Problems installing Gentoo / grub not loading
 

Hey,

Looks like a great community. I'm not a total Linux noob, but I'm not nearly as experienced as I'd like to be. This is my 3rd gentoo install, and for some reason grub isn't loading. It boots and says "Please wait while grub loads..." (I'm not right at the failure message this instant, so I forgot the exact message). It doesn't progress beyond that point.

For those who are wondering, I was following the step-by-step instructions on how to install gentoo, starting with a stage 2 install. I used genkernel to compile the kernel, and I'm using 2.4.25.

My partitioning is:

/dev/hda1 -- windows
/dev/hda2 -- ext3 Linux, my root, which also contains the boot directory
/dev/hda3 -- Swap

I've tried several things, but the process I tried recently to get this working is to boot from the live cd (thank goodness for those!), mount hda2, and edit grub.conf. My grub.conf looks like this:

default 0
timeout 10

title=Gento 2.4.25
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/kernel-2.4.25-gentoo init=/boot/linuxrc root=/dev/ram0 real_root=/dev/hda2 vga=0x317

title=Windows
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1


I'm thinking the problem isn't necessarily the conf file itself, but how grub is installed. So, I tried these series of commands (from startup of the live cd)

mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/gentoo
cd /mnt/gentoo
./sbin/grub

(grub loads)
root (hd0,1)
(confirmation of correct filesystem)
setupd (hd0,0)
(notes what it is doing, doesn't report any errors)
quit
(grub exits)
cd /
umount /mnt/gentoo
reboot

And then I get back to my never-going-away "Please wait" message, when it reboots. The weird thing is -- I had it up and running a few months ago :(

Any ideas are welcome. Thanks in advance! :)

this will install the boot sector into the windows partition, not the MBR.

Right, sorry about that. I did type setup (hd0), without the extra parameter. (It's tough not being able to copy and paste my steps that I've done ;) )

So.. now that I'm sitting at the place where I can't progress further, this is the exact text it spits out:

GRUB Loading stage1.5.


GRUB loading, please wait...
(insertion point here, but can't type anything)

The stage1.5 is foreign to me. What does that mean?

I should learn to post all the information at once ;) Since the time of when I had it working, I erased my gentoo partition because I needed to back up my laptop (and my windows drive had too much work on it). I then went to the store that weekend and picked up a RAID controller card, as well as two hard-drives to complete the setup. I noticed this on google (which had no replies, from the looks of it): http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug.../msg00159.html.

Could this be the cause? If so, is there a way to tell grub to ignore the PCI devices when loading? (I'm trying to google for things like this, but can't seem to find the right keywords ;))

Thanks again in advance for any ideas and suggestions.

I had the same problem before on an old machine I installed Gentoo on. It turned out to be a setting in the BIOS. Check the setting for your hard drive.

Unfourtunately, nothing looks out of place there. I went ahead and unplugged my raid controller card, and it still didn't work. I replugged it in, and also unplugged my cd-recorder (the other thing that I've installed since I had it working last). Still not working though...

Thanks for the idea. I'm sure it'll end up being something blatantly obvious that I'm missing ;)

Hmm... I re-emerged grub, and reinstalled it, and it worked this time :) Now there's other problems, but we'll see if I can solve those now :P