Linux - NewbieThis Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux.
Just starting out and have a question?
If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place!
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
Newbie to linux here hoping to find some clear help. A couple days ago I tried to install FC1 on my computer. I already had XP home on my first hard drive a Western Digital 60G, and part of my second hard drive a WD 80G was partitioned for windows. I installed FC1 with the graphical interface without any problems, however after reboot all I got was the following
GRUB_
(the _ blinking of course) so I tried reintalling a couple times, and have since installed FC2 in place of FC1 on my second hard disk. I still only get the black screen with GRUB_ . I am only able to use the linux rescue mode from the CD to interact with my computer at all. I apologize if this is common place to you and it seems I just haven't looked around for myself, but within the past two days I haven't really found out what I can do. Not sure what other info I should post about my system to get the best help with this situation. Thank you in advance for your patience with me. Hoping to hear back on this soon.
The XP is using an ntfs partition and I have just the two hard drives. One is a 60G Western Digital, it came with the Dell with XP Home already installed on it. At the beginning of the summer I installed the second harddrive, the 80G WD that has another ntfs partion on it and I installed FC2 on free space that I left for it on the second harddrive (the 80G). I am still having the problem with only GRUB_ displaying after the BIOS screen. Thanks for any/all help, I'm still searching and am hoping a solution will not require wiping either hard drive.
Normaly if you have more than one hard disk drive, you should use the 'map' command to make the disk as the first disk and then continue. Please take a look into http://www.mcc.ac.uk/grub/grub_13.html#SEC87 and configure your 'menu.lst' accordingly.
Disk /dev/hda : 60.0GB, 60000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7294 cylinders
Units=cylinders of 16065*512=8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 4 32098+ de Dell Utility
/dev/hda2 * 5 7294 58556925 7 HPFS/NTFS
fdisk -l /dev/hdb gives me the following:
Disk /dev/hdb : 80.0GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units=cylinders of 16065*512=8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 8454 67906723+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb2 * 8455 8467 104422+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb3 8468 9566 8827717+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb4 9567 9727 1309297+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5 9567 9727 1309266 82 Linux Swap
I haven't gotten a chance to look into the map command yet, I'll be looking at that next. Thanks again for the help. I'd be very grateful if future help was just a tad more explicit, I wasn't really sure what output of fdisk was needed and the like.
Edit:
I realize the above is a tad hard to read, is there any way to post things as a table so stuff like this is easier to digest?
I'm not sure what it is either, I don't recall being able to access it before. Some wierd partition that Dell decided to put there I suppose. I don't know if you were suggesting that I try accessing it from Windows now, but if you were I can't boot into Windows at all, the only thing I can do at the moment is boot from the FC2 cd into the linux rescue mode shell.
As far as the map command goes, don't I have to have a grub prompt to use that? I found my menu.lst, but I'm not sure how to 'configure it accordingly'. Still looking for solutions on my own, but any/all help is still greatly appreciated. Thanks for the help so far everybody, I'm at least learning about stuff like the fdisk command .
I'm pretty sure my first drive is primary master... How exactly would I double check that, and if it isn't what should I do differently/change? Any other info I can provide that would help? Thanks again for the help =).
Primary/Secondary Master/Slave settings are determined at the bios level. If your drives are on the same IDE cable, one must be set to master and one to slave.
Ideally you want the main hard disk as Primary Master and the other as Primary Slave...make sure jumper settings are correct.
for Drive1, it should either be on "Master (with slave present)" or Cable select.
for Drive2, it should either be "Slave" or Cable select.
If you enter setup at startup (before Linux loads) (usually by pressing Delete key), it will often tell you the primary master/slave...
So my first hard drive (the 60GB, only XP and the wierd Dell partition, hda) is the master and the second hard drive (the 80GB, with an ntfs partition and FC2 on it, hdb) is the slave, definitly. I'm still confused as to exactly what difference it makes. Another thing, I've been looking around online a bit and found somewhere (sorry, can't find the link anymore) an example of someone else's grub.conf that was similar to mine. I posted what mine looks like above. Do I need to edit it in some fashion, or should it work just fine as is? Is there somewhere in particular that might be another good resource for finding the solution? I've tried looking through bugzilla but I didn't really find any solutions, or cases that involved the same symptoms, mostly just similar hardware/software situations and the like. Any pointers/further help is greatly appreciated. Thanks for the help thus far everybody.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.