The dreaded GNU Grub Boot Prompt after trying to install Elementary OS
 

Okay, so today I tried to install Elementary OS. I got through the installation and when I was prompted to reboot and select Elementary OS (I dual booted it with Windows 8), I got what is apparently known asthe dreaded grub boot prompt.

I see that there are steps there to help get through it, but I don't quite understand how to apply them to my PC.
When I 'ls', I get "(hd0) (hd0,msdos1) (hd1) (hd2) (hd2,gpt5) (hd2,gpt4) (hd2,gpt3) (hd2,gpt2) (hd2,gpt1)." When I boot into Windows, I have the partitions C:/ and L:/ and I am not sure which one is which. Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Hi:

Sorry to hear your having trouble with your Elementary OS.

I (think) that you can now use the next command (ls and the (hd0) and all the rest; to look at each partition to determine which one is the Linux root, boot, and swap. Look for the dev/sda1 that is your "/boot partition"
If this partition contains /boot, the output will show the full name of vmlinuz and initramfs.

At the prompt on your screen; does it say: error: file not found grub rescue?

Also is this a Desktop computer or a laptop? What make and model?

I have asked another member to help here because I don't know about your Windows C:/ or L:/ and I don't want to tell
you the wrong thing.


https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Troubleshooting
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Initramfs

After consulting with another member here It would be better for you to use a Linux LIVE-CD to determine what each drive contains.

With Windows 8 that particular partition is on a UEFI partition all of it's own.

http://www.ehow.com/how_8248552_hidd...n-windows.html
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...st-4175478139/

Thank you for your help, Ztcoracat.

First of all, I apologize for being unable to reply quicker.

To answer your questions, this a desktop that I built. No, it did not say "error: file not found grub rescue."

I am unfarmiliar with Linux LIVE-CDs. How would I go about using one to determine what each drive contains? Also, since this new partition that I created only contains Elementary OS files that the installer installed, would it be easier to just start the process over? You know, wipe the partition then reinstalling? I guess a better question is, is this issue caused by an error in the installation that is most likely a one time thing, or is this caused by an incompatibility issue, or something else? Because I wouldn't mind retrying if you think it might fix this issue.

You are very Welcome. It's my pleasure to assist you.

If Elementary OS is the only operating system on your new computer than yes, it would be considerably easier to just re-inatall Elementary. Depending on the size of the HDD you could create your own partitions or just allow the installer do it for you if you want the OS to take up the entire disk.

Otherwise you would have to prepare for a dual boot (Windows and Linux) on the same HDD:-

If you have Windows 8 installed on your computer than it would be better to use a LIVE Linux CD to determine all of the partitions on your machine. To do so you would go and get any Linux distro's live .iso image and burn it to a CD/DVD and set your computer in the BIOS to boot to the CDROM drive first.Save the changes in your BIOS and than Exit.If you already have Elementary OS on a CD/DVD you can use that-:)

If it is a compatibility issue than all you would need to do is disable the secure boot in your BIOS-
That is if Windows 8 is installed on your computer--

Once the Linux CD loads you can use the terminal to run this command and post the output of it-

I don't believe I was specific enough about how I went about installing Elementary OS in my original post.
I extracted the elementaryos-stable-amd64.20130810.iso onto a USB drive and booted into that. I then went through the installation process, and I was then prompted to restart my computer and select Elementary OS. When I booted back up, instead of getting a screen where I could select my OS, I got the grub boot prompt.

I would be happy to boot into the Elementary OS USB drive tomorrow and run the fdisk command, but right now, I need to go. Again, thank you for your time.

Although it doesn't say "error: file not found grub rescue.", you are brought to grub prompt.
What does your hardware consist of?
How many hdd's do you have?
Do you know if you installed to the msdos disk or did you install to the gpt partitioned disk?

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/11t4n
I have one HDD.
I am not sure which one I installed it to. I think I installed it to the gpt partition. I know I didn't install it to my main disk that I am running Windows on.

Also, I attempted to run the command, but all I got was this .

I'd like to mention something that I noticed while watching an installation video. In the video, one of the options for installation was "Install elementary OS alongside Windows 8," and I didn't have that option. I was thinking that that might relate to my issue in some way, but I'm not sure.

