Re: Grub boots from command line but not menu

On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 15:06:27 -0800, andrew.bell.ia wrote:

imotgm wrote:
On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 14:53:28 -0700, Douglas Mayne wrote:

You didn't look closely enough. None of the stanzas I posted are booting
from kernels on the boot partition. At the moment, I'm doing housekeeping
on the boot partition, and no kernels reside there, at all, only the grub
directory, and the files therein. Each kernel is in the /boot directory of
the OS's / partition. look again.

title Slackware 9.1 - slack partition
kernel (hd0,8)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda9 vga=788 hdb=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi

title Slackware 9.1 - slack partition 2.4.22
kernel (hd0,8)/boot/vmlinuz-adaptec.s-2.4.22 root=/dev/hda9 vga=788 hdb=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi

This gave me something to try which worked. Putting the root info on
the kernel line as shown above works, but splitting the root and kernel
command, as I posted originally, doesn't work.

#
# Doesn't work
#
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb1 ro

#
# Works
#
kernel (hd1,0)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb1 ro

This syntax is not clear from the grub manual. If anyone has any
explanation, I'd love to hear it.

WAG: root is the magic word which causes the grub to "forget"
anything it knows about filesystems, and also reinitialize where it looks
for _its_ files. This is what I was speculating about before.

BTW, I am planning on doing some more tests with grub. I'd like to know
what exactly is required for it to be able to read from different types of
filesystems on different partitions. I think that an appropriate stage2
needs to be pre-installed on the BPB of a target partition before it can
read it (unless the target partition and last specified root partition
are using the same filesystem type.) I am not sure, but some simple tests
will tell.

--
Douglas Mayne

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Grub Manual
    ... I have digested what you all have said and applied it to the small file I wrote on the Grub Manual. ... Please no more about what is root. ... Many people keep the entire Linux in one partition and in that case both of the root point to the same partition. ... Your computer often wants to use the name of the kernel. ...
    (Fedora)
  • Re: Grub Manual
    ... And you will hate my definition of a root. ... Many people keep the entire Linux in one partition and in that case both of the root point to the same partition. ... Others like to use more partitions and there is a root directory for each of them and the root calls point to different partitions. ... Your computer often wants to use the name of the kernel. ...
    (Fedora)
  • Re: Installing grub for a different computer
    ... > NOW Murphy is kicking good and proper. ... > Mounting root filesystem. ... at least the kernel was loaded from ... root parameter on kernel line is pointing to the wrong partition ...
    (Fedora)
  • Grub Manual
    ... At first look at what it takes in the file /grub/grub.conf to boot a Linux system. ... root ... Your computer often wants to use the name of the kernel. ... A typical one will look like rootwhich says a partition on the first hard drive and the 4th partition. ...
    (Fedora)
  • Re: Could swap space be shared among different linux distributions?
    ... drive, /dev/hda1 for the first partition on it, /dev/hda2 for the second ... different distributions will have *WILDLY* ... since it is never a disk partition of its own even ... *IS* a kernel trick that provides hooks to read to or from the kernel. ...
    (comp.os.linux.setup)