Hi guys, I am facing somewhat wierd problem. I have Toshiba Laptop (Satellite 1410, Celeron 1.8GHz, 256MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce4 420 Go Processor with 16 MB VRAM, 30 GB Hitachi IDE Harddisk, Windows XP preinstalled). I partitioned the harddisk using Partition Magic 7.0 into 15GB NTFS C: and 15GB E: FAT32. I installed Redhat 7.2 into that. I made following partitions /boot 100MB / 5GB /usr 3GB /home 3GB /var 3GB swap 512MB actually that much was not needed ... but anyway ;)
Now Windows would boot without problem (fortunately) but it would not go to GNU/Linux at all! So I prepared a bootdisk with rawrite and went to rescue mode. I had experimented with GRUB this time which I don't have much idea about ;) In rescue mode it would mount my file system to /mnt/sysimage. To my surprise I found /boot partition empty! No vmlinuz there!
Some pages about GRUB had instructed me to type "grub-install" on the command prompt. But that would say "/sbin/grub not found". So I figured probably this was becoz of the mounting the whole file system to /mnt/sysimage. So I saw that grub-install is a shell script I can modify. So I changed some variables to reflect the new mounting. But now it would give message that some file in /mnt/sysimage/usr/i386... is missing! I cannot make head to tail of that message.
One mistake that I have done which seems to be quite common, while installing GRUB is I have not labelled the Windows XP partition. Apart from that I got one warning while installing that my architecture may not support the partitioning that I have made. As a GNU/Linux enthusiast I don't want to erase the system that is installed and am trying to find a way to make things work without it as I can.
The questions are: 1) Why /boot partition is empty? 2) Why GRUB would not load? 3) What I need to do without going thru the hassels of reinstallation?
Thanx
===== rgds, Aditya N. ======= Graduate Student, Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, Auburn University, Auburn AL, USA.
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On Dec 15, 2002 at 13:27, aditya newalkar wrote:
Now Windows would boot without problem(fortunately) but it would not go to GNU/Linux at all!
You did not install a boot loader, or did not configure your existing boot loader to boot linux.
would give message that some file in /mnt/sysimage/usr/i386... is missing! I cannot make head to tail of that message.
It's missing.
quite common, while installing GRUB is I have not labelled the Windows XP partition. Apart from that I
That's easily fixed once you can boot into Linux. The opposite problem is not so easily fixed, as you have found out.
- Why /boot partition is empty?
It wasn't mounted? You said it mounted your "filesystem"at /mnt/sysimage. Which filesystem?
- Why GRUB would not load?
Because it wasn't installed.
- What I need to do without going thru the hassels
of reinstallation?
Boot by hook or crook into Linux single-user mode, and install a real boot loader.
On Monday 16 December 2002 06:11 am, Satya wrote:
- LUG meet on 12 Jan. 2003 @ VJTI
On Dec 15, 2002 at 13:27, aditya newalkar wrote:
Boot by hook or crook into Linux single-user mode, and install a real boot loader.
You seem to be an slightly advanced user so I suggest you do the following., if you need ore explaination then do write in.
1. Boot using your CD in to rescue mode. 2. Mount your other partition (actually /boot is only required). Mount it under /mnt/sysimage/boot using the command "mount /dev/hdaX /mnt/sysimage/boot" 3. Do a "chroot /mnt/sysimage" (this does take approx 2 seconds). 4. Then do a "lilo -v -t" ( -v is for verbose and -t is for test) 5. Check the output of the above command, if everythingis fine, then do a "lilo -v" 6. Use "exit" to comeout of the chrooted mode. 7. Unmount your /mnt/sysimage/boot (using command "umount /mnt/sysimage/boot").. 8. Reboot and enjoy.
Welcome to the real world.
Bye and good luck.
On Dec 16, 2002 at 08:00, Amish Munshi wrote:
On Dec 15, 2002 at 13:27, aditya newalkar wrote:
Boot by hook or crook into Linux single-user mode, and install a real boot loader.
No, he didn't. I wrote that.
Welcome to the real world.
... Neo.
People were saying that when they saw Elrond in LOTR:FOTR greeting Frodo and Co. with a "Welcome to Rivendell", they heard him continue "...Mr. Anderson.". (Elrond and Agent Smith are played by the same actor.)
boot using ur linux cd start installation and choose upgrade do not choose any additional packages when it asks u whether u want to upgrade ur boot loader configuration choose yes install grub on the partition u have mounted as /boot u did not mention whether ur /boot partition was beyond 1024 cylinder limit or not i assume it is so in that case use xosl http://www.xosl.org the entire process would take not more than 15 minutes and u wont have to reinstall linux
the linux rescue cd mounts your root filesystem (/) on /mnt/sysimage u would find ur /boot as /mnt/sysimage/boot
===== ninad purohit have a nice day :-)
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aditya newalkar -
Amish Munshi -
Ninad Purohit -
Satya