Error 21...

Questions about Grub, UEFI,the liveCD and the installer
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emorrp1

Re: Error 21...

Post by emorrp1 »

Hi, you say you selected the use entire disk option, but the menu.lst indicates there is more than just mint on that drive (should be (hd0,0) otherwise). To be honest, if I ever have a problem like this, I just do a completely fresh reinstall after verifying that the disc itself is ok (afterall it only takes about 15mins).

In terms of actually diagnosing the problem, where abouts did you get the error? In the install stage or what? Also which version (and edition) of mint are you trying to install?
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
emorrp1

Re: Error 21...

Post by emorrp1 »

ok, basically I'm stumped. Looking at other people who've had this issue, they've solved it by either re-installing, or re-loading grub (but you say you've done that). A sanity check would be to ensure that grub is available in sda2 (at the grub prompt):

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find /boot/grub/stage1
Which should return (hd0,1)
emorrp1

Re: Error 21...

Post by emorrp1 »

You could try installing using the default partitioning options (rather than manual), and also make sure you don't change anything from the advanced button either. If that doesn't work, I would suspect the cd media is corrupted, or the iso didn't burn properly. That's easy to check, just enter the following with the cd in the drive (might work from the live CD, might not, I've never tried:

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cd /media/cdrom0
md5sum -c md5sum
Which should return stuff with "OK" at the end of each line.

Also, the new gloria RC is out, which has a disk-verify boot option, so you could install from that.
nick
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Re: Error 21...

Post by nick »

Aging Technogeek

Re: Error 21...

Post by Aging Technogeek »

Error 21 means "Selected disk does not exist." I think your Grub is working OK, but it can't find your Mint partition. Can you run the live CD and launch Partition Editor from the desktop? If you can, please post a copy of the partition table. This may point us in the right direction
Aging Technogeek

Re: Error 21...

Post by Aging Technogeek »

Your grub is set to boot partition sda1. If you look at the partition table, sda1 is a 227 Gb partition mounted as "/media/disk" . It looks like Mint is in there (5.94 Gb used) and the boot flag is set, so theoretically it should boot.

This may not have anything to do with the problem, but why is your swap space in a separate extended partition? Normally it would be installed in the same primary or extended partition as root.

If no one else can see anything wrong that I missed, your best option may be to erase the disk using dban or a similar program to ensure that nothing is retained from the failed installations and try a clean reinstall using the Manual install option and setting up partitions as described here:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... &sk=t&sd=a

EDIT It just hit me. your Grub is looking to boot from (hd0,1) - this is sda2 - your swap partition. If you look at the grub menu in your original post, you will see this
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet splash
Look at the entry immediately following the=. It states that grub should look for Mint on sda2

Reset grub to boot from (hd0,0) - sda1 and you should be good to go.

You edit grub in terminal by entering

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 gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst


In the active menu, change all references to (hd0,1) to (hd0,0).and all sda2 to sda1. Save the changes and close the terminal. If I'm right Mint should boot normally on restart
Fred

Re: Error 21...

Post by Fred »

coltz,

I am assuming you made the gparted screen shot from the live cd. If that isn't the case, please correct me. If it is from the live cd do the below steps. Open a terminal and type:

sudo grub

root (hd0,0)

setup (hd0)

quit

Close the terminal and open it again, then type:

gksu gedit /media/disk/boot/grub/menu.lst

This will open your menu.lst file for editing. Please post the entire contents of that file to the forum and we can go from there.

Fred
Aging Technogeek

Re: Error 21...

Post by Aging Technogeek »

The Master has arrived. I will settle back and learn along with everyone else.
Aging Technogeek

Re: Error 21...

Post by Aging Technogeek »

Have you tried booting using the modified Grub? If so, did it work?
Aging Technogeek

Re: Error 21...

Post by Aging Technogeek »

When you followed Fred's instructions
sudo grub

root (hd0,0)

setup (hd0)

quit

Close the terminal and open it again, then type:

gksu gedit /media/disk/boot/grub/menu.lst

This will open your menu.lst file for editing. Please post the entire contents of that file to the forum and we can go from there.

Fred
you changed the location Grub looks at to boot Mint from sda2 to sda1. Compare the boot list at the end of the new menu with the one you entered in your original post.

You should now be able to use Grub to boot into Mint on your hard drive. Just remove the live CD (if it's in the CD drive) and restart the computer. If everything is right, it should load and boot normally.
Fred

Re: Error 21...

Post by Fred »

Thanks Aging Technogeek. That is exactly what I was going to ask him to do next. :-)

I think the confusion was coming from the fact that he was running from the live cd when he took the screen shot and posted the wrong menu.lst the first time.

Fred
Aging Technogeek

Re: Error 21...

Post by Aging Technogeek »

When you restarted your computer after removing the live CD, did you reset the boot menu in BIOS to boot from internal Hard disk? Many computers don't reset this automatically and some computers don't keep looking for a bootable site if the first place they try is not available. In other words, your computer might still be trying to boot from CD although there is no CD in the drive.
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