Grub (or me) fails???

[motorpsycho]

I wanted to check out what all the fuzz about linux was about, so someone recommended
me to install Fedora. I dl'ed Fedora Core 4, and burned it. Media check ok. Grub installs without a problem.
At least as far as my newbie eyes can see. Reboot, and no Grub menu.
Just boots right into WinXP.

I have to admit that I screwed up a little bit first. Before installing Fedora, I went into BIOS and changed a setting for my SATA drive.
I set it to "large", which I thought was the same as "LBA". When I rebooted the first time, absolutely nothing happened :eek: .
Couldn't boot anything, until I went into BIOS and changed the setting back for my SATA from "large" to "auto". Then I could at least boot into WinXP.

My system:
1 Sata disk (WinXP)
1 IDE disk (Fedora core 4)

What can I do to remedy the situation? And, please remember that I'm a complete
newbie, so be gentle with me :)

[jombeewoof]

first of all welcome to the linux community and all that
your problem seems to happen to a lot of people

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=59135
read that

[motorpsycho]

first of all welcome to the linux community and all that
your problem seems to happen to a lot of people

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=59135
read that


Thanks! I just can't wait to be a member of Your community.

Can You please confirm this:
Boot linux from cd, choose "secure" (I think?). And then in my case,
just type: grub-install --recheck /dev/sda, since it's a SATA drive???

[jombeewoof]

boot from cd
choose linux-rescue
type grub-install --recheck/dev/hda (sd# is for SCSI your still using ATA, just serial ATA)

[jombeewoof]

Thanks! I just can't wait to be a member of Your community.

it's not my community
I've only been here for a few weeks
I gues it would be our community

[motorpsycho]

I'm pretty sure Fedora showed my SATA drive as "sda",
because my other disk (IDE) which I was installing linux on,
showed up as "hda".

But I will try Your suggestion tomorrow!
I have to sleep a little before work.
Thanks again, jombeewoof!

[jombeewoof]

I might be wrong
try it both ways

[virusdoc]

boot from cd
choose linux-rescue
type grub-install --recheck/dev/hda (sd# is for SCSI your still using ATA, just serial ATA)

I am having the exact same problem, and when I follow these instructions, I get an "unrecognized command" error. I boot to FC4 disk 1, type "linux rescue", hit continue, and once I get to the bash prompt I enter:

grub-install --recheck/dev/hda

and I get an unrecognized command error.

What am I doing wrong? And why has the installation of grub changed so much from FC2 and FC3, which both installed without a hitch?

[jombeewoof]

I'm sorry I forgot to mention
when it gives you a prompt
type
chroot /mnt/sysimage
that will load the system

[virusdoc]

Jombeewoof- Your advice worked perfectly. I mounted the sysimage, and then executed

grub-install --recheck /dev/hda

I received a warning that the system would probe devices to try to guess BIOS drives, and that this might take a long time. It did in fact take a very long time (>5 minutes), but at the end I received a notice like "install complete, no errors reported." I rebooted, and there was Grub! Both FC4 and WinXP booted normally from the menu.

I wonder why Grub didn't install correctly during the initial FC4 setup?

[jombeewoof]

glad you got it working
if only I could have found this post yesterday I could have taken my own advice and not spent 3 hours figuring out an alternative fix (I forgot about the --recheck option stupid me) I had to rewrite the /boot/device.map file manually

[92b16vx]

Jombeewoof- Your advice worked perfectly. I mounted the sysimage, and then executed

grub-install --recheck /dev/hda

I received a warning that the system would probe devices to try to guess BIOS drives, and that this might take a long time. It did in fact take a very long time (>5 minutes), but at the end I received a notice like "install complete, no errors reported." I rebooted, and there was Grub! Both FC4 and WinXP booted normally from the menu.

I wonder why Grub didn't install correctly during the initial FC4 setup?
I wish I had known this two days ago :(

I installed FC4 7 times trying different configs after I reinstalled Windows and could not get grub to work. I finally installed FC3 which I know installs GRUB and then upgraded to FC4 once GRUB was functional.

[pbrundog]

sigh, I did all this a bunch of times over now trying it on hda, hdb, all that, but it doesn't quite work (different problem now tho)

grub loads, then it gives me this message:


Booting 'Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4)'
root (hd1,0)
Filesystem type unkown, partition type 0x7
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition
Press Any Key to Continue...

if I press a key it lets me select Fedora to boot to(and only fedora), but when I select fedora and hit enter it just pops up the same screen again... Im thinkin its just not worth it to deal with all this crap and maybe I should just go with Windows like Im used to

[pbrundog]

anyone? .

[92b16vx]

If I install Windows, in other words, erase the MBR so that it is a Windows only system, and then try to install FC using FC4 it doean't write grub to the MBR. If I use FC3 it works fine, and then I can install FC4 over it, and it works fine, but I have not been able to get FC4 to write a usable grub. It might be beneficial to you to try FC3 anyway, since it has more time under it's belt, and a few less bugs, at least in my opinion, and it's not a professional opinion, but another noob user opinion.

[pbrundog]

well any opinion is a good one at this point :) I'll give it a try thx 92b16vx

[virusdoc]

I don't know what is causing your error message; I tried to do a bugzilla search for it, but their internal database is down. But doing a clean FC3 install (choose a minimal package set to make the install go more quickly, if you plan to immediately install FC4) followed by an FC4 install should solve the problem, since FC4 will use the correctly located grub on your windows disk. I don't know what is wrong with grub in FC4, but lots of people have had this problem.

[92b16vx]

Yip that's exactly what I do, minimum FC3 then FC4 like I want it, it really only takes like five minute start to finish to do the FC3 minimum, so I just include that in set up time :)

[pbrundog]

ah, I see,
that shouldn't be too bad at all then once I download FC3... which I won't be able to do till later today (at work currently) but once I do I'll let u know how it works