Re: [opensuse] 10.3 install trouble

On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 21:21 +0100, Anders Johansson wrote:
On Friday 30 November 2007 12:32:21 Dave Howorth wrote:
I'm trying to install 10.3 on a 4-year old 32-bit machine. I don't do
enough installs to remember all the gotchas, so it's always a fraught
process if anything goes wrong :(

I blew a 10.3 DVD, verified it and ran the installer. It all went
happily and eventually started installing the packages so I went home
and left it to it. This morning I came in to find

Missing operating system

The 10.3 system installs the boot loader to the partition containing /boot,
leaving a standard MBR that does nothing except hand over to the partition
marked "bootable" in the partition table.

Thanks for this. It's useful. Is there anywhere I can read more?

My guess is that you have the wrong partition marked as bootable.

I don't think so. The /boot partition is marked bootable on that disk
and the other disk has a partition with the dreaded lilo marked
bootable. I don't see any evidence that either is being reached.

Boot the rescur system, run fdisk -l, and see which partition has a * in the
Boot column. If it's the wrong one, you can change it with the "a" command in
fdisk

On the other hand, if it's the right one, there is something wrong with your
MBR. You can use YaST to set this by enabling the option to install a
standard MBR in the bootloader installation section

Agreed, I'd already launched the rescue system and used cfdisk to check
the bootable partitions :) On Monday, I'll find time to try patching the
MBR but I'll use the grub-based method I found on a web page first.
Given that the Suse installer / YaST messed it up in the first place,
and that Suse's repair system is broken, I don't trust it to fix it!

Once the illusion of magic is shattered, I prefer to get my hands into
the dirt and see just what's there.

You should however be able to finish your install by booting the installation
system again and selecting "boot installed system" when it asks you what you
want to do. Once it completes you can log in, run YaST, and reinstall the
boot loader, with the correct option

But try fdisk first

Anders

Thanks Anders. I'll let you know how it goes on Monday.

Madness takes its toll

Ain't that the truth!

Cheers, Dave
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