Art Alexion on 30 Mar 2005 00:59:30 -0000


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Re: [PLUG] Need to reinstall grub


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.
>>    
>>


-- 

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