FC9 install won't boot

Mindez · #1 6th November 2008, 02:02 AM

Hey,

I'm having problems with my FC9 installation. I've managed to get it installed on my laptop but on my desktop it's being somewhat awkward. The installation goes as usual, but once it is finished and reboots it hangs on a blank screen with just "GRUB _" in the top left, and nothing else, and doesn't boot.

It's a clean installation of FC9, I've wiped the Windows that was on, I'm not terribly interested in making it dual boot, I just want FC9 on, so I've just let it set up the default partitioning and had it remove all other partitions.

I'm not sure about the hard drives or what partition is on each; I believe there's two hard drives but I would have no idea how to find this information in Linux.

I am extremely inexperienced in this kind of stuff, so will need things majorly dumbing down please

Will provide more information if needed; if you tell me how to provide the information >.>;

stoat · #2 6th November 2008, 02:10 AM

Hello Mindez,

It's happened before. Just like you described. Right after installing. The universal treatment for it is to re-install the GRUB boot loader using linux rescue. You can read more about this, find links to even more of these, and see examples of how to re-install the GRUB boot loader in the HOWTO on this subject...

HOWTO Deal with GRUB _, grub> _, and GRUB GRUB GRUB

Mindez · #3 6th November 2008, 02:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stoat

Hello Mindez,

It's happened before. Just like you described. Right after installing. The universal treatment for it is to re-install the GRUB boot loader using linux rescue. You can read more about this, find links to even more of these, and see examples of how to re-install the GRUB boot loader in the HOWTO on this subject...

HOWTO Deal with GRUB _, grub> _, and GRUB GRUB GRUB

Most of the solutions seem to just be "Reinstall GRUB". I've seen instructions as to how to do this by booting the install DVD in rescue mode and using:

chroot /mnt/sysimage
grub-install /dev/hda

The problem I'm having is with the grub-install line; I have no idea what it's supposed to be followed by. I've tried a load of different paths based on what I've seen in the installer (/dev/hda, /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/mapper/nvidia_achiiyeap2 (Where FC9 was installed from what I could make of the installer), /dev/mapper/nvidia_achiiyea, /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00, etc.)

And every attempt says something about it not having an entry in BIOS or something. Is there any way to find what should be there? (The laptop I installed it on installed it to /dev/hda, but the desktop seems to be installing it to /dev/mapper/nvidia_achiiyeap2 which I don't understand)

Wisp558 · #4 6th November 2008, 02:27 AM

running

su
/sbin/fdisk -l

should give you your hard drive configuration... You should put your default HDD.

For example... with my output...

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9726 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x09440943

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 9324 74894998+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 9325 9726 3229065 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 9325 9726 3229033+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x69737369

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 50586 406332013+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 50587 60802 82053120 7 HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda is the one I want.

stoat · #5 6th November 2008, 02:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mindez

And every attempt says something about it not having an entry in BIOS or something.

You are probably referring to the "No corresponding drive in BIOS" error message. Whenever that occurs with the grub-install command, do it again with the recheck option like this...

Code:

grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mindez

chroot /mnt/sysimage
grub-install /dev/hda

Starting with Fedora 7, the IDE drivers use the same libata code as the SATA drivers. There is no /dev/hda in Fedora since then. All drives have device names in the /dev/sdx format. GRUB still uses the same old (hd0,0) format. Nothing was changed with GRUB.

P.S.: I would like to warn you about and discourage you from those sort of thrashing attempts at re-installing GRUB trying multiple targets seemingly based on nothing. You can bust things like other boot loaders doing that. It's happened before. Just like you were doing. Sometimes, it's very hard to undo.

Mindez · #6 6th November 2008, 02:33 AM

The output from that:

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0000c98c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 25 200781 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 26 60802 488191252+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-0: 4294 MB, 4294967296 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 522 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 4294 MB, 4294967296 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 522 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

I've tried with /dev/sda and the output is:

/dev/sda does not have any corresponding BIOS drive.

For /dev/hda:

Not found or not a block device.

stoat · #7 6th November 2008, 02:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mindez

I've tried with /dev/sda and the output is:

/dev/sda does not have any corresponding BIOS drive.

For /dev/hda:

Not found or not a block device.

I just addressed both of those. Maybe we were both typing at the same time. Anyway, go back a couple of posts.

Mindez · #8 6th November 2008, 02:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stoat

You are probably referring to the "No corresponding drive in BIOS" error message. Whenever that occurs with the grub-install command, do it again with the recheck option like this...

Code:

grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

grub-install does not support reprobing of device.map when using a device-mapper based boot device.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stoat

I just addressed both of those. Maybe we were both typing at the same time. Anyway, go back a couple of posts.

