory: If GRUB, including the stage1 binary, was installed by Kubuntu, why was it necessary to use APT to install it?


What follows is supposed to be as small as I can make it, but font control seems to be broken for Konq. 3.3.2, sorry.
* I have installed 2-3 versions of RH, 1 FC, 3 Debian, 4 MEPIS, 2 or 3 Mandr[ake|iva], 2 or 3 SuSE, not to mention FreeBSD. My multi-boot "record" is close to 10 distros on 1 machine.

Sorry, I might have confused something...

GRUB was installed during Kubuntu installation. It also appears as an "installed package" in my package manager.

So I guess I can assume that submitting the problem to Kubutu would be the right action.