Grub doesn't install
Ian
mogplus8 at bigpond.net.au
Tue Sep 20 06:57:12 UTC 2005
Hi Jim,
Thanks for the response.
My problem is, though, that I can't boot FC4 at all, because grub didn't
get installed when I reinstalled FC4. The master boot record still
contains lilo from my install of Mandrake, and it won't boot FC4. So I
have no way of changing any grub settings. I think they call it stuck
between a rock and a hard place...
Ian
Jim Cornette wrote:
> Ian wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>> I'm not a Linux guru but I would like to use Linux as an alternative
>> to Windoze wherever possible. To that end I've tried installing a few
>> different distros, the latest being FC4, but I appear to have screwed
>> something up with grub. Sorry, but it's a long story so please bear
>> with me.
>> I had Mandrake 10.0 Official installed on the second hard drive in my
>> PC (XP is on the primary drive) which used lilo (could never get grub
>> to work) as it's bootloader, and all was fine. Then I tried FC4,
>> which installed grub and again everything seemed to work okay, but I
>> couldn't get FC4 to recognise my Windoze drive. Tried mounting the
>> drive as ntfs but it told me ntfs was not a valid file type.
>
>
> Fedora does not come with ntfs modules. you have to install the
> modules from a source which provides rpms for your distro and kernel
> version/type.
> If you are talking about an entry in grub to boot windows, it ought
> to be visible if you press any key when grub starts loading. you
> should be able to arrow up or down to your preferred OS to load.
>
>> A bit of RTFMing told me that the valid file types had to live in a
>> specific file (the name of which I've forgotten now, but you probably
>> know it). ntfs wasn't in there so I added it. Now the mount command
>> told me /hda had an invalid or unrecognisable header. At that point I
>> gave up.
>
>
> There seems to be some modules for FC4 at this website. Grab the one
> for your kernel/type and install it using the rpm program.
>
> http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/fedora4.html
>
>>
>> Finally found my way to this forum, and found the post about booting
>> with "linux rescue", chroot /mnt/sysimage and grub-install /dev/hda.
>> Tried that and got a message saying /dev/hdb1 (where FC4 is
>> installed) did not have a valid BIOS file (sorry, again I don't
>> remember exactly what the message said, but it was something along
>> those lines. It definitely mentioned /dev/hdb1 and BIOS). Now I'm
>> really stuck.
>
>
> there should be a file in your /boot/grub directory called device.map,
> my file contains the below. There is some grub command which will
> reset this file. I however never had to do this. It tells grub where
> your devices are mapped to. What does your file read?
> (/boot/grub/device.map)
> cat device.map
> # this device map was generated by anaconda
> (fd0) /dev/fd0
> (hd0) /dev/hda
>
>> During FC4 install I created 3 partitions on my drive, one for /boot,
>> one for swap and the rest for /. I formatted all partitions prior to
>> each install.
>
>
> This sounds acceptable as a layout.
>
>> My PC has an AMD2200+, 512Mb, primary drive is 40Gb (Win) and slave
>> is 10Gb (Linux).
>> All help very gratefully received!
>
>
> Good luck with your adventure through Linux distros.
> Jim
>
>> Ian
>>
>
>
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