I will admit, I am new at linux, I have tried several distros without failing to get one to install. Slack, zenwalk,arch,etc. None of them gave me trouble so i am perplexed how could one with a gui install do it. Well after i installed to my hd from the live CD it reboots. Then I get the following screen

grub>

I have hit tab, and looked at the commands. I dont know what to do. I am absolutely stuck. Can some please give me step by step instructions? I'll donate 10 bucks in your name to your favorite sourceforge project or distro project. Please HELP!

I have typed everything under the sun in at the:

grub>

prompt. I even bought a 50 dollar book on linux, it cant help....

You may have accidently skipped over the part where it installs lilo to the mbr.
If you have another linux distro installed, you could get the grub up and going for that distro, then put an entry for pclinux in that distro's grub.conf.

For example: I have Fedora installed on my second hard drive, second partition. so, at the grub > prompt, I would proceed like this....
The grub entry for pclinux looks like this. Note: In this case, it's installed on the first drive, and first partition. Maybe different for you.
If you don't have another distro installed, it would likely be easiest for you to boot up with the livecd and re-do the install. Then make sure to do the part of installing lilo to mbr.

I installed lilo to the MBR. I have already done a second istall because i thought that i messed that step up. There are no other linux systems or M$ systems on my pc. Just pclinuxos. Everything starts fine the i get the


grub>

Here is where i get lost. My swap partition is 2gig and the other partition that has the OS and MBR installed on it is 108gig. The commands that you gave me to try are those done from root or grub? I cannot even get the kernel to load. At the grub>

I have typed: kernel load
load kernel
root

where you told me the pclinux boot command looks like
title PCLinuxOS
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hda1
initrd /boot/initrd.img

do i type what you told me to type at the grub> prompt?
Sorry if i am confusing. I am new to linux but learning as much as i can>

Thank you so much for your help!

If there are no other systems on the machine, then you don't need to mess with grub as pclinux uses lilo by default.

If you have done the part about writing lilo to the mbr correctly, it should over-write the grub stuff you have left from previous installs of other Linux distros.

Here is what I just tried and it worked to restore the lilo on a system which has grub already.

Boot up with the pclinux cd and become root ( su - ) .

# This part should clear previous mbr entries
lilo -M /dev/hda

# We need to un-mount everything and re-mount the partition where pclinux is installed. ( some kind of permission issue )

umount -a

# Note: In my example, pclinux is installed on /dev/hda2
mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/hda2
chroot /mnt/hda2
lilo
exit

reboot and see if it works for you.

i have typed
grub> setup (hd0)

and tried 2 and 3

it told me:
checking if "boot/grub/stage1" exists,,,,,,no
checking if "grub/stage1" exists no,,,,,,,file not found

I am going to reinstall on my HD, do yo uhave any other ideas?

thanks,
Ryan Southard
suseforge@linuxmail.org

i have typed
grub> setup (hd0)

and tried 2 and 3

it told me:
checking if "boot/grub/stage1" exists,,,,,,no
checking if "grub/stage1" exists no,,,,,,,file not found

I am going to reinstall on my HD, do yo uhave any other ideas?

thanks,
Ryan Southard
suseforge@linuxmail.org

You don't need to reinstall your HD!!! you must have grub.lst or grub.conf in your /boot dir. you can run
grub>root (hd0,0)
grub>setup (hd0,0)
it depends where you have /boot dir and grub's files copied.

what partitions do you have? and on which partition is your /boot dir?

you can install as many grubs as many partitions you have. Each partition has its own boot record ala MBR. Then
you can "travel" from one grub to the other using chainloader +1 command.
e.g
grub>root (hd0,0)
grub>chainloder +1
grub>boot

or this whay you can try "to catch" your installed grub partition!
e.g
grub>root (hd0,1)
grub>chainloader +1
grub>boot

and so on, changing root (hd0,2) or (hd0,3) etc.
Just remember grub counts from 0!
0=hda1

Thank you so much! I will try it right now, and see if it works Thanks again for the tip!

I can help you on line now if you need. I understand your frustration. I've spent myself a lot of time with this kind of problems... Do you have any Live CD and could you tell me your partitions?

BTW, remember that MBR is for Master Boot Record and only one for the whole disk - in the first sector - 512 bytes. Each partition has boot records but not MBR.. .

also you can try to play with entering comands into grub:

grub>kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hda1 #or hda2 etc
grub>initrd /boot/initrd.img
grub>boot

if you can access your disk from live CD then the best thing is to have a look at the /boot dir. To be sure what kernel and initrd names. Because you can have different kernel names- like vmlinuz24 or vmlinuz26 or whatever. Same for initrd. Also check if you have /boot/grub directory and what files in there. Then you can boot just by entering commands I posted above. I mean you don't need menu.lst or menu.conf etc..

my hds are: hda is the bootsector partition

hda1 is the master boot record
right now my install is at which hd i put the bootloader on.

ps i do have the live cd of pclinuxos

Thanks again,
We are going to london in june cant wait!