Re: "Grub Hard Disk Error", after installing from sarge floppies

From: Joao Clemente (jpcl_at_rnl.ist.utl.pt)
Date: 12/01/04

  • Next message: Rogério Brito: "Re: On unresponsive maintainers (was: Re: On using magicfilter and gs)"
    Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 02:08:53 +0000
    To: Alvin Oga <aoga@ns.Linux-Consulting.com>
    
    

    Hi Alvin. Once again, thanks for your ultra-fast reply. I have not been
    able to understand completly what you've said so I'll comment along your
    mail, ok?

    Alvin Oga wrote:
    > On Tue, 30 Nov 2004, Joao Clemente wrote:
    >>...but when one is suposed to get the GRUB menu, I get simply a
    >>"GRUB Hard Disk Error" message
    >
    >
    > grub is "unreasonably" finicky ....

    What means "finicky"? 1rst time I see this word

    > you have several choices..
    > 1) boot into dos a:> fdisk /mbr
    > -- wipe it out and try grub-install again

    I could try this but it would fail again... as you already said - and
    its obvious that it will...

    > 2) i always use lilo, whenver grub failed ..

    Well, I was willing to try it... but I haven't been able to get to a
    point that I get a shell...

    > 3) install into the boot sector of the partition (/dev/hda1 ) instead
    > MBR of the disk ( /dev/hda )
    > - but the mbr must be empty too

    I am not certain of you're refering to grub, lilo, or both. I see no
    reason why grub (or lilo) would fail when installed in MBR but suceed
    when installed in /dev/hda1... and, btw, can grub be placed in
    /dev/hda1? I've done this with lilo, but never seen it done with grub...

    > presumably you can boot off of other media to try to install the MBR
    > with grub/lilo/loadlin/...
    > boot media == boot floppies, knoppix, deb cdrom,
    > where you can get into standalone rescue mode

    Well.... here is also one of the problems.... I tried to follow
    instructions on http://www.desktop-linux.net/grub.htm about using a grub
    floppy and I was not sucessfull... I found out that I needed (at least)
    to give the commands
    - root (hda0,0)
    - kernel /vmlinuz
    - initrd /initrd.img
    - boot
    but I must be missing something as even with this the boot fails at some
    point with a kernel panic...

    One thing that its crossing my mind is... can I use tomsrtbt floppy and
    chroot to my freshly installed sarge? Can I run "apt-get lilo" from such
    a chroot'ed environment? Is it worth a try?
    (I am not trying this at this moment because I decided to reinstall
    again, to see if I can have a choice somewhere of getting lilo instead
    of grub somewhere during installation)

    Thanks
    Joao Clemente

    Ps: I can only use floppies as boot media for this machine.. no boot
    from cdrom available... it's an old bad machine..

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  • Next message: Rogério Brito: "Re: On unresponsive maintainers (was: Re: On using magicfilter and gs)"

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