How do I install FC16 with grub (not grub2)?

[adrian_stephens]

Dear all,

Having researched grub2, it is described as an experimental project.
I need to have my grub boot within a partition, not on the mbr (because I don't
want to experiment with the mbr on my family's windows 7 installation).

When I do the install from scratch with the live image and select /dev/sda3, I get an
error "this disk might not be bootable".

When I boot up the live image and do grub2-install /dev/sda3, it tells me that I shouldn't install it on
a partition, something about block lists and with lots of warnings in capitals.
It doesn't sound like the authors consider it should be used in this configuration.

But this works flawlessly with grub1 in fc15.

So, I've given up on grub2. Is there any way to tell the installation to use
grub1?

Thanks,

Adrian Stephens, Cambridge UK.

[AdamW]

No.

But you can pass a parameter to grub2 to force it to install to a partition - I think it's --force - or you can simply install with grub2 and then manually install whatever other bootloader you want via anaconda's shell, the rescue mode, or any old rescue live CD.

[AdamW]

oh, actually, I lie, there is one way: do an EFI install. but that requires EFI-capable hardware

[stoat]

Originally Posted by adrian_stephens

When I boot up the live image and do grub2-install /dev/sda3, it tells me that I shouldn't install it on
a partition, something about block lists and with lots of warnings in capitals.

As already suggested, go ahead with the re-installation of GRUB to the partition boot sector using that --force option. The actual GRUB 2 warning message that you paraphrased even says to do that if you really want to proceed. It's perfectly acceptable and still completely functional. I have done this with GRUB 2 in Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu because I booted them all with another system's boot loader.

Originally Posted by adrian_stephens

It doesn't sound like the authors consider it should be used in this configuration.

They don't (obviously from the warning message). But all they mean by that ominous warning when it's attempted with GRUB 2 is this... When you install GRUB in the boot sector of a partition instead of in the master boot record, the large intermediate program capable of finding the next part of the boot loader in the filesystem is not used (too big, no place to put it). The little program installed in the partition boot sector has to find the next part of the boot loader by having its sector address embedded into it (that happens at the time it is written into the boot sector). All right. It's possible, but sort of rare, for the parts of the boot loader that exist as files in a filesystem occasionally to be relocated to different sector addresses. When that happens, then such a boot loader arrangement as the one you wanted would be busted. Okay, fine. No big deal, just re-install the boot loader when that happens.

Originally Posted by adrian_stephens

But this works flawlessly with grub1 in fc15.

So, I've given up on grub2. Is there any way to tell the installation to use
grub1?

Well, here's the really salient point about all of this... Legacy GRUB has always had this same exact issue. When you choose to install Legacy GRUB in a partition boot sector, the tiny stage1 is written into the partition boot sector and includes in it the sector address of the file named stage2 in the filesystem (in the boot directory). Stage1 is so small that it doesn't have the ability to understand anything about filesystems and must find the next component by sector address alone. Stage1.5 which is capable of finding stage2 in the filesystem is not used in this scenario. It's too big (about 20KB). It can go only in the unused sectors following the master boot record (but before the start of the first partition), and that only happens when you choose for (or allow) Legacy GRUB to be installed in the master boot record. This is why GRUB is somewhat vulnerable to breakage when it is installed in a partition boot sector.

All of this is still basically the same with GRUB 2. The terminology and details are different. Stages have been replaced by images and modules. But this particular issue is the same in either version of GRUB. Legacy GRUB just never bothered to stop and issue that scary warning. It let you go right ahead.

[Basilicum]

Considering that Grub2 is able to find all kernels over all partitions, and considering that Grub2 is resistant for kernel updates, my conclusion is that I will move from my previous grub1 scheme (i.e. a chainloader grub1 in MBR and a tiny partition, and for each OS its own grub1 in PBR) to grub2 in MBR.


