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Re: grub setup is driving me crazy



cr wrote:
On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 22:32, J Y wrote:

Hi I am very grateful for the community here and I appreciate the help I
received. I will be trying to get my internet connection going when I
reboot into debian. Which brings me to my issue of the moment :(
I really have tried so many things to be able to boot from the grub SuSE
installs (version .92) I think. Currently I boot from a floopy. I read
the grub editing procedure which is made to sound simple but I can not
get debian to boot froom grub. I have edited /boot/grub/menu.1st every
way I can think of/copy from other how-tos. At best I get a filesystem
not found. I had been getting a start up and then 'kernel panic'. The
specifics, sorry, its early in the morning and I have just thrown the
damn SuSE manual against the floor, Debian 3.0 is on hdb5 my 2nd hard
drive. I know that grub numbers drives starting from 0 so hdb5 = (hd1,4).
This is my current (not working) /boot/grub/menu.1st debian listing:

title debian3.0
  kernel (hd1,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=dev/hdb5
  initrd (hd1,4)/initrd


Try this for menu.lst:

root (hd1,?)    (see below for the  ?)
kernel           /boot/vmlinuz--2.4.18-k7    root=/dev/hdb5
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-k7 It looks to me as if your Suse may be in an extended partition? I *think* GRUB only counts the actual partitions used so for example the GRUB numbering would be as follows:

/hdb1       windows                           (hd1,0)
/hdb2       more windows                    (hd1,1)
/hdb3       extended
               /hdb5          Suse               (hd1,2)
               /hdb6          spare Linux      (hd1,3)

If you're using or have a grub boot floppy, you can check it by booting the floppy, then do (in the above example)

root (hd1,2)
and if it says it's found an ext2 partition, you know at least it's Linux

Enter 'grub' from the command line.
Enter root '(' & press enter. Grub will show the disk it can find.
Enter '(hd1,' and press enter. Grub will show the partitions it knows about.

Yes, grub does not count the 'extended' partition. So from partition 4 onward the partitions are 1 less than what 'fdisk' shows.

Then try find /<tab> should show you a number of directory names, if you're lucky they'll include boot find /boot/<tab> should show you the actual kernel and initrd as two of the names.

You only need the 'root=/dev/hdb5' as a Linux parameter to pass to the kernel if it's in a different partition from your root directory, that is, if you for example have a separate /boot/ partition (RedHat often does, Debian usually doesn't, I don't know about Suse).


To install GRUB in the MBR, you need to either boot into Grub off a boot disk, or (when in Linux) run Grub, then when you're in the Grub shell do this:

<grub>  root (hd1,4)      (or wherever your /boot/grub  files are)

<grub> setup (hd0) (and that will put Grub in the MBR of the first hard drive)

(If your first drive happens to be DOS, you can also get GRUB for DOS which will allow you to install GRUB and its menus on the first hard drive. It comes complete with instructions. Google for "Grub for dos").

Hope this helps and I've made no booboos.   ;)


I have tried putting /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-k7 for the kernel with video
parameters and not. I have tried /boot/loader, chainloader with the
device and +1. I did have debian install a loader to the partition just
not to the MBR. I wish I could have figured this out myself. The SuSE
manual makes setting up grub sound easy.


They all do...    :)

Probably your using the second hard drive is the complication.

cr







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