Re: Re: new Etch install fails to boot
Thank you for your help.
Re: new Etch install fails to boot [SOLVED]
This problem has been solved, as least in a practical sense. Repeated tries to install Etch had resulted in the boot failing as soon as grub was called. Attempts to build a system with lilo also failed. The motherboard (Abit BX133 440BX) has four IDE connectors, allowing 8 drives in total. My hard drives were on IDE3 and correctly seen as hde and hdf. The only other device was the CD drive (hdc on IDE2). With a rescue boot from the CD, I did verify that grub was referenced in the first two 512-byte blocks of hde, and that the MBR of hdf had not been written by mistake. So that was not the problem. Next I tried disconnecting the spare hard drive (hdf) and doing a fresh install including disk formatting. That still crashed. Finally, I switched both hard drives to IDE1 (hda and hdb) and succeeded in doing a full install. The system is running fine now. Supposedly IDE3 and IDE4 run at 66 MB/s max, while IDE1 and IDE2 go at 33 MB/s max. But where this machine's going that won't matter. I did notice something odd that may help to understand the cause of the failures. With the drives on IDE1 (the successful configuration), the drives showed as follows during the install: IDE1 master (hda) - 41.2 GB IC35L040AVER07-0 IDE1 slave (hdb) - 41.2 GB IC35L040AVER07-0 With the drives on IDE3 (the unsuccessful configuration), they showed as follows: IDE5 master (hde) - 41.2 GB IC35L040AVER07-0 IDE5 slave (hdf) - 41.2 GB IC35L040AVER07-0 Although there can be eight devices (hda-hdh), there are only four IDE connectors. If hda and hdb are both seen as IDE1, then hde and hdf should be seen as IDE3, not IDE5. There was one unrelated issue too. When the system booted, the serial mouse didn't work in X. In /etc/X11/xorg.conf, I changed the mouse device from /dev/input/mice to /dev/ttyS0, and changed the mouse protocol from ImPS/2 to Microsoft. Neither change alone was sufficient. I don't know if this was the proper way to go, but it seems to have worked. I made the changes by imitating the XF86Config file from the machine's Red Hat days. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Tue, Jul 31, 2007 at 09:31:09PM -0400, Steve Kleene wrote: In case it's relevant, here's how fdisk showed the filesys in rescue mode: Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hde1 * 1 12 96358+ 83 Linux /dev/hde248195005 1502077+ 5 Extended /dev/hde3 12481838604195 83 Linux /dev/hde548195005 1502046 82 Linux swap / Solaris I do appreciate all of your suggestions and am sorry this is going on so long. No need to be sorry ;) IIRC your /boot partition was pretty big. Would it be very complicated to make it something like a few hundred megs (less then 512) ? Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) pgpyX9Aw3daUt.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On 07/31/2007 08:31 PM, Steve Kleene wrote: [...] Still, I verified that /etc/lilo.conf was there, and there were no grub files anywhere under /target (including under /boot). I finished the installation anyway, and found it totally bizarre when a reboot produced the same output as before, including GRUB Loading stage1.5. It's as if this string lives on the MBR and I'm unable to overwrite it. Which MBR? Each fixed disk can have its own MBR. It sounds like you have six ATA devices installed; the BIOS is trying to boot from one of those devices, and you need to write to the MBR for that device. BTW, did you change /etc/lilo.conf to work with your system? Practically all I can think of now is trying to install Windows and see if that's even possible. That's pretty desperate. In case it's relevant, here's how fdisk showed the filesys in rescue mode: Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hde1 * 1 12 96358+ 83 Linux /dev/hde248195005 1502077+ 5 Extended /dev/hde3 12481838604195 83 Linux /dev/hde548195005 1502046 82 Linux swap / Solaris I do appreciate all of your suggestions and am sorry this is going on so long. Where are and what are the devices before /dev/hde? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Sun, Jul 29, 2007 at 11:00:30PM -0400: [I wrote that my fresh Etch install calls grub and then stops.] On Wed, 1 Aug 2007 09:21:49 +0300, Andrei Popescu replied: IIRC your /boot partition was pretty big. Would it be very complicated to make it something like a few hundred megs (less then 512) ? As shown during partitioning, it was 100 MB, i.e. IDE5 master (hde) - 41.2 GB IC35L040AVER07-0 #1 primary 98.7 MB B f ext3 /boot Since each cylinder is 8225280 bytes, this is 12 cylinders. