Formatted GRUB partition formatted - unbootable computer

[hamstar]

Hi guys...

I did some stupid things...

First of all, I installed fedora with my IDE drives in the computer. So it installed GRUB onto the primary master IDE, which then points to my SATA0 drive.

Next stupid thing I did, was take that IDE drive out, and format it for use at uni.

Now I am stuck with no bootable-from-hdd OSs on my computer.

I do however have exactly the same FC3 distro installed on my school drive, so GRUB is on that one, probably overwrote the orginal GRUB that was there.

However the FC3 on this IDE drive was installed at school and crashes on boot at "Kernel Parameters" pretty early.

I have tried modifying the device.map file in the /boot/grub of this drive, to include /dev/sda1 as (hd1).

However whenever I call root (hd1,0) from the GRUB command line, or try to boot like that it always says unknown filesystem type 0x7. The filesystem on sda1 is ext3 so I don't why why it does that. However the filesystem on hda2 (the school FC3 install) is ext2 and it will boot from that.

All I want to do is reinstall GRUB onto my SATA0 channel, to point to /dev/sda1

I have also tried:
booting with rescue cd's to repair the bootloader
running a slackware disc and going bare.i root=/dev/sda1 noinitrd ro however it doesn't want to know the partition either.
Most bootable distros i have wont pick up the sata. Morphix/Knoppix/RedHat9 install.
I was able to edit with Linspire live, and a rescue command line off another distro...

[hamstar]

help............?

[hamstar]

to make things worse i dont even have the FC3 cd's.....

I do however have the following, can any of them help me?
RedHat 9 Shrike Install cd's (3)
Slackware 10 install cd's (2)
Linspire 5.0 install/live cd (1)
Suse 9.0 pro install cd's (5)
Suse 9.1 pro install dvd (1)
Mandrake 9.1 install cd's (3)
Old versions of live cd's (knoppix, morphix, thiz, atomic tv)

[Knudson]

mh try to download at least CD1 of fedora

anyway, you can do this:

boot from cd
enter rescue mode
grub-install /dev/sda0

anyway check google or man grub-install for more info (i can't be more specific right now!) because i dunno if it will create /boot dir...

just rememebr to install grub in the master boot record (MBR) of the drive!

after that, from the rescue mode you should change grub.conf to point to /sda1 instead of /sda0

le us know , hope i helped you at least a bit...

[hamstar]

well, I kind of got halfway there...

That grub-install thing got me thinking.

So I got my school disk, ran grub and tried to get it to work.... I got it to boot but it keeps mounting the root fs as readonly for some reason even tho I don't specify it as ro or if i specify it as rw....

Which is a *****... so it doesn't start the x server, complains about not being able to write logs yadda yadda yadda...

Just going to do some research on grub now...

Downloading the FC3 disk 1 isnt an option i'm afraid... I'm on dialup - New Zealand is still in prehistoric internet - the worst internet in the developed world.

Check out the telescum.co.nz link in my sig - i made that to protest the company that is keeping nz in the dark ages of internet.

[Knudson]

mhh you can try with a liveCD to chroot your installation and then re-run grub-install..i dunno if it will work with different distros, think so, but i never tried it :|

tomorrow i'll leave for holidays so this will be my last msg for the next 16 days! Hope someone can help you if that chroot doesn't work!!

bye

[hamstar]

I figured it out...

Error in the grub boot files.

I had to delete all the hard drives from the device.map file, except for the one I was booting from, then change the menu.lst file to reflect the changes....

If anyone else has this error, make sure your boot files are correct.

The device.map file and the menu.lst file are the ones that matter.

I booted a live distro and modded these files - grub-install didn't work.

Now my files look like so:
device.map

# This file was Automatically generated by Anaconda
(fd0)         /dev/fd0
(hd0)        /dev/sda

Make sure you delete any drives that you don't boot from to avoid stuff like this happening. If a drive in device.map is not present grub will give you an error.

menu.lst

title Fedora Core 3
     root (hd0,0)
     kernel=/boot/vmlinuz-xxx-xxx.img ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
     initrd=/boot/initrd-xxx.img

I'm not sure why the ro is in there, cos that would make it read only you would think, but it doesn't.

You may have to do what I did, chroot into your partition, and do the following:
fdformat /dev/fd0
mkfs.vfat /dev/fd0

To format the floppy, then type grub and do the following at the grub command line:
root (hd0,0)
setup (fd0)
quit

Then quit and boot from the floppy and hit c to go into grub command line and type:
root (fd0)
setup (hd0,0)
quit

Make sure your files from above are setup properly.

This also solved my problem from http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/...ad.php?t=66684

Thanks for all your help guys...