GRUB stuck at command prompt

[David Batson]

I have a new X220 with Windows 7 on it. Yesterday I installed Fedora 15 Gnome and the installation went fine. After that I installed Mageia KDE and on reboot I am stuck in GRUB text mode and cannot boot any OS (Windows, Fedora, or Mageia). Frankly I am just lost at this point.

The version of GRUB I am in appears to be Fedora's.

Any ideas?

---------- Post added at 07:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:04 AM ----------

Looking at the drive from a Fedora 15 Live CD that I have, I think Mageia overwrote Fedora. The Partition I installed Fedora on initially now appears to be .5 GB. The hard drive structure just looks strange. I think I'll try a reinstall of the Fedora 15 Gnome DVD (I already tried Rescue System without success).

---------- Post added at 08:22 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:15 AM ----------

I've reinstalled Fedora 15 and can now boot Fedora and Windows. Mageia is nowhere to be seen. I have (2) unknown partitions, a 13 GB one and a 35 GB one. Originally I shrank the Windows partition from Windows and created (2) 50 GB partitions with the intention of installing Fedora on one and Mageia on the other.

I would like to reinstall Mageia, but I don't want a rerun.

Why can't two linux distros get along with one another? In the past I have read of others having difficulty getting two linux distros to coexist. I was able to do it before with 2 hard drives and choosing which drive to boot from the BIOS boot menu. This time I am trying to do it with just one hard drive.

Looks like I need to install a Boot Loader program like System Commander.

[glennzo]

Nah. You can do it with grub. I have a couple computers both booting 6 or 7 distros on one hard disk. What I've been doing of late is installing the "new" system's boot loader to it's /boot partition instead of having it overwrite a perfectly good grub setup. Then I boot the "main" OS (Fedora) and add a menu item for the "new" system usng configfile.

title Megeia
root (hd0,7)
configfile /boot/grub/grub.conf

[David Batson]

Ok, thanks for the info.

I went back to square one and deleted all Linux partitions and reinstalled the Windows 7 bootloader. I then went into Windows 7 disk management and set up a 50GB free space partition. I rebooted and installed Mageia from the DVD onto that partition. That install went fine.

Now I'll set up another 50GB free space partition and try installing Fedora to that.

---------- Post added at 11:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:19 AM ----------

I am trying to install Fedora on a 50GB free space partition and the installer says there is not enough room!

What do I need to do here?

I tried creating the partition with the installer, but am stuck on mount points and sizes needed. Also, I would like to use the existing Swap partition that Mageia created if possible.

[glennzo]

Good. You should be able to tell the Fedora installer to install grub to it's /boot partition and then add Fedora to Mageia's grub in the same fashion as outlined in the above example. Do the same for each additional Linux OS. You can even do this with releases like the Debians that use GRUB2 although the syntax is slightly different.

[glennzo]

Originally Posted by David Batson

I am trying to install Fedora on a 50GB free space partition and the installer says there is not enough room!

What do I need to do here?

I tried creating the partition with the installer, but am stuck on mount points and sizes needed. Also, I would like to use the existing Swap partition that Mageia created if possible.

Did you format the partition (with the Windows tool) or leave it as blank space? I believe, but I'm not positive, that it should be an empty partition. I further believe that you can use the existing swap. I do, for all installed Linux OS's. Choose the bottom partitioning option. If memory serves me it is "create custom partitioning" or something similar. Then all you need to do is select the target partition and set it mounted to /. Format as EXT3 or EXT4. Your choice.

Oops! Error there. Not mounted to /boot but /. Fixed.

[David Batson]

I went back into Windows disk management and discovered my problem of "not enough free space". Too many primary partitions. I did not intend it that way. I guess I'll have to remove Mageia again and create an extended partition. I can't seem to do that from disk management currently.

---------- Post added at 01:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:11 PM ----------

Found to do this in Windows 7 I had to run diskpart from a command prompt. Can't do it from the GUI.

C:\~\diskpart

DISKPART> select disk 0

DISKPART> create partition extended

DISKPART> exit

C:\~\exit

I then went back into disk management and created 3 logical drives without assigning them a drive letter or formatting them. Now back to installing Mageia and Fedora.

---------- Post added at 02:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:29 PM ----------

Ok, I've got Mageia and Fedora both installed. I put Fedora's boot loader on the root of SDA6. Fedora is installed on SDA6. Mageia is installed on SDA5.

I tried the following in menu.lst of Mageia

title Fedora 15
root (hda0,6)
configfile /boot/grub/grub.conf

The menu listing for Fedora is there but I get an error when I choose it.

EDIT: I got it. I needed root (hd0,5) instead of (root) (hd0,6) in Mageia's menu.lst. Fedora boots now!

EDIT2: BTW, when I installed Mageia I let GRUB install to the default MBR, but when I installed Fedora afterwards I chose the option to install to / of Fedora's partition.

[glennzo]

David, you have this, root (hda0,6) You need to remove the a so it reads (hd0,6).

[David Batson]

I think the "a" (hda0,6) was a typo in the forum post. I meant (hd0,6). At any rate "6" was the wrong number. It was "5" that worked. I chose "6" because Fedora was installed on sda6, but after looking at Fedora's grub.conf and saw that it used "5" I tried that and it worked.

Thanks for your help glennzo! I've got it solved.

[glennzo]

You're welcome David. Remember that hd0,0 = sda1, hd0,1 = sda2 and so forth.