FC5 fails to boot after install

[el_fantin]

Hi all,
I'm quite new to Linux, just eagerly moving my first steps. 
I have read this thread while searching for an answer to an issue that arised when I installed FC5 on my machine: it would read the MBR from the HD (where I have Ranish boot manager), but then fail to load grub, and go for the second entry in the BIOS. So it's not exactly what described by dpeck, as grub never got launched. Yet, I think this might be of help, and it still goes under the heading: "FC5 fails to boot after install". So here it goes:
FC5 installed fine, but would not boot. I tried a manual boot after starting the FC5 installation DVD in rescue mode. I mounted my installation under /mnt/sysimage/ as done by default by the rescue DVD. I was pleased to see that everything was there. From grub command line,I specified the location for kernel and initrd but the command 'boot' gave nothing at all. Using 'geometry (hd0)' I noticed that the partition of installation was not recognised. (thanks so much to Mike for his brief 'tutorial' on GRUB, I had always seen it as an obscure boot loader, but now I see some light!)
I must now give some more details on my hd0. I use the <b>GREAT Ranish Partition Manager</b>, which allows me to have 8 partitions on my 120 GB hd, with 3 Win2000 installations and 1 Linux. Why so many? well, just to play around. Of course, you can't see more than 4 partitions at a time, but that's exactly the point: I don't like having a Win2000 aware of another win2000 on the same system, and hiding a partition is no good. Basically the idea is to put in the partition table only data about the partitions you want the systme to see, so that everything else looks like unpartitioned space. GREAT CARE is required! but it works wonders, you can have many separate PCs in one.  But I'm digressing, for details on RPM search the web, you'll find it :lol:.
Anyway, I had used RPM to create a partition for my linux and I set it as "linux", without worrying too much (type 0x81, I reckon). Installation went smooth, I only asked to manually configure the partition layout, because what anaconda thought was unpartitioned HD space was actually full of my data! I also went for advanced config of GRUB, because I don't want my MBR, which contains RPM, overwritten; there I asked to install GRUB in the boot record of the installaion partition. I also asked to format the partition I had created in RPM with ext3. There was also a swap, but no matter.
Bottom line: GRUB and also fdisk were still giving type 0x81 for that partition, even if I asked anaconda to format it as ext3 (which I think should be 0x83). My guess is that this prevented grub from working. Alternatively, it simply didn't get installed in the boot record of the partition (sorry, I didn't test to check this).
Solution: I set the partition type to 83 (with fdisk?). Then I installed manually grub:
First I checked that everything was ok with 
<code>
GRUB>geometry (hd0)</code>
which gave this info:
<code>Part #0, ext2fs 0x83</code>
Then:
<code>GRUB>root (hd0,0)
GRUB>setup (hd0,0) </code># that's to make sure it goes on the boot record of part#0, rather than in the MBR of hd0
And the problem was solved! (although setup gave 2 not fatal errors)

Then I installed FC5 also on my laptop. This time I decided to create a partition of different type (I can't leave it unpartitioned or I won't know where my other partitions start...). I made a Win FAT32 partition, ready to savour its destruction later on. During installation of FC5 I did like before, asking to format that as ext3. But again, it didn't boot! fdisk and GRUB showed again that the partition where I installed FC5 was still of type FAT32 ! and yet FC5 was there! I did the same as above (i.e. setup GRUB) and everything was fixed.

<b>My deductions, from partial experiments? That during formatting of the partition, anaconda doesn't change the partition type, and maybe this causes trouble to grub.</b>
I'm still not sure if I have the partition type right. Am I ext2 or ext3? I don't know how to check. How much the part type, as receorded in that little byte placed somewhere, matters? I'm actually tempted to change it back to fat32 and see if it still works...
Hope this helps someone. If I have been imprecise or wrong anywhere, feel free to correct me, thanks!

El Fantin
"Riding ahead"  


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