I think I install Grub2 in MBR with its own tiny partition (if that is possible) because otherwise the grub2 configuration and stage2 files are lost when installing a new OS in exisiting partition.

I hope this conclusion is right, and I searched a very long time to find information just to come to this conclusion. Anyway, the answer of stoat was the most usefull I found.

Regards

[stoat]

First, GRUB 2 is not exactly a perfect boot loader IMO. It's supposed to find all of the existing systems and create menu entries for them, but the simple truth is that it doesn't every time. To me, GRUB 2 just turned out to be more complex and to have some gee-whiz things, but it's really not any better at doing the job of a boot loader IMO. I often wonder how big of a step forward GRUB 2 was. To me, it's just different. Not much better.

Next, your comment about GRUB having its own small partition to escape damage when other systems are installed is not exactly accurate. True, it can exist in a separate boot partition, but that boot partition is part of some existing system. GRUB is part of that system. It doesn't stand alone. So, I recommend that you select the GRUB 2 of one system to be installed in the MBR and have that GRUB boot the others. That system could be your favorite or your most important or the one most likely to stay around for a while. And never allow any newly installed system to install its boot loader in the MBR. Then, any or all of the others can come, stay, or go without busting the boot loader. But your main system which is hosting (so to speak) the GRUB 2 boot loader has to stay, or else the boot loader for the others gets busted.

[fpmurphy]

One way would be to install Fedora 15 (which uses GRUB Legacy) and then upgrade to Fedora 16. Fedora 16 will continue to use GRUB Legacy in this case.

---------- Post added at 10:03 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:02 AM ----------

Originally Posted by stoat

First, GRUB 2 is not exactly a perfect boot loader IMO. It's supposed to find all of the existing systems and create menu entries for them, but the simple truth is that it doesn't every time. To me, GRUB 2 just turned out to be more complex and to have some gee-whiz things, but it's really not any better at doing the job of a boot loader IMO. I often wonder how big of a step forward GRUB 2 was. To me, it's just different. Not much better.

I could not agree more! In addition, it is bloatware of the worst kind.

[DBelton]

I also agree. Grub2 in my opinion is bloated and hard to set up and use.

It's also a general pain in the butt.

[adrian_stephens]

Thanks for all the replies. In the end, I ended up installing grub2 into the MBR. This works, and all I need to do is educate my family about selecting the Windows 7 menu entry if they are booting the family PC.

I tried an upgrade on an F15 laptop. Guess what - it replaced the boot loader with grub2 :0).

In the end, I prefer grub2. The one feature I love is that it has is the ability to boot directly into raid/lvm. This means I can simplify my server machine setup, which used to have a separate boot partition, and now doesn't.

[adrian_stephens]

The other workable option, and the one I ended up with is to use EasyBCD as described here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...CD_and_NeoGRUB.

This is a 4-stage boot: 1. Windows Menu, 2. Boot into Neogrub, 3. Boot into Grub2 via the core.img file, 4. Select & boot FC16 menu entry. It's not elegant, but do I care?

It requres that the fc16 /boot be readable by Neogrub, which (I'm assuming) means it won't work with raid and lvm.

[bendib]

I like EXTLINUX for my bootloader. Doesn't seem to work (easily) with GPT partition tables however. You can do "yum -y install syslinux-extlinux" and then extlinux -i /boot, then if you have nothing in your mbr, mark that partition active.

then edit /boot/extlinux.conf and make it something like this.
This is for one of my machines. You'll need to set your own root and kernel.

default boot
label boot
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.1.6-beetle-salad
append initrd=/boot/vmlinuz-3.1.6-beetle-salad ro root=LABEL=FedoraFS

All those other boot args they added in recent releases like RD.whatever aren't really needed unless you have a language or keyboard other than english. I don't bother with them.

[duende]

I was upgrading from f14 to f16 and hit the problem described here:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=274701
(by the way, I think there is not sufficient warning about this, one only finds out when it actually happens and one starts searching the forum for a solution).
As a result grub2 did not install during upgrade. First I tried to install grub2 manually but was put off by the warning messages and reluctant to use the --force option. And I also did not want to mess about with my partitions.

