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 .
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]

Originally Posted by 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

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]

Originally Posted by motorpsycho

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]

Originally Posted by jombeewoof

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]

Originally Posted by 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?

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.