Grub issues

Jerry Feldman gaf at blu.org
Wed Mar 18 14:51:17 EDT 2009


I have fixed this on several occasions, mostly by my own tinkering.
In the past, what I did was to reinstall without formattting.
One question, is /boot part of your regular root file system (eg. 
/dev/sda3) or was it originally /dev/sda1. Remember the /boot grub 
stage2 must reside within the first 1024 cylinders. It is normally 
prudent to keep it in the first physical partition although not 
required. Essentially the MBR must be able to record the physical 
address of the grub stage 2. Also note that in a reinstall, you don't 
need to reinstall and overwrite anything. You just want to force a 
reinstall of grub. This will also install your kernels in the right place.

I don't know what your super-grub-disc did, but I've always used the 
original installation CD/DVD I used to install the system in the first 
place.  The one important thing to remember is that if you do not have a 
separate /home partition, to make sure you do NOT format the root file 
system. Also note that the preferred name of menu.lst is now grub.conf, 
but several distros, such as ubuntu use menu.lst with no grub.conf, 
others have grub.conf with menu.lst as a symlink.
Again, let me reiterate, when you go to the manual partition menu, make 
sure you do not have format checked. It's been a whil since I have used 
this procedure on my laptop since I've taken the upgrade install path. I 
forget if ubuntu actually gives you access to the packages you want to 
install. If so, make sure that grub is to be reinstalled, but you don't 
have to worry about other stuff. It should not deinstall stuff you 
already have. You may also be able to fix things directly from your live 
CD, but the main issue is to be able to rebuild the MBR. You can later 
add the Windows boot section or let the installer set that up for you.

On 03/18/2009 12:33 PM, Jesse Lazar wrote:
> Hello,
>  
> I kinda hosed my boot loader, was wondering if anyone could point me 
> in the direction of putting the pieces back together.
>  
> The computer is my desktop pc. I have two drives: the first has four 
> partitions and the second has only one.
>  
> sda1 is 10GB, ext3, unused
> sda2 is 130GB, NTFS, storage of files (shared with windows)
> sda3 is 10GB, ext3, this is where the Ubuntu system lives
> sda4 is 1GB, swap
>  
> sdb is 20GB, this disk has windows on it
>  
> I re-installed grub a couple times as I was not able to boot my Ubuntu 
> system directly, was having to use a "super-grub-disc" (this is after 
> re-mapping the drives in grub so I could boot windows). Whatever I did 
> last I acutally wiped out the grub installation, there is no 
> "menu.1st" or kernel on sda3.
>


-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 251 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20090318/0a682ec5/attachment.bin 


More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list