Some boot options needed

if you go to a grub boot prompt
grub >
from there you can interrogate the system to find the bootable image.
i haven't read up all about it and can't tell you how off the top of my head but no floppy is required.

When the driveloads on a channel other
than hdb I get a kernel panic error.

At this point I might as well change it to
hdd permanently.

What's the procedure for that?

Please give all details and syntax.

Dear Diary,

Today i tried to repair the hard drive
by running the install disk.

The install routine on cd found the correct
new location of the drive: hdd.

I requested grub be reinstalled.

The routine said completed successfully
but the porgress bar began to fill in and then quit.

When I made a fresh cold boot the same kernel panic
error message appeared as though nothing were written
to the drive.

Dear Diary ...

Might want to take a look at and/or post your /boot/menu.lst file, that specifies your bootloading configuration for Grub. For example, if your boot folder was on the first partition of hdd (2nd HD on 2nd controller) and the root (/) partition of that drive was on the same partition, you should have something like this in your menu.lst file:

title MEPIS at hdd1, kernel 2.6.10
kernel (hd3,0)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10 root=/dev/hdd1 ... [kernel options]
initrd (hd3,0)/boot/initrd.splash

(hd3,0) specifies the drive,partition where you're booting from, numerically, starting from zero for the first drive,partition (hd0,0).

If this was your first title/kernel entry in the file and you wanted it to be your default boot you'd add a "default 0" without the quotes on a line before it in the file.

Some more pointers:
http://www.mepislovers.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?viewmode=flat&topic_id=1388&forum=6
http://www.mepislovers.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?viewmode=flat&order=ASC&topic_id=4956&forum=6&move=next&topic_time=1130233648
Grub Manual: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html

This screen is still not fixed for replies
so I'm getting dizzy scrolling sideways.

I've been away a bit trying to get btitorrents
rolling in Windows after some slowdowns with that.

What I found at the Mepis install was the loader goes
to hdb,03 partition.

I haven't looked at it in qtparted, but the drive
is Mepis only/ no dual boot.

Down at the command line I need to record and save
the command to chmod or whatevs, the drive from hdb
to hdd. To review, I've had to go through all this
because of hardware age and failure on the primary
ide channels.

Help is on the way for that, but not there yet.

Thanks for responding.

So maybe in your /boot/grub/menu.lst file you have an entry like this as your default, loading from hdb3:

title MEPIS at hdb3, kernel 2.6.10
kernel (hd1,2)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10 root=/dev/hdb3 ... [kernel options]
initrd (hd1,2)/boot/initrd.splash

and you'd need to add this before it in the file, to load from hddx by default, where 'x' is the number of the partition where the /boot folder is and 'y' is the root partition number, which may be the same:

title MEPIS at hddx, kernel 2.6.10
kernel (hd3,x)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10 root=/dev/hddy ... [kernel options]
initrd (hd3,x)/boot/initrd.splash

You'd need to be root to edit menu.lst. A df -h on the command line should give you the partition numbers. These Grub configurations can also be done this way:

title MEPIS at hddx, kernel 2.6.10
root (hd3,x)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10 root=/dev/hddy ... [kernel options]
initrd /boot/initrd.splash

This sounds like I have to load vi or some
other incomprehensible line editor.

Those things were always incomprehensible to me.

I could never play cards because I couldn't
remember suits or count. Memorizing many
commands for vi or joe or all the other ones
was beyond me.

I may have to consider reinstalling the OS
and hopefully salvage my setup.

This brings up another question:

How does upgrade over internet work? That's
supposed to do the whole distro while connected,
right?

I will make a fresh question of this if it is
worth discussion.

Lon, you don't need to use vi. Your system already has kate installed. It's a pretty good graphical editor. You will, however, have to run it as root. You can do that by pressing alt+f2 (run) and entering

kdesu kate /boot/grub/menu.lst
(you'll be prompted for root's password)

kdesu starts "su" while in the kde environment. kate starts the editor, and of course, /boot/brub/menu.lst is the name of the file.

Jon

I've been following this case on both forums and I see again a possible fault ahead. Editing grub menu.lst as described in other posts is right and does the same job as reinstalling grub.

The problem is that grub is in the hdd not MBR of hda. Grub should be in the MBR of hda to work [b]or[/] hdd should be mapped to disguise as hda. This mapping can be done from bios (not every motherboard supports it) or maybe by some other bootloader.