Did you build this system or did they buid?
Is windows bootable?
Try using a live-cd

The commond 'fdisk -l has to be ran as 'root' That's the small letter l, BTW-
When you run that command you should get something like this:

Here's are the partitions on my computer; as an example. Here you can see my dual boot Win's XP and Black Opal/ Ubuntu 12.04--

If you didn't have the option to install Elementary OS alongside Win's 8 like in the video; than the only way that you could of been able to install Elementary OS was to create a /journaling file system (Ext 4) and than create another partition for the swap-

Do you recall making 2 partitions?

If you only have that one 1 TB Western Digital HDD in that desktop tower than there is no other place that Elementary could of been installed.

I apologize, I meant I didn't install it to my main partition.
I do have another partition that I created for this purpose, but I did not create it through the installer. I only used to installer to install the OS on the empty partition.

This is what comes up when I typed in the command:
I built the system.
I am not sure how to answer that question. Yes, I can boot into windows. No, I am not booting into windows from a disk or USB drive.

To read gpt partitioning you have to use gdisk
What os are you using on live-usb?

This is a partition that was created but it doesn't have any mount points-
Unless I am mistaken-

This is your Windows partiton. Thank goodness!
There should be at least another /W95/Fat32 partition and I am having trouble understanding why you don't have another Windows partition-
Because you should:- (bizarre)

The fact that you can boot into Windows is a very good sign. Your Windows OS is permanetly installed on your drive-

Because of the WARNING about fidisk you will have to use GNU parted.
https://www.gnu.org/software/parted/
https://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/

If you don't want to do that (use GNU Parted) than you will have to format the usb that has Elementary OS on it.
Than you should be able to install Elementary alongside of your Winows OS.

In that case than use that to install Elementary to- As long as you made a /journaling file system (ext4) Unless you want your Elementary to have more room) Than you would create a partition larger than what you have already mad. It's 1024 x (times) the size of the partiton you want to get the calculation in Mib's-

Don't forget to create another partiton for the swap. I would dedicate 1 to 2 GB for the swap partiton.
The swap holds temporary memory packages.
A server can boot w/o a swap partition as long as there's enough RAM. (if your running a server)

I think that Elementary is the OS on his live-usb:-:)

Windows is bootable & on gpt partition
This is a 4Gig usb.
Elementary is capable of installing to GPT & UEFI so it should have gdisk on it.

Thank You Eddy1-:)

Since Elementary is capable of this all our friend; Caskla now needs is to use gdisk? Right?
I didn't know that gdisk comes with Elementary.

I used a Live Elementary CD yesterday and I was able to use g-parted to look at my friends Lenovo's partitons-
Don't know if that helps-

Try the usb on your machine & run the command if it's installed it will read your gpt partitions, if there are no GPT partitions it will notify you of that, then you'll know if it's included in live-cd.

The Live CD is no longer with me.
My friend took it to install it on his Lenovo-

Caskla:

The Elementary .iso image is on your usb isn't it?

Although this wasn't directed at me, I tried it anyway because I figured the results would be the same.
Yes, it is.

Looking at the output gdisk in now installed. ;)

You should be able to install Elementary OS now (onto the partiton that you made) from your usb memory stick.

So I should go through the installation process again?

When you start up your computer do you have the GNU Grub Menu to choose either Elementary OS or Windows OS?
If you don't than I don't think Elementary Os has been installed.

We should see what Mr. Eddy has to say about the /dev/sda1 partition that you have.


/dev/sda5 EXT 4 4068 MB-
You should be able to install to that partition.

As you know, I'd like to install it to the partition that I made, but according to the installer, /dev/sda1 is only 300 MB. /dev/sda5 seems to be the partition that I made. Here is an album of photos of the installer and my options: http://imgur.com/a/Vulvh

sudo gdisk /dev/sda

You are correct as sda5 has almost 4 Gigs of data written to it & it's ext4, but you also have an unknown partition sda3 that may be grub efi. Right now I'm going to to check the REFIT site for answers

Not sure if that is Grub or not--

You could shrink your Windows partition and that way you will have more free space to make 2 partitions for Elementary.
That's what I would do if this was what I had to work with. I'd reduce it to about 1/2 the size it is now.

