Grub fails on SATA Drives-Solved
Posts: 49
Hi - has anyone succeeded installing Mepis3.4-3 on SATA HardDrives? Here are the specs: DELL Optiplex GX620 P4 HT, WindowsXP on Western Digital SATA 80G Caviar WDC-WD800-JD-75MSA1. I added to the IDE connector a IBM-DJNA-370910 10G HD for linux.
Mepis installed flawlessly with root partition on /dev/hdb1 and home on /dev/hdb2. After GRUB was written to the Windows master drive on /dev/sda2 the reboot failed - with "GRUB" written all over the screen. I had to use a Win98 floppy fdisk /MBR to get back XP and restart the 3.4-3liveCD. Here's what I found and my partial solution:
Mepis Grub set (hd0,0) as root partition hdb1 when it should be (hd1,0) and (hd1,1) as XP sda2 when it should be (hd0,1) I know this to be fact because after the MepisliveCD rebooted I did the following as root to check: root>grub (invoke grub on LiveCD) then
grub> root (hd0,0) returns an unknown partition with an address that appears to be NTFS - this is /dev/sda1
also root (hd0,1) which is the proper WinXP partition. Now within grub the command identifies the installed linux partition: grub>cat (hd1,0)/etc/fstab
Now we wld have thot that changing the grub.conf file to the correct partition on the installed boot/grub directory will help? Here's what I did to create a boot grub floppy (sorry for the experts here but I thot some newbie might want to know):
1. Insert a new floppy umounted and format as root:
>mke2fs -cv -L GrubBootDisk /dev/fd0
2. Mount floppy, create /boot/grub dir and copy the stage* and menu.lst files from liveCD /boot/grub/ like -cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /mnt/floppy/boot/grub/grub.conf
Also the message* file if desired.
3. go into /mnt/floppy/boot/grub and link
ln -s grub.conf menu.lst, edit grub.conf to the correct partition as stated above and UNMOUNT the floppy
4. Make floppy bootable (there are other ways but this works always for me): as root
root>/sbin/grub --batch --device-map=/dev/null <
root (fd0)
setup (fd0)
quit
EOF
5. Reboot the PC with grub floppy.
It is a partial solution because now the grub menu appears normally, Windows XP boots OK but linux flashes the screen and returns to the grub menu.
Can anyone help me and others to the complete solution?
Best Regards to all who made this possible,
KT
Solved(Oct-2006): Set up the PC to accept SATA/PATA drives
Mystery cleared and SOLVED-Cold Grub boot only sees SATA
Posts: 49
Finally see the light at:
http://www.mepis.org/node/9449#comment-33517
I found a v simple way to boot my IDE linux install without changing bios or hardware:
1. Mount a USB device of memory >2M which the liveCD will detect. I used a 100M iomega zip drive which is detected as /dev/sdb4. It could also be a flash thumb drive or any USB devices which the bios has successfully detected on LivedCD. I assume the Linux installation has a boot partition with grub installed as MEPIS do. Check to make sure /boot/grub/menu.lst has the correct boot devices. For my HD install I have my boot partition on hdb1 with initrd and kernel image and root on hdb7, swap hdb6, etc. This is verified from mnt/hdb7/etc/fstab. I also set up my ndiswrapper before HD install.
2. I make a USB boot zip disk as root:
root> mkbootdisk --device /dev/sdb4 kernel#. When done, I check to make sure the kernel image and initrd as well as any boot messages are there. It MUST be copied from the INSTALLED /boot directory.
3. On reboot I choose on my SATA PC order of boot with F12 key - first boot from a USB device. I make sure that the zip drive is the only device connected to the USB ports.
4. On the boot: prompt I type "linux root=/dev/hdb7". As it turns out the initrd and Image is already defaulted correctly.
5. Happiness
It is nice of the LiveCd allows one to make a boot disk (besides grub or lilo floppy) from a external storage USB device.
KianT
"If it ain't fixed don't break it"