Re: installing/using grub-legacy
Felix Miata composed on 2015-10-21 18:02 (UTC-0400):
> All my many installations are seriously multiboot, with typically no less
> than 10 distro installations within a HD's first year of use, and upwards of
> 30 partitions as HD warranty becomes a distant memory.
> In order to Keep It (multiboot) Stupidly Simple, most booting here is via
> Grub 0.97.x. So as a first attempt to revert from grub2 to grub-legacy I've
> been trying with a 64 bit intel CPU wheezy installation on host msi85. I did
> apt-get purge of os-prober and everything I could identify as related to
> grub2, rebooted, then tried apt-get install grub-legacy. That pulled in
> grub-common, claiming to have installed both. But, nothing reached
> /boot/grub/.
...
> Enabling use as bootloader on the / partition can be a simple matter
> of creating a menu.lst and running setup from the grub shell. Thus, I rarely
> make use of any grub scripts personally managing multiboot configuration.
...
> When I first tried to run grub from root shell in wheezy, first command
> attempted, as suggested by grub's man page, is find /boot/grub/stage1. This
> listed the first 3 instances, (hd0,0), (hd0,1), (hd0,7), then hung. I aborted
> with Ctrl-C, then rebooted after disconnecting hd1, and tried again, reaching
> same hang. Anyone know whether this hang would be a bug, known or previously
> unknown, or some pre-configuration or configuration required in a debian that
> isn't necessary in an rpm distro? I tried searching on bugs.debian.org, but
> as a 15 year user of various Bugzillas, I'm not making much sense of how the
> search by keyword(s) process is supposed to work on
> https://www.debian.org/Bugs/. I get an error message "An error occurred.
> Error was: You have to choose something to select by " but with no sign of
> what mandatory select list I'm missing.
> I tried running setup for wheezy from a grub> shell in openSUSE 13.1, but
> attempting to chainload boot from it, it only does
> chainloader (hd0,14)+1
> GRUB Loading stage2..
> and locks up the machine.
> I tried repeating setup from LMDE2 Betsy like I tried in openSUSE, but it
> hangs sooner than it did in wheezy, simply by hitting <return> after typing
> find /boot/grub/stage1. I tried to chroot to wheezy from lmde to run grub
> shell, but it hangs after showing instance 3 (hd0,7) same as run booting
> wheezy directly.
After perusing /usr/sbin/grub-install, as suggested by first thread response,
I tried:
# grub-install /dev/sda15
The entire result is:
Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub
_
IOW, grub-install hangs in like manner to running setup from the grub>
prompt. Ctrl-Fn works. And after waiting about 5 minutes hoping some loop
might timeout, Ctrl-C succeeded to abort the script. Nothing shows up in
dmesg or /var/log/* to provide any recognizable clue why the failure. The
script did succeed to cp /usr/lib/grub/x86_64-pc/* to /boot/grub/, as all
*stage* files there now acquired a current date/time stamp (291,076 bytes in
9 files), as did /boot/grub/default.
So, I booted a different host, and tried roughly the same overall process on
Jessie:
1-purge grub2*
2-install grub-legacy
3-copy a device.map from a co-installed distro to /boot/grub/
4-grub-install /dev/sda21
5-# grub --> grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
6-create /boot/grub/menu.lst
Step 4 completed, but with an error message about some sort of stage1 read
failure.
Step 5 hung, instantly, so after waiting a bit, I aborted with Ctrl-C. Again,
no apparent clues are to be found in dmesg or /var/log/*
I attempted to chainload to Jessie from the main bootloader. All that results
is a grub> prompt from which a kernel command results in "error: can't find
command `kernel', and an initrd command results in
alloc magic is broken at 0xdd901170: 0.
Aborted. Press any key to exit.
No boot device available -
strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility
Press F5 to run onboard diagnostics
F1 triggered reboot. Again from Jessie boot, # grub --> grub> find
/boot/grub/stage1 hangs, so I can't help but thing the grub-legacy debs or
some deb(s) it/they depend on on the mirrors is broken.
Next I tried booting openSUSE 13.1, starting grub shell, and setting up
(hd0,20). It claimed to succeed. In attempting chainload to it and running
find /boot/grub/stage1, it outputs only (hd0,2), then hard locks the machine.
Retrying but instead executing 'root (0,20)' succeeds, only to be followed by
failure of any kernel to be found by any name offered. configfile
(hd0,20)/boot/grub/menu.lst is not found, while chainloader (hd0,2)+1 -> boot
produces expected result.
--
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!
Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/
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