That's a good partition but not big enough for Elementary to have room to expand over time.

4068 is used space on the partition, but partition is 104.9Gigs, so os is most likely installed but no bootloader. At this point the OP needs somebody like evo, tobisdg or other members who are more experienced with this type of setup.

I wrote to Mr. Evo and asked him for his help-;)

10/04/13 Update
 

I have asked our Moderator to join this thread- ;)

BTW approx. 30 GB's is recommended for Windows 8-

However; it depends on how many other programs you must install on the boot disk partition:-
http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=faq-Windows-8&faq=5

Windows will eat up 30Gigs in 1 update. You need atleas 70 Gigs for windows to breath.

Wow! 70 Gig's- That's just crazy:-

Currently, I have 833gb on my Windows 8 partition, so there's no reason to worry. I plan on keeping that size, and having the extra 100gb on my HDD for Elementary OS.
Anyway, thank you, Ztcoracat, for asking for help.

You are Welcome -;)

If you haven't reinstalled yet at the grub prompt what is the output of the following
I believe you may be missing the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file

I too colorpurple21859; was suspicious of /boot/grub/grub.cfg file missing.
How do we get that file that is needed?

This thread that our Guru: business_kidd SOLVED may be helpful in your case Caskla. To say the least to learn from.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...80#post4952280

Trying to help the best I can.

:~$@ Claska run those commands that colorpurple21859 needs when you have time.

:~$@ colorpurple21859: thank you for joining our thread!

that is what ls /boot is for to see what the kernel and initrd files are, then can manual boot with the linux and intrd commands. once booted either can run grub-update or grub-mkconfig to create a grub.cfg, or can create one manually with a text editor.

Thank you for teaching me that.
So...like you said once booted you will know wether to run grub-update or use grub-mkconfig to create the grub.cfg file.
I'm thinking that running "grub-update" and running "grub-mkconfig" performs differnt things.
Obviously 'grub-mkconfig' will give you the ability to make and configure the needed file-
Is that right?

It has been a while since I ran grub-mkconfig. If I can't get grub-update to work then I usually create one with a text editor.

I would have to look on my system to see the arguments contained in the grub.cfg-
Thanks-;)

Sorry it took me so long, guys. I lead a busy life. So, I ran the commands, and here are the results:

Evidently, you do not have the grub file. (error: file not found)

Lets's see what colorpurple21859 advises on this.
I would need his take on this to assist you or anyone else for that matter:-

In the meantime it probably wouldn't hurt to look up:
Invoking grub-mkconfig and or how to create /boot/grub/custom.cfg?

what does give and what is your partition/disk setup? There is no /boot on this partition.

you can find where your /boot partition is located by changing the partition numbers according to the output of then try variations of this , we already know it is not on (hd2,gpt2). once we find where /boot is then you can boot with something along the line of linux (hd?,gpt?)/boot/<name of kernel> root=/dev/??
initrd (hd?,gpt?)/boot/<name of initrd>
boot

Then run updates and then reinstall grub to MBR

also what is the ouput of

Here is the input. It seems that (hd2,gpt5) is my boot partition. Would have continued with the instructions, but I was unsure of what to type after the root=/dev/ part.
I figure the initrd.img-3.2.0-51-generic is the initrd.

Yes it (hd2,gpt5) does indeed look like your boot partition.
And the initial ram disk image (3.2.0-51 generic seems like it could be the initrd-

I (think) now like colorpurple21859 said you would type something like:
After the kernel in the above in code I'm not sure if root=/dev would come next or if the name of initrd is what should be typed next.

I'm learning and waiting for colorpurple21859's counsel at this point. Never seen this output before.

Set to the correct value, which might be something like this:
not sure if you have to insert the gpt module

See if this will pull up a boot menu.
If it does and allow you to boot, then copy the /boot/grub/grub.cfg to /boot/efi/ubuntu and see if that will give you a boot menu.

will allow you to see what kernels are in you boot menu so you can boot directly as posted before if the configfile command doesn't work.