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:31:09 -0400, I wrote: Still, I verified that /etc/lilo.conf was there, and there were no grub files anywhere under /target (including under /boot). I finished the installation anyway, and found it totally bizarre when a reboot produced the same output as before, including GRUB Loading stage1.5. It's as if this string lives on the MBR and I'm unable to overwrite it. On Wed, 01 Aug 2007 02:18:13 -0500, Mumia W.. replied: Which MBR? Each fixed disk can have its own MBR. It sounds like you have six ATA devices installed; the BIOS is trying to boot from one of those devices, and you need to write to the MBR for that device. BTW, did you change /etc/lilo.conf to work with your system? Where are and what are the devices before /dev/hde? The motherboard (Abit BX133 440BX) has four IDE connectors allowing 8 drives in total. hda-hdd have a speed of 33 MB/s max. hde-hdh have a speed of 66 MB/s max. So I have always had the two hard drives connected to hde and hdf. There are no other hard drives. I forget which device the CD drive is, but most of the IDE connectors are not connected to anything. Since I brought this up 6 years ago, the MBR has been on hde and supported both Win98 and Red Hat. This all worked until I tried to build Etch on hde (with no Windows). It is a good idea that maybe grub is trying to read the MBR on the wrong disk (hdf). I may have to break down and disconnect hdf before I resume. I may also try to read the MBR with od if it's available just to see where this string GRUB Loading stage1.5: is coming from. I did not try to edit the lilo.conf that was installed. It was really a bare-bones file. Thanks. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Mon, Jul 30, 2007 at 10:19:09PM -0400, Steve Kleene wrote: [I wrote that my fresh Etch install calls grub and then stops.] Here's a fresh start, just to verify that your machine will actually boot properly. 1. Connect your drives to /dev/hda and /dev/hdc, set the jumpers on both drives to master. Alternatively, just remove hdc for now. 2. Boot the installer and go to a shell. 3. Clear the beginning of the drives, which includes the MBR: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=2 ;sync dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdc bs=512 count=2 ;sync 4. exit the shell and return to the installer. 5. Run the install, just the base system (don't select any tasks). 6. Partition the drives thus: hda1/boot 32 MB hda2swap128 MB hda3/ remainder You don't need hdc for this. 7. Install the grub onto hda (not hda1 or other partition). 8. Try to reboot. If it doesn't work, reboot the installer in rescue mode and tell it to install grub again in hda. As for the grub-disk, if you mount it you should see a default menu.lst file. Therefore, when you boot it, you should get a menu on the screen. You may need to ensure that it got copied correctly. Use dd to make an image file of the floppy you created and then compare the md5sum of both images. They should be the same. Good luck, Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Wed, 1 Aug 2007 08:45:23 -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: Here's a fresh start, just to verify that your machine will actually boot properly. Thanks. I'll definitely try this, but probably won't have time until tomorrow. As for the grub-disk, if you mount it you should see a default menu.lst file. Therefore, when you boot it, you should get a menu on the screen. In fact, that's exactly what happened on my good Etch machine. It looked just like the usual grub menu I get from the hard drive, so I probably failed to realize it was coming from the floppy. And I guess I thought I was supposed to get a shell prompt to execute the grub commands you had suggested earlier. Thanks. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On 08/01/2007 07:23 AM, Steve Kleene wrote: The motherboard (Abit BX133 440BX) has four IDE connectors allowing 8 drives in total. hda-hdd have a speed of 33 MB/s max. hde-hdh have a speed of 66 MB/s max. So I have always had the two hard drives connected to hde and hdf. There are no other hard drives. [...] I think I smell a bug in the installer. Your HD configuration may be throwing it for a loop. You probably will have to install Lilo manually--with minimal help from the Debian installation and configuration system. I used to have fun with this when I used Lilo in conjunction with another Linux distro :-) I forget which device the CD drive is, but most of the IDE connectors are not connected to anything. Since I brought this up 6 years ago, the MBR has been on hde and supported both Win98 and Red Hat. This all worked until I tried to build Etch on hde (with no Windows). It is a good idea that maybe grub is trying to read the MBR on the wrong disk (hdf). I may have to break down and disconnect hdf before I resume. I may also try to read the MBR with od if it's available just to see where this string GRUB Loading stage1.5: is coming from. I'd suspect that the BIOS is trying to load the MBR from /dev/hde, so Lilo or Grub needs to write its MBR there. Here are some WRONG places to which the boot-loader might be writing: /dev/hde1 /dev/hde2 /dev/hde3 /dev/hde5 /dev/hdf /dev/hdf1 /dev/hdf2 ...