| Art Alexion on 30 Mar 2005 00:59:30 -0000 |
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Thanks to Jeff, Carlos & Kevin, I am up and running again. This is probably the kick I needed to switch both the drive and the monitor. I took Jeff's advice (option 2) and switched the existing Linux root hdb and made it the primary master. The replacement drive -- now hde -- is much faster than the previous hda and four times as large. It was sitting in a mothballed machine. I connected it to the Promise PCI/IDE card and the kernel detected it as hde. No b or d; c is the cdrom. I guess this is because there is no slave on either of the onboard IDE slots. Knoppix wouldn't let me run cfdisk or fdisk on the hdb, mounted or not, so I took Carlos' advice and rebooted without any GUI, using "knoppix26 2" at the boot prompt. With that it worked fine. While I was futzing inside the box, the CMOS reset, so I had to go in and change the BIOS settings. I had been having problems with a "flashing [or maybe better described as "blanking"] screen in character mode. I didn't know if it was the OS or the video controller; I didn't think it was the monitor because I never had a problem with the graphical display active. While I was using Knoppix and it started doing it in X as well as character mode -- after an extended power save sleep -- I knew (1) that it wasn't my main OS as it was doing the same with another, and (2) I wasn't so sure it wasn't the monitor. Well it was doing it in the BIOS setup program so that I couldn't even set it up -- that totally eliminated the OS. I switched monitors with one I was using on a 13 year old computer that I turn on when I need an old document. Not a single blink since. So, 3 problems solved so far. Now that I have installed the PCI/IDE card, I have some more controller and bay space, and I have to decide whether to install another cdrom for direct copying, or an internal zip drive that has been mothballed (I have a lot of zip discs laying around). Thanks again to all who helped. Art Carlos Konstanski wrote: >In case you're still trying to figure this one out: > >I do this just often enough to sort of remember how to do it. If this >doesn't work perfectly, at least it's on the right track. > >1. Boot up under a knoppix CD. Use "knoppix 2" at the boot prompt to avoid a > full GUI. > >2. cd /mnt brings you to the already-defined mount points. Then > mount your /boot partition with "mount /dev/hdb2 hdb2". Notice that > we're not using the fstab entry to mount /dev/hdb2. Knoppix writes > an fstab entry for it, but it uses switches that will not work for > what we need to do. So bypass fstab by specifying both the device > and the mount point. > >3. Do we need to mount the root filesystem too? I can't remember - > probably not - but it couldn't hurt. > >4. Now that the /boot partition is mounted, we can install grub to it. > Try "grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/hdb2 --recheck /dev/hdb". > This will install grub to the MBR on /dev/hdb. If you want to put > it elsewhere, change the last arg to suit. > >5. Edit your menu.lst file, found (while up under knoppix) at > /mnt/hdb2/grub/menu.lst. Also edit your fstab file on your root > filesystem. > >6. Reboot! If you get a grub a grob prompt instead of a menu, type > these 2 commands to get booted up (don't type the comments): > > root (hd1,1) // this is grub-ese for /dev/hdb2 > configfile /grub/menu.lst // the leading slash may be unnecessary > >That's it! If you end up always getting a grub shell instead of a >configfile, it may be that grub is also installed to a partition, and >the active flag is set to that partition. fdisk can fix probably fix that. >I've seen it happen, but never to me. If it happened to me, I would >know how to fix it. Think of it as added security; someone has to know >grub commands to boot your machine. No good for remote servers, though >- they won't reboot unattended. > >At least with grub, you have the ability to boot even if something is >not right. With lilo, you'd be stuck. > >Another command that can be added to a menu.lst entry or typed directly >in a grub shell is: > > setup (hd1,1) > >This is analagous to the grub-install command. You could do this while >booted up under knoppix too. Typing "grub" will start a grub shell at >any time. Putting the setup command in as an entry in the menu.lst file >has helped me on at least one occasion. It allowed me to install grub >while not mounted or booted up or anything. Typing the commands >manually would have had the same effect. > >Hope this helps and I'm not way off base. > >On Sun, 27 Mar 2005, Art Alexion wrote: > > > >>Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 08:43:29 -0500 >>From: Art Alexion <art.alexion@verizon.net> >>Reply-To: Philadelphia Linux User's Group Discussion List >> <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> >>To: plug@phillylinux.org >>Subject: [PLUG] Need to reinstall grub >> >>Grub was installed on my MBR on hda. It seems that hda has given up the >>ghost. Not much lost (win98 that came with computer), but now I can't boot >>(currently running knoppix). Boot is a continuous loop from the mem test to >>going through the BIOS-defined boot drives, then back to the mem test. >> >>How can I get the computer to boot from hdb (where linux, the kernel, and the >>grub program are located). To be more precise, I don't really understand >>where the grub program is located, but I think most of it is in /boot/grub on >>/dev/hdb2. >> >>If anyone can walk me through this using knoppix, that would be wonderful. I >>have the Knoppix 2.6.9 kernel loaded. I know that the Ubuntu kernel on >>/dev/hdb2 is a 2.6 kernel, but I am not sure of the exact version. >> >> -- _______________________________________ Art Alexion Arthur S. Alexion LLC arthur [at] alexion [dot] com aim: aalexion sms: 2679725536 [at] messaging [dot] sprintpcs [dot] com PGP fingerprint: 52A4 B10C AA73 096F A661 92D2 3B65 8EAC ACC5 BA7A The attachment -- signature.asc -- is my electronic signature; no need for alarm. Info @ http://mysite.verizon.net/art.alexion/encryption/signature.asc.what.html Key for signed PDFs available at http://mysite.verizon.net/art.alexion/encryption/ArthurSAlexion.p7c The validation string is TTJY-ZILJ-BJJG. ________________________________________ Attachment:
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