Re: Problems with GRUB and SATA
On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 01:27:07PM +0000, ieb wrote:
> I asked last week about getting Debian to run on my new box.
>
[snip: running Etch]
> Everything worked fin until Saturday.... switched on and it failed with
> an Error 18 at the GRUB.
>
> It took me 8 attempts over the weekend to reinstall to system.... it
> kept failing at the 'Installing Software' stage and wouldn't proceed.
> I downloaded the latest installer yesterday- - burnt another dic and
> tried again.... it all seemed to go fine and the system was up and
> running again.
>
> I have just switched on the machine - it booted OK - got to Gnome
> desktop... and the whole thing froze (reminiscent of the bad old Windoze
> days) ... switched it off (couldn't shutdown ... wouldn't take any
> inputs) switched back on and I'm back with my Error 18 during GRUB
> again....
>
> Any sage advice please. I will remind folks that I am not 'that'
> technical, so please be gentle with me with I ask stoooopid questions.
>
> It seems as if I have a hard disk problem.... but I even went and bought
> a new drive at the weekend so this has happened to two separate SATA
> drives.
>
> A kinda obvious question.... but is anyone else having problems with
> SATA and ETCH?
>
> I understand that Error 18 is a read attempt beyond 8GB on older
> machines..... but this is a brand new Motherboard, AND in any event I
> always have BOOT in a separate 50meg partition at the front of the disk.
>
> Advice / comments please,
>
Hello Ian
I read some great advice yesterday in one of the *BSD books talking
about what to do when a drive failure happens:
PANIC: you will anyway, so just PANIC away from your computer so
you don't make things worse. Then calm down.
First, the reason I use Etch is _because_ I have SATA drives.
I don't know what a desktop (e.g. Gnome) may be trying to do. I don't
use one. Instead, when I want X, I use startx from a shell.
Since you're running Etch, is it up-to-date? That is, have you run
aptitude or apt-get update/upgrade?
---
Since this is a booting issue, don't let it boot to runlevel 2. What
you want is single-user mode, accessed by the 'single' kernel parameter.
Boot the computer. When you get the grub menu, edit the kernel line and
add 'single', then boot the entry. That is, unless you already have a
single-user or maintenance mode.
If you don't get Grub, boot the installer in rescue mode and reinstall
grub.
Once you get to a command shell in single-user mode, edit the grub
menu.lst file to give you an added line for single-user mode if it isn't
there already. When you shutdown, use the -F command to force a
filesystem check on next boot.
If after booting grub you get errors on the screen, write them down so
you can send them to us. Then reboot but instead of using 'single', use
'init=/bin/sh' to bypass all the init stuff and just get a shell to work
in.
Once you get a functioning system again, install smartmon (or whatever
its called) to monitor the S.M.A.R.T. status of your drives.
You shouldn't have to reinstall unless, after sharing the errors here,
there is no alternative. For this to be the case, something very
serious must have happened.
Good luck,
Doug.
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