(anything on hdf)... I did not try to edit the lilo.conf that was installed. It was really a bare-bones file. Thanks. After you change it, always remember to do /sbin/lilo. And after you change any file referenced by /etc/lilo.conf, always remember to do /sbin/lilo. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 08:05:06AM -0400, Steve Kleene wrote: On Sun, Jul 29, 2007 at 11:00:30PM -0400: [I wrote that my fresh Etch install calls grub and then stops.] On Wed, 1 Aug 2007 09:21:49 +0300, Andrei Popescu replied: IIRC your /boot partition was pretty big. Would it be very complicated to make it something like a few hundred megs (less then 512) ? As shown during partitioning, it was 100 MB, i.e. IDE5 master (hde) - 41.2 GB IC35L040AVER07-0 #1 primary 98.7 MB B f ext3 /boot Since each cylinder is 8225280 bytes, this is 12 cylinders. Sorry, must have been very tired (or sleepy) when I read that! Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. Albert Einstein) pgp4SnPdZNv9c.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Sun, Jul 29, 2007 at 11:00:30PM -0400: [I wrote that my fresh Etch install calls grub and then stops.] I've tried the remaining suggestions without luck and am now royally confused. 1. I installed the grub-disk package and ran the following: dd if=grub-0.97-i486-pc.ext2fs of=/dev/fd0 bs=1024 conv=sync; sync There were no errors. I could mount the floppy and read the files. I set the BIOS to boot off the floppy. The system touched the floppy but failed to boot off it. I tried this with the box I'm working on and one that is successfully running Etch. I repeated the test with a second floppy, which also didn't boot. 2. I tried repeatedly to install grub from the CD in rescue mode. The install seemed to succeed. I poked around with a rescue shell and confirmed that files had been installed in /boot/grub. However, booting the machine still gave the usual message from the dead, i.e.: Verifying DMI Pool Data .. GRUB Loading stage1.5. Read 3. I reformatted the partitions, reinstalled the base system, and tried to install lilo. This came up: LILO installation target: /dev/hdf: Master Boot Record /dev/hde1: new Debian partition Other choice (Advanced) Note that the first one is for hdf, which is the second drive. I have no idea why. Anyway, I tried all of these, include Other with /dev/hde and /dev/hde1. In all cases, I got lilo-installer failed with error code 1. Console 4 showed the following: Setting up lilo (22.6.1-9.3) mount: /dev/hde1 already mounted or /boot busy dpkg: error processing lilo (--configure) subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 32 Still, I verified that /etc/lilo.conf was there, and there were no grub files anywhere under /target (including under /boot). I finished the installation anyway, and found it totally bizarre when a reboot produced the same output as before, including GRUB Loading stage1.5. It's as if this string lives on the MBR and I'm unable to overwrite it. Practically all I can think of now is trying to install Windows and see if that's even possible. That's pretty desperate. In case it's relevant, here's how fdisk showed the filesys in rescue mode: Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hde1 * 1 12 96358+ 83 Linux /dev/hde248195005 1502077+ 5 Extended /dev/hde3 12481838604195 83 Linux /dev/hde548195005 1502046 82 Linux swap / Solaris I do appreciate all of your suggestions and am sorry this is going on so long. