possible to edit /boot/grub/grub.conf from live cd?

[mailman1175]

All right, I installed the XFCE spin of F10 on my Acer Aspire One. Let it auto-update (which takes hours w/ my slow internet connection), and started tweaking it per The road to Elysium.

The first time, I followed all his instructions. The directions on converting to ext2 led to some unexpected error messages, but I trudged on, top to bottom, rebooting only when done. Results?

Error 11: Unrecognized device string

Press any key to continue...

... which I do, and it sends me to a grub screen, at which point I have no idea what to do.

Grr. Oh, well, I figure, maybe that has something to do with trying to convert a mounted filesystem to ext2... [As an aside: This is probably what happens when you give someone just enough knowledge to be dangerous! ] So, I re-install the live OS, install to hard drive, go through the 10 hour process of updating again, reboot, SKIP the ext2 conversion steps, update to madwifi, reboot, then go through his section on "Optimizing Fedora 10". Results? You guessed it:

Error 11: Unrecognized device string

So now the question is: Can I fix this from the grub menu? or do I have to re-install again?

I found someone else who'd had a similar problem, and they said they fixed it from the live cd, but didn't say how... I've tried the obvious -- (as root)

nano /boot/grub/grub.conf

, but that gives me a file-not-found type of deal. Any help?

[stoat]

Originally Posted by mailman1175

Error 11: Unrecognized device string

Hello mailman1175,

I've seen that error message caused by even trivial syntax errors in the grub.conf menu commands. You should be able to access the grub.conf file of the installed system from the LiveCD once you mount the boot partition. So boot with the LiveCD then...

su
mkdir /mnt/temp
mount /dev/sdxy /mnt/temp
gedit /mnt/temp/grub/grub.conf

You, of course, change x & y to the drive & partition of the Fedora boot partition.

NOTE: That last terminal command might instead need to be like this...

gedit /mnt/temp/boot/grub/grub.conf

You will figure that out easily enough.

Now examine the grub.conf line by line for even the most tiny breach of GRUB syntax. Even inappropriate spaces or lack thereof can do bad things. Why not undo whatever you did while you were in Elysium? At least temporarily. Once you get the thing booting again, then you can continue on with that. BTW, I looked at that whole thing, and the point of most of it escapes me. But who am I to question it? Anyway, if you find something in the grub.conf to make better, do it, and then save it. Reboot. See what happens. You can also post your grub.conf here if it's still not working. Maybe some additional eyes will help.

[mailman1175]

I'm kind of confused now -- in over my head, prolly, but I'll figure it out eventually.

I went ahead and re-installed the live CD to disk. The machine will now be updating for most of the night.

So, as I understand it, a lot of the command line work he's done on the site I referenced is to save read/write cycles to the SSD on the aspire one, thus lengthening its life and extending battery life. Do I understand you to be saying that you think all that's unnecessary? 'Cause if it is, I'll skip it this next time around. No point in going through all that extra work if it's not going to accomplish anything....

madwifi seems to help. Wifi works, but it's slow.

Everything else I'm just doing because I assume it'll help my machine live a little longer and work a little faster. The SSD is noticeably slower under F10 than it was under Mandriva... but I've got more things working correctly with F10 -- at least, I do until I start tweaking things.

[stoat]

Originally Posted by mailman1175

Do I understand you to be saying that you think all that's unnecessary?

No, I don't want to say that. I think I just don't know anything about your machine and can't appreciate what was being accomplished. I yield to those who know and use the machine.

Since you've re-installed, I guess there is nothing more to do here. But a suggestion that I thought of was to make one change at a time, reboot, and make sure it's going to be okay be proceeding on. It will be easier to identify what knocked the wheels off of it last time and back out of it.

[mailman1175]

kthx, stoat