GRUB Problem

[dsavage at peaknet.net]

On Wednesday August 11, 2004 at 9:35 a.m. "David" <davidh at niitsa.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> im having the following error when my system starts up:
>
> Grub version 0.93
> [minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. for the first word,TAB lists
> possible
> command completies anywhere else TAB lists the possible completions of a
> device /
> filename.]
>
> grub>

David,

This looks like grub phase 1 (usually stored in and read from MBR) cannot
find your /boot/grub/grub.conf file needed to run phase 2. I can think of
a several of possible reasons for this.

(1) Your partition labels could have changed, especially the one
containing the /boot partition. If your system has any difficulty finding
and mounting /boot, you'll get no farther than phase 1. It should be
possible to manually enter the information in a kernel stanza from
grub.conf (assuming you have a hard copy handy) at the grub> prompt, but
I've never actually seen this done.

(2) Have you added a second hard drive to your system with a partition
label the same as one on your first drive? If your system encounters a
duplicate partition label at boot time, it tries to resolve the ambiguity
by appending a "1" to the duplicate label.  You're not trying to migrate a
system from and old hard drive to a new one, are you?

(3) Do you have an EIDE drive in a system that has an SCSI drive you
really want to boot from? I once had to unplug data cable for an EIDE
drive during an installation before anaconda would install grub on the MBR
of the SCSI drive. Annoying.

Suggest grabbing either your Binaries CD#1 or the RescueCD, boot 'linux
rescue', and double-check all your partitions and partition labels. Also
check out the /boot/grub/grub.conf file for any editing errors.  Make sure
you have an /initrd directory owned by root:root with permissions 755.

Then, as root, run 'grub-install /dev/[hda|sda]' to re-write the MBR of
your intended boot drive.

Hope this helps...

--Doc
Robert G. (Doc) Savage, BSE(EE), CISSP, RHCE | Fairview Heights, IL
RHEL3/ESu2 on Tyan S2468UGN w/3G, dual Athlon MP 2800+, 1.1T RAID5
"Perfection is the enemy of good enough."
                         -- Admiral of the Fleet Sergei G. Gorshkov