So if you want to swap the drives: install grub always to the root partition, edit menu.lst and use GAG bootloader to boot because it detects all the bootable partitions automatically and can work from floppy or first bootable harddisk.

Now it is still a little bit unclear how are your drives set up:

1. Is there a hda (windows?) drive plugged when you use linux?
2. If yes, is the grub installed to hda's MBR?
3. If not do you then select somehow from what drive to boot?

Today was may day to do chores: backup etc.
I used the advice given-- forget who-- who said run
the installer and reinstall grub to root partition
which was hdd,03 in this case.

I didn't think it would go, but here I am and I
avoided a system reinstall.

As an inexperienced user I took the easiest path
available.

Always in these exchanges, thanks for the help and maybe
there is other info in the thread that someone can use.
If I had not had this thread and did the system checks, I
would not have known to install at hdd,03. I would have
assumed that it was supposed to go on the first partition

Anyone have an extra atx power supply?

If not, I'll have to get a replacement at retail.

Lastly on this: for the future, is there some sort of
keydisk that can be made on floppy to issue the "grub
to root" command?

After installing grub to root partition rather
than MBR, my login only allows user and no
boot to root or access to it with su.

I may have to do the install thingie anyway.

This sucks.

I tried to do the simple maneuver of editing
the grub boot load sequence.

This made me real crabby.

Nothing could be less intuitive.

After fiddling a bit I thought I edited the
kernel line to say hdd instead of hdb... that's all
I wanted to do. It failed.

Repeating: Why no autodetect for a simple drive
install?

"Repeating: Why no autodetect for a simple driveinstall?"

No clue, ask GRUB developers, btw read the GRUB online manual it might help you, it tells a little bit about naming conventions for the drives.

--
Post questions on www.mepislovers.org too.
Check out our wiki: www.mepislovers-wiki.org

After screwing around with most current
mepis install and messing it up, I backed up
my scratch drive from my backup scratch drive
I know at least loads to hdb and with my sound stuff
still being installed.

I just put the stuff on the shelf until my next
build it done. I will keep reading forums but
if there's no way out of this I'll just sit it out.

I was told about something called Gag (nice name!)
but that clown was more interested in being cryptic
than providing anything more than catchphrases and
Linux treehouse shorthand.

Ok, let me be the clown this time... did google for "GAG boot"? What's the first link that you get?

If you ask people things that you can google yourself you should expect this kind of responses

--
Post questions on www.mepislovers.org too.
Check out our wiki: www.mepislovers-wiki.org

"I was told about something called Gag (nice name!)
but that clown was more interested in being cryptic
than providing anything more than catchphrases and
Linux treehouse shorthand."

What does that mean? Can someone natively english speaking person translate it to "easy" English?

Hmm, "clown", "cryptic" & "beyond me".

I think you have already supplied Mr. Lon with the actual link to the GAG web page.

Thats what I'm gonna git. Some of that "Linux treehouse shorthand"!

First off, the link over on mepis lovers to
to gag was dead.

Then when looking up Simple Boot Loader program
(also in the same message) I failed to connect to
it.

Where I am now with this is needing a keydisk
which has the following properties:

Remember CloneMaxx?

That's the program they told me about here
to do backups.

While in Windows, I looked up Clonemaxx,
downloaded it to Windows desktop, put it
on a floppy and that was it-- ready to backup
Linux drives or anything else.

The same routine would be needed to get
a keydisk that loads the boot routine from floppy
then say "where is the drive today?" or something
and be able to _change that one letter in the command
sequence_ from "hdb" to "hdd".

From my end, I think it's rude to say "If
you want to this, go _here_, if you want to do that,
go there, for more information on {fill in blank}
_go here_. Have a nice day." These are not persons
that are engaged with the questioner since most of
the hopping around suggested is just that: hopping
around needle in the haystack time: dead links,
pages of text leading nowhere-- a waste of time.

I find myself doing it occassionaly but as a form of
discourse or _communication_ it's pretty feeble.

Some on here and Mepis lovers do it better than
others. Remember that scene in Dark City where
Keifer Sutherland drops the mouse in the center
of the maze? Ok, you get the idea.

OK, I just checked the links and they worked fine.

From this moment I decided not to (try to) help you anymore if you are not able to follow simple advice and not able to follow links on a page (and by the way you are not able to explain clear what you do or post error messages)

Good bye and good luck!

Over.

--
Post questions on www.mepislovers.org too.
Check out our wiki: www.mepislovers-wiki.org

"Remember CloneMaxx?"