But I found that upgrade did not remove grub legacy from MBR (it only cleared the kernel entries in grub.conf, windows booted by chainloader was still there). It turned out that it was sufficient just to edit /boot/grub/boot.conf and the system boots normally. Furthermore, I was pleasantly surprised that a kernel update still changes appropriately the entries in grub legacy's grub.conf.

As to the question raised in this thread - If one installs from scratch and wants to boot with grub legacy - would it be sufficient to install first f16 and then install grub using f15 install disk?

[mannaggia]

I have the same problem and deeply regret to have upgrated from fedora 14 to 16. I find it a shame that there was no concrete warning or check when upgrading to fedora 16, the trouble is not worth the upgrade...

Basically when I boot I have only one option: Upgrade to Fedora 16. However, I cannot do it as I get an "error 15 File not found"

I have no solution to this, I am not an expert use. After searching a lot in the internet, I managed to boot with the boot disc of fedora 16 under rescue mode and I have now a shell. I mounted all my previous data at /mnt/sysimage.

I am able to where isse commands as a root, when trying grub2-install /dev/sda I get some error saying "unknown LVM metadata layer" (which I think is just a warning) and another error "Your embedding area is unusually small. core.img won't fit it.."

Could somebody kindly help me in one of the following (in order of preference):

1) Downgrade back to release 14 without losing any data
2) Use grub instead of grub 2
3) Manage to use grub 2 somohow
4) Backup all previous Fedora 14 space and install from scratch fedora 14 (or 16 if it would work from scratch)

Thanks a lot for any help!

[duende]

mannaggia,

with grub2 I cannot help you, I could not be bothered with it, when I saw what happened. I have read that for some people the option --force gives good effects. (But do not take my word for it)

If you want to try to use the old grub then most probably you only have to edit one file.
In short, what you have to do is to boot some live_cd, find what was your old /boot partition (or / if you did not have separate partition for /boot), mount it and check the content of the boot directory
i.e.

ls /some_mount_point/

or

ls /some_mount_point/boot/

Check the version of the F16 kernel.
Edit the content of the file /some_mount_point/boot/grub/grub.conf(or /some_mount_point/grub/grub.conf)
by adding the section of the form

title Fedora (3.1.6-1.fc16.x86_64)
        root (hd0,4)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.1.6-1.fc16.x86_64 ro root=/dev/sda5 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=pl2
        initrd /boot/initramfs-3.1.6-1.fc16.x86_64.img

The parts in blue have to be modified to suit the configuration of your system. In this example there was no separate /boot partition, and / was /dev/sda5.
You can probably find many examples of grub.conf on the internet, and on this forum. But if you need further help with this, first paste the output of

ls /some_mount_point/
ls /some_mount_point/boot/
cat /some_mount_point/boot/grub/grub.conf
cat /some_mount_point/grub/grub.conf
fdisk -l

and describe your system a little (are you using LVM, separate /boot partition, which partitions they are on) Of course "some_mount_point" is the directory where you mounted fedora /boot or / partition

[mannaggia]

Hi duende

thanks for your help. At the end as I had not much options I tried to --force, and despite of the error message, it worked (I hope I did not damnage somenthing...).

So now I have two grubs, the legacy one in /boot/grub/grub.cfg and the grub2 file in /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.

As a matter of fact, grub 2 is now used in the booting process, how can I decide if to use grub or grub2? Is it possible to configure this somewhere?


Now that I am finally running Fedora 16, I have two main problems:

1) Gnome 3 failed to load
2) yum is not working, whatever package I try to fetch yum searches in the following wrong repository:
Not Found : http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/...ata/repomd.xml
Trying other mirror.
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: fedora-firefox4. Please verify its path and try again


Can somebody help?

Thanks