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On 07/29/2007 04:43 PM, Steve Kleene wrote: I just made a fresh Etch Netinst CD and successfully completed an install on a PC that I bought six years ago. When I try to boot, this is as far as it gets: Verifying DMI Pool Data .. GRUB Loading stage1.5. Read It may or may not be relevant to mention an issue I had in the past with this box. I used to run Red Hat on it but with a Windows partition at the start of the disk. During the Red Hat installation, I had to select Force LBA32 or it wouldn't find the Linux boot partition. Now, though, I have given the whole disk to Etch, so I'd be surprised if this is the issue. There are just two partitions: IDE5 master (hde) - 41.2 GB IC35L040AVER07-0 #1 primary 39.9 GB B f ext3 / #5 logical1.5 GB f swap swap The BIOS (AWARD 1998 / PCI/PNP 686 / 276079428) shows: IDE Primary Master Auto (other choices are None, Manual) Access Mode Auto (other choices are Normal, LBA, Large) I've tried various combinations, including LBA, to no avail. The hard drives are IBM Deskstar 40-GB IDE hard drives, model IC35L040AVER07-0. Any ideas how to fix this? Thanks. Older BIOSes have restrictions on where the Linux kernel and other boot files must be located. LBA32 should be able to get past these restrictions, but in your case it might not be working. If you can, try to get the boot files placed before the 1024th cylinder boundary. Sometimes this is at 0.5GB, 2.1GB or 8GB. Try a partition layout like so: /boot (primary #1, 2.1GB) / (primary #2, 37.8GB) swap (logical #5, 1.5GB) /boot must be the first partition, and try to keep all of it below the 1024th cylinder. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Sun, Jul 29, 2007 at 11:00:30PM -0400, Steve Kleene wrote: [I wrote that my fresh Etch install calls grub and then stops.] On Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:19:40 -0400, From: Douglas Allan Tutty replied: What happens if you reboot the installer in rescue mode and tell it to install grub again? I don't know how to do this yet, but it sounds like it's worth looking into. I'm hoping not to have to run the whole build again. Does the box have a floppy and do you have a grub-disk (I've never made a grub-stick)? Will that get you to a grub command line? It does have a floppy. I do not have a grub-disk. I do have a second (newer) box that is happily running Etch. And on Sun, 29 Jul 2007 22:28:04 -0500, Mumia W.. wrote: If you can, try to get the boot files placed before the 1024th cylinder boundary. Sometimes this is at 0.5GB, 2.1GB or 8GB. Try a partition layout like so ... This is exactly what I always did with Red Hat and lilo on a drive that shared Windows and Linux. I could easily try this again but thought it should be unnecessary for two reasons. First, I am using grub now, which I thought supported lba by default. Second, without the whole drive allocated to Etch (i.e. no Windows partition at the start of the drive), I imagined the files needed by grub would not be placed past cylinder 1024. But maybe that's unpredictable. Thanks. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Sun, Jul 29, 2007 at 10:28:04PM -0500, Mumia W.. wrote: If you can, try to get the boot files placed before the 1024th cylinder boundary. Sometimes this is at 0.5GB, 2.1GB or 8GB. Try a partition layout like so: /boot (primary #1, 2.1GB) / (primary #2, 37.8GB) swap (logical #5, 1.5GB) You shouldn't need a 2.1GB /boot. I find that 24 MB is fine. Hey, splurge and make it 32 MB. Since we don't know what the problem is, better be safe and assume that the boundary is as 512 MB. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Mon, Jul 30, 2007 at 08:24:08AM -0400, Steve Kleene wrote: On Sun, Jul 29, 2007 at 11:00:30PM -0400, Steve Kleene wrote: [I wrote that my fresh Etch install calls grub and then stops.] On Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:19:40 -0400, From: Douglas Allan Tutty replied: What happens if you reboot the installer in rescue mode and tell it to install grub again? I don't know how to do this yet, but it sounds like it's worth looking into. I'm hoping not to have to run the whole build again. The installer's rescue mode (at the boot prompt, instead of typing 'install', just type 'rescue') is designed to rescue an already installed system. It will not reinstall from rescue mode. I also gives you the option of a shell chrooted into your installation where you can run commands as if it had booted normally. Does the box have a floppy and do you have a grub-disk (I've never made a grub-stick)? Will that get you to a grub command line? It does have a floppy. I do not have a grub-disk. I do have a second (newer) box that is happily running Etch. Then on that box, install the grub-disk package. It gives you a disk image which you write to a floppy with dd: dd if=grub-disk.