Re: Grub stage1 file error

[Robert L Cochran <cochranb speakeasy net>]

Michael Schwendt wrote:

> I don't agree at all with what you think is "very clear". Anaconda
> allows manual partitioning where you can take over existing
> partitions. You can even skip formatting existing partitions.

I've never personally fed a FAT16 partition to anaconda just to see 
whether I could overlay it with a Linux system. So I can't say what 
would happen here. Perhaps I can experiment just to find out. Say, try 
to assign mount points to a FAT16 partition. But where will I put \ if I 
have a FAT16 partition taking up the whole disk and I need \boot to be 
the first partition? And where is swap going to live? If you activate 
swap, that formats it.

I don't think the installer lets you continue the installation process 
unless you have /boot, /, and swap at a minimum. But most FAT16 
partitions take up the entire physical drive. You very quickly find 
yourself forced to partition as part of the installation process. And if 
you do that with disk druid, FAT16 is not one of the available partition 
types.

But let's suppose you somehow have 3 FAT16 partitions on a drive or on 3 
separate drives in the system. Does the installer mount them as FAT16 or 
ext3? I don't know. I don't know how you can actually write data to a 
partition not supported by the installer.

> > The real problem is elsewhere and won't be solved with fdisk.
>
>
> I disagree strongly. The OP should switch the partition type to
> "Linux", so any tool -- e.g. a bootloader like GRUB which implements
> native file-system access to load files -- is not confused. GRUB would
> use a FAT driver to access an ext3 file-system.
>
> IMO, this is *very* likely to be the problem. And yes, I've seen cases
> of file-system/partiton-type confusion before.

Correct me if I'm wrong: you go into fdisk, change a partition type to 
x'83', Linux ext3, write the change to the partition table, and what is 
the next step? I've done this several times and I think you have to 
format the partition. How else can you get your inodes and journalling 
done? Formatting destroys everything on the drive. Which will surely not 
boot the system.

Are you saying that you can just change a partition type from FAT16 to 
ext3 and, without formatting it, get Grub to work with it? And 
subsequently boot to such a partition? If so, then that is something new 
to me. I've never done that before.

More information from the user will help pinpoint the issue. The user 
did not post very much detail to start with and didn't really give 
enough detail subsequently.

Bob


> - -- 
> Michael, who doesn't reply to top posts and complete quotes anymore.
>
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--
Bob Cochran
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA
http://greenbeltcomputer.biz/