- Yeah sure. I suggested it and you bashed it.

Was the best tip I ever got for Linux.

Still I stand by what I say-- not the insults--
I apologize to Pohjola for that-- but the technique
for conveying what's needed often gets obscured
in jargon and shorthand.

Today I downloaded Gag. Nice name and oh so
appropriate:

I unzipped it in windows and saw that the
directory created was too big for a floppy.

Well, I tried to make a floppy anyway without the
xp stuff and whatnot. There was no auto exec or
command com so I got an error from the floppy.

I rebooted and my Windows hard drive-- well it
Gagged. Would not do the bootup routine. I could
see the system was trying to access the hard drive
(light stayed on) but couldn't do it. I spent the
next 20-30 mins restoring the drive from yet another
backup drive I have. I have about 5 altogether between
windows ones and Mempis/Demudi/Ubuntu.

So if a keydisk is possible to boot from floppy,
I still have no answer.

BTW as a Debian user, I looked for a .deb of
Simple Boot Manager. Those seemed to be all in
tar files and as we know, I haven't got a useable
Linux install to do any of those things.

Wait... I have Puppy linux on cd rom. I know little
about it though... it's not set up for broadband or
anything to get files, untar, all that stuff.

Thanks for the chat. But I'm not back on the team yet.

"I unzipped it in windows and saw that the
directory created was too big for a floppy.
Well, I tried to make a floppy anyway without the
xp stuff and whatnot. There was no auto exec or
command com so I got an error from the floppy."

I see you don't care much about reading the instructions. Well, if it would be a perfect world "guess'n'try" would work all the time.

You know I actually did look at the readme stuff.
But I don't need it in Winders, I need it for Mepis. I'll go
back and give it another peek, but it still looks TOO BIG
to go on a floppy.

Aside from that, the program itself does look like what
I want it to do. But I was getting a guilt screen from
poking around with it about only use for 55 days.

On _my_ planet we are open source-- or try to be.

I will look on the Install.txt routine and see where it
says: Put a 1.44 floppy in now, press enter when ready.

I don't know what you have done this time but for sure GAG is free and under GPL licence. There is not any guilt screens coming with it.

I don't know how small your floppies are but GAG fits very well to mine.

I don't know what you have red because with my version of GAG there is no readme stuff expect for the devel part.

I don't know what is so difficult, there are instructions for linux and windows and other. And GAG boots both of them including seven other OS.

I don't know what's your planet but it seems not be the same Earth.

Yeah, I was kind of wondering about the planet thing myself. Lon, you've got to:

1) treat people better who want to help you in their spare time in these forums;

2) provide clearer and better information;

3) read.

I'm going away for a while til everyone
cools off.

Just now on my backup drive, I did the same
operation again: download gag, unzip.

The directory that opens up has an icon for
VSO software. I have no idea why it's there.
I thought it might be some 'common' icon style
because I have had VSO on my drive.

Looking at it again, it says trial period is
55 days _past_. I have no idea why a VSO software
icon with a message that says this software
is not free turns up when unpacking gag.

Try it yourself. I clicked on it just to see
what it would do.

I'm heading out.

There are surely some strange things happening on your planet, maybe there is a black hole or something too close.

I have a fresh copy of GAG install file and I can't see any VSO's there (NOTE: Floppy can be made also using Mepis liveCD). Downloaded it from the link provided through GAG web page. Either it is your windows messing it - which can happen just like that I have experienced it in the earlier days - or the package itself is hijacked.

Or you are having just some gag not GAG.

lon, it was so easy, and we've all missed it all the time.
Have grub in mbr, boot all with grub.
start computer, with the timer running on grub change the boot options to
c [enter]
now you should have
grub >
1. Ask grub what partitions are bootable
grub > find /sbin/init
so this on my machine gives
(hd0,0)
(hd3,0)

2. find partitions containing the kernel
grub > find /vmlinuz
{same answers}

3. find kernel file for hd0,0
grub > null (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz [tab]
autocompletion with the tab key gives a set of answer(s)

4. boot hd0,0

grub > root (hd0,0) [enter]
grub > kernel /boot/vmlinuz{write this in from 3} [enter]
grub > boot [enter]

5. If there is a hard way to do something, lon has tried it

Hi Doc, I think AdrianTM has supplied this information at MepisLovers to Lon but your example is nicely clear presented.

Maybe somebody could make Lon a personal GRUB boot floppy?