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=1024 conv=sync; sync If that box has grub installed and you have the grub-doc package, there are instructions for putting grub onto a floppy from within the grub command line. And on Sun, 29 Jul 2007 22:28:04 -0500, Mumia W.. wrote: If you can, try to get the boot files placed before the 1024th cylinder boundary. Sometimes this is at 0.5GB, 2.1GB or 8GB. Try a partition layout like so ... This is exactly what I always did with Red Hat and lilo on a drive that shared Windows and Linux. I could easily try this again but thought it should be unnecessary for two reasons. First, I am using grub now, which I thought supported lba by default. Second, without the whole drive allocated to Etch (i.e. no Windows partition at the start of the drive), I imagined the files needed by grub would not be placed past cylinder 1024. But maybe that's unpredictable. Just because grub can find something doesn't mean that your bios can boot it. Just to save the headache later, especially if I move the drive from one computer to another, I _always_ put /boot in the first partition on its own. If I have two drives, I'll put it on a raid1 partition for good measure. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:35:19 -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty [sent several helpful discussions on how to get around the lba problem with grub]. Thanks very much. It make take me a few days to try these, but in any case I'll report on the outcomes. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:43:26 -0400 Steve Kleene [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello Steve, I just made a fresh Etch Netinst CD and successfully completed an install on a PC that I bought six years ago. When I try to boot, this is as far as it gets: Have you tried booting with a noapic option? Older machines sometime require that; Mine does, and it's a similar age to yours. -- Regards _ / ) The blindingly obvious is / _)radnever immediately apparent Black man got a lot of problems, but he don't mind throwing a brick White Riot - The Clash signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Sun, Jul 29, 2007 at 11:00:30PM -0400, Steve Kleene wrote: [I wrote that my fresh Etch install calls grub and then stops.] On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:01:51 +0100, Brad Rogers replied: Have you tried booting with a noapic option? Older machines sometime require that; Mine does, and it's a similar age to yours. I haven't tried this, but I'll look into this and the other suggestions I've received. Thank you. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 11:07:36 -0400 Steve Kleene [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello Steve, Have you tried booting with a noapic option? Older machines sometime require that; Mine does, and it's a similar age to yours. I haven't tried this, but I'll look into this and the other suggestions I've received. Thank you. TBH, it doesn't appear that your machine is getting far enough into the boot sequence for this to be an issue. Having said that, I'm no expert, so don't quote me on it. -- Regards _ / ) The blindingly obvious is / _)radnever immediately apparent Black man got a lot of problems, but he don't mind throwing a brick White Riot - The Clash signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
Hi, I recently made a huge mistake, which might help you... I did a apt-get dist-upgrade to upgrade my Sarge server to Etch, and all seemed to go very well, but then I rebooted and Etch with the default 2.6.18 kernel could/would not find my two NICs. I then wiped everything and installed Fedora Core 6, same problem (pretty much the same kernel I believe), so I then re-installed Etch (from scratch) with still the same problem, until I decided to turn off (disable) the Power Management in the BIOS. I think your problem was with bootup, but maybe this helps you out, if you haven't already found a solution. Robert From: Brad Rogers [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: new Etch install fails to boot Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:18:27 +0100 On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 11:07:36 -0400 Steve Kleene [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello Steve, Have you tried booting with a noapic option? Older machines sometime require that; Mine does, and it's a similar age to yours. I haven't tried this, but I'll look into this and the other suggestions I've received. Thank you. TBH, it doesn't appear that your machine is getting far enough into the boot sequence for this to be an issue. Having said that, I'm no expert, so don't quote me on it. -- Regards _ / ) The blindingly obvious is / _)radnever immediately apparent Black man got a lot of problems, but he don't mind throwing a brick White Riot - The Clash signature.asc _ http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=hmtextlinkjuly07 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Sun, Jul 29, 2007 at 11:00:30PM -0400: [I wrote that my fresh Etch install calls grub and then stops.] On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:30:41 +, Robert Cates wrote: ... I then re-installed Etch (from scratch) with still the same problem, until I decided to turn off (disable) the Power Management in the BIOS. I think your problem was with bootup, but maybe this helps you out, if you haven't already found a solution. Thanks, I'll keep this in mind. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Sun, Jul 29, 2007 at 11:00:30PM -0400: [I wrote that my fresh Etch install calls grub and then stops.] I've tried several of the solutions suggested and am still stuck. In the BIOS, Virus Protection was already disabled, and I tried turning off Power Management. I've tried the different Access Modes for the drive (Auto, LBA, Large). Then I tried rebooting the installer in rescue mode and reinstalling grub (I think it did grub-install /dev/hde1). Then I tried doing a whole new install of just the base system, but set up these partitions: IDE5 master (hde) - 41.2 GB IC35L040AVER07-0 #1 primary 98.7 MB B f ext3 /boot #3 primary 39.5 GB f ext3 / #5 logical1.5 GB F swap swap IDE5 slave (hdf) - 41.2 GB IC35L040AVER07-0 #1 primary 41.2 GB ext2 which gave /boot its own partition at the start of the disk. I tried this a few times and should mention that the `f' flags in the table sometimes showed as `F' or `K'. I think `F' means format this, but I haven't been able to track down what `f' and `K' mean. As I said, these all still crashed when the boot got to grub. I wouldn't have guessed that there was any need to have the boot files near the start of the disk anyway. Until two days ago, this same disk in the same box had a 9.8-GB Win98 partition (1252 cylinders), followed by Red Hat, as follows: Mount Size Device Point TypeFormat(MB) Start End /dev/hde /dev/hde1 vfat 9821 1 1252 /dev/hde2 /boot ext3 Y 102 1253 1265 /dev/hde3 / ext3 Y 28318 1266 4875 /dev/hde4 Extended 1020 4876 5005 /dev/hde5swap Y 1020 4876 5005 /dev/hdf /dev/hdf1 ext2 39260 1 5005 This worked fine, although I did have to force lba32 in lilo.conf. Supposedly grub does this by default. I have not yet tried the suggestion of making a grub disk but may if I can figure out what to do with it. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Mon, Jul 30, 2007 at 10:19:09PM -0400, Steve Kleene wrote: On Sun, Jul 29, 2007 at 11:00:30PM -0400: [I wrote that my fresh Etch install calls grub and then stops.] [... stuff about trying grub and various partition options] I have not yet tried the suggestion of making a grub disk but may if I can figure out what to do with it. I agree with trying a grub disk. you can boot the system like this from the grub command line grub root (hd0,0) #that tells grub to use the first partition of the first disk. it should return something about the file system. grub kernel /boot/linux-imageinsert appropriate info here root=hda2 \ ro single #note this is all on one line. You can use grubs find feature or its tab completiong to get the complete filename grub initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6blahblahblah #use tab completion again, but make sure it matches the kernel grub boot #this will fire up the boot. Also, if lilo worked before, then maybe you should use lilo again until you can get it sorted out. A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On 07/30/2007 09:19 PM, Steve Kleene wrote: On Sun, Jul 29, 2007 at 11:00:30PM -0400: [I wrote that my fresh Etch install calls grub and then stops.] I've tried several of the solutions suggested and am still stuck. In the BIOS, Virus Protection was already disabled, and I tried turning off Power Management. I've tried the different Access Modes for the drive (Auto, LBA, Large). Then I tried rebooting the installer in rescue mode and reinstalling grub (I think it did grub-install /dev/hde1). I am absolutely not a Grub expert, but maybe you want grub-install /dev/hde. How do you get a /dev/hde anyway? Perhaps your BIOS prefers to boot from /dev/hd[a-d]. Take a look at your old Lilo config file. You might have needed to use Lilo's map-drive feature to trick the BIOS into thinking that /dev/hde is a more traditionally-positioned IDE drive. Grub has something similar. Then I tried doing a whole new install of just the base system, but set up these partitions: IDE5 master (hde) - 41.2 GB IC35L040AVER07-0 #1 primary 98.7 MB B f ext3 /boot #3 primary 39.5 GB f ext3 / #5 