On 29/12/11 01:42, Thomas H. wrote:it should use grub-install --no-floppy --force "/dev/da6" is there a way to run grub-install manually from a 2nd console during the installation, or any other way to get grub2 installed on /dev/da6?Hi Thomas, If you Alt-F2/F3 into a spare console, I imagine you can do: chroot /target /bin/bash and then run the grub-install command manually. You should then Alt-F1 back into the installer menu and say 'Continue without a bootloader' as there are some other things it does before it finishes.
thanks steven. the chrooting worked, but ultimatively resulted in a non-bootable system when doing update-grub and grub-install.
i retried the installation, this time not allowing debian-installer to install grub in the MBR but rather setting the target to /dev/da6. this resulted in the following errors:
grub-installer: info: Installing grub on '/dev/da6' grub-installer: info: grub-install supports --no-floppygrub-installer: info: Running chroot /target grub-install --no-floppy --force "/dev/da6"
grub-installer: /usr/sbin/grub-stup: warn:grub-installer: Your core.img is unusually large. It won't fit in the embedding area. grub-installer: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged.
grub-installer: /usr/sbin/grub-setup: error: grub-installer: cannot read '/grub/core.img' correctlygrub-installer: error: Running 'grub-install --no-floppy --force "/dev/da6"' failed.
i guess the disk partition layout is broken and will redo them now before giving it another try (i had to do the partitions in gparted as d-i failed partitioning the drive before...). some a grub bug-report comment [0] suggest that there should be at least 1M+ gap before the first partition when using MBR or have a dedicated 1M+ grub bios partition under GPT - which my drive currently hasn't.
BTW, were you installing the Squeeze release (kfreebsd-8)? Or one of the Wheezy testing images (kfreebsd-9) from: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
i used the squeeze release 6.0.3 kfreebsd-adm64 squeeze dvd release. i'll give the wheezy image a try if it still fails after repartitioning. another idea i had was to first try a normal amd64 debian to hopefully get grub2 installed correctly...
regards, thomas [0] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/24103#comment76579