Yeah, we were. As we were then. As we probably are now. Tch, that's the problem with forums.

stoat · #9 6th November 2008, 02:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mindez

grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

grub-install does not support reprobing of device.map when using a device-mapper based boot device.

The command grub-install is a front-end script for the GRUB shell. They both can be used to re-install the GRUB boot loader (with interesting and almost paradoxical differences). Anyway, when one doesn't work, I recommend trying the other. You should try the GRUB shell. Example...

Code:

/sbin/grub

That starts the GRUB shell producing the grub> prompt. Continuing on in the GRUB shell...

Code:

grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)

Exit the GRUB shell, reboot, and see what happens now.

Mindez · #10 6th November 2008, 03:10 AM

/sbin/grub

Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
Unknown partition table signature.

GNU GRUB version 0.97 (640k lower / 3072k upper memory)

[minimal BASH-like editing is supported. For the first word, TAB
lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
completions of a device/filename.]

grub> root (hd0,0)

Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

Then things get rather weird.

grub> setup (hd0)

Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... no
Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists... no

Error 2{box}{E with accent} `{U with accent}: B{box}d {degrees sign}ire or direc{|-}ory {|-}ype

{+/- sign}r{-|}b>

Stuff between {} is description of a single weird character that showed up.

Then everything was in weird characters, even after exiting the GRUB shell. Rebooting gives the same result; GRUB _ with flashing underscore character.

stoat · #11 6th November 2008, 03:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mindez

Error 2{box}{E with accent} `{U with accent}: B{box}d {degrees sign}ire or direc{|-}ory {|-}ype

{+/- sign}r{-|}b>

I have never seen that stuff before.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mindez

Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... no
Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists... no

That right there makes me think important things did not get installed.

My last idea... You can try manually editing the device.map file (if one exists) and then running the simple grub-install /dev/sda command again. It's worked before. If that doesn't work, then the strange things you just reported would make me lean toward re-installing the entire system.

P.S.: Editing the device.map file is what that --recheck option would have done if it had worked.

Mindez · #12 6th November 2008, 03:24 AM

Where is device.map, can't find it anywhere; and what should it contain? As for reinstalling the entire system, I have done twice before I posted; each time producing the same result, attempting different settings. So...

I know my computer isn't allergic to linux; I installed an old version of Ubuntu on it a few years ago to dual boot with XP. I assumed installing purely FC9 would be easier.

stoat · #13 6th November 2008, 03:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mindez

Where is device.map, can't find it anywhere; and what should it contain?

It's in the /boot/grub directory along with grub.conf and a bunch of stage image files...

Code:

$ ls /boot/grub
device.map     grub.conf~        reiserfs_stage1_5  vstafs_stage1_5
e2fs_stage1_5  iso9660_stage1_5  splash.xpm.gz      xfs_stage1_5
fat_stage1_5   jfs_stage1_5      stage1
ffs_stage1_5   menu.lst          stage2
grub.conf      minix_stage1_5    ufs2_stage1_5

Typical contents of the device.map file...

Code:

$ sudo cat /boot/grub/device.map
# this device map was generated by anaconda
(hd0)     /dev/sda
(hd1)     /dev/sdb

The device.map file is not always present and the system will function just fine. It's only used during re-installing GRUB like you are doing. Never during routine booting as many people think. If device.map does not exist or if the drive being targeted by grub-install is not listed in it, that's when that "no corresponding drive in BIOS" error message occurs. Under normal circumstances, the --recheck option makes GRUB re-probe for devices and rewrite the device.map file. I have lost confidence that this situation is normal now.

Mindez · #14 6th November 2008, 03:41 AM

Found it in /boot/grub; contents:

more device.map

#this device map was generated by anaconda
(hd0) /dev/mapper/nvidia_achiigea

Despite it containing /dev/mapper/nvidia_achiigea though, I still get the 'no corresponding drive in BIOS' message when attempting grub-install /dev/mapper/nvidia_achiigea.

stoat · #15 6th November 2008, 03:46 AM

I would try editing it to look like this...

Code:

# this device map was generated by anaconda
(hd0)     /dev/sda

Then try plain old grub-install /dev/sda again. First, this is precisely what the device.map file is intended for according to the GRUB manual. Second, it's worked before in a similar situation as I have already shown above. Third, things can't get much worse. And fourth, you can always restore it since you have recorded it here for eternity.

P.S.: What else is in /boot/grub? Are those stage image files there? Remember the GRUB shell complained that they aren't there. You know, the boot loader stuff is the last thing accomplished by Anaconda during installation. Did your installation complete normally to the last page with the reboot button and eject the DVD?