logical1.5 GB F swap swap IDE5 slave (hdf) - 41.2 GB IC35L040AVER07-0 #1 primary 41.2 GB ext2 which gave /boot its own partition at the start of the disk. I tried this a few times and should mention that the `f' flags in the table sometimes showed as `F' or `K'. I think `F' means format this, but I haven't been able to track down what `f' and `K' mean. It's nice to have a Knoppix or Kanotix disk when these situations arise. The 'rescue' feature of the Debian install disk might suffice to let you see what is actually on those partitions. I hope that you rebooted after changing the partition table. On every i386 computer I've used, under every O/S I've used (Windows 3.1-XP, multiple Linux distros) I've used, the computer must be rebooted after the partition table has been changed, or the system will be messed up. I've never been clear on the exact reasoning, but that's the case. As I said, these all still crashed when the boot got to grub. I wouldn't have guessed that there was any need to have the boot files near the start of the disk anyway. Until two days ago, this same disk in the same box had a 9.8-GB Win98 partition (1252 cylinders), followed by Red Hat, as follows: [...] I'm convinced that the 1024th cylinder limit doesn't relate to your problem; however, you might consider using the --force-lba option to grub-install next time. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
Hi, Sometimes older bios has a virus protection enabled in the bios itself. This does not allow anything to be written to the MBR to protect MBR viruses. I have faced this problem whereby the MBR gets cooked and the GRUB does not get written properly. Looking at your information it looks like grub is not able to proceed. Can you check your bios once again and try disabling the virus protection (re-enable it later once things are working) and re-install the grub and check ? On Sun, 2007-07-29 at 17:43 -0400, Steve Kleene wrote: I just made a fresh Etch Netinst CD and successfully completed an install on a PC that I bought six years ago. When I try to boot, this is as far as it gets: Verifying DMI Pool Data .. GRUB Loading stage1.5. Read It may or may not be relevant to mention an issue I had in the past with this box. I used to run Red Hat on it but with a Windows partition at the start of the disk. During the Red Hat installation, I had to select Force LBA32 or it wouldn't find the Linux boot partition. Now, though, I have given the whole disk to Etch, so I'd be surprised if this is the issue. There are just two partitions: IDE5 master (hde) - 41.2 GB IC35L040AVER07-0 #1 primary 39.9 GB B f ext3 / #5 logical1.5 GB f swap swap The BIOS (AWARD 1998 / PCI/PNP 686 / 276079428) shows: IDE Primary Master Auto (other choices are None, Manual) Access Mode Auto (other choices are Normal, LBA, Large) I've tried various combinations, including LBA, to no avail. The hard drives are IBM Deskstar 40-GB IDE hard drives, model IC35L040AVER07-0. Any ideas how to fix this? Thanks. -- Bhasker C V Registered Linux user: #306349 (counter.li.org) The box said Requires Windows 95, NT, or better, so I installed Linux. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
[I wrote that my fresh Etch install calls grub and then stops.] On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 07:56:04 +0530, [EMAIL PROTECTED] replied: Sometimes older bios has a virus protection enabled in the bios itself. This does not allow anything to be written to the MBR to protect MBR viruses. ... Can you check your bios once again and try disabling the virus protection (re-enable it later once things are working) and re-install the grub and check ? Thanks for a good suggestion. However, my BIOS already has Virus Warning set to Disabled. This feature is described as follows: Allows you to choose the VIRUS warning feature for IDE Hard Disk boot sector protection. If this function is enabled and someone attempts to write data into this area, BIOS will show a warning message on screen and alarm beep. Since this is already set to Disabled, and since I didn't see a warning message, I'm not sure that this can account for the problem. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new Etch install fails to boot
On Sun, Jul 29, 2007 at 11:00:30PM -0400, Steve Kleene wrote: [I wrote that my fresh Etch install calls grub and then stops.] What happens if you reboot the installer in rescue mode and tell it to install grub again? Does the box have a floppy and do you have a grub-disk (I've never made a grub-stick)? Will that get you to a grub command line? Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
