Need help with install and boot up

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evworld

Need help with install and boot up

Post by evworld »

Here is what I am trying to do and was successful doing it with Ubuntu and Pclinuxos, but can't get it with Mint.

I have two SATA hard drives. The primary has Vista and my second one I want to put Mint. I unplug the vista drive and plug in the 2nd one and install Mint. Everything works fine. I then plug in the vista drive as primary slot and put the mint drive secondary. I control the boot up by bios. I like it that way because my kids and wife only use Vista and I like playing around with the second drive. If I screw things up it an easy fix for me.

I read the wiki that seems to answer my problem but I don't have no idea what it means being fairly new to all this.

When I reboot my system with the two drives plugged in I get an error message. Something about init missing. I see the grub screen on Mint but when I choose either kernel i get the error. I am guessing it has something to do with me switching the hard drive plugs around.

I currently reformatted the second drive and planning on starting all over. I would like to know how I go about getting this to work this way. I am sure it can be done because Ubuntu and Pclinuxos has no problem installing and running this way.

I appreciate and help or direction on were to get some instructions...
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.
lvleph

Re: Need help with install and boot up

Post by lvleph »

Most likely your grub menu is trying to use the incorrect drive. You will need to edit the grub menu. Plug the drive in like you had when you installed Mint. Now boot into Mint.
Once in mint open a terminal and do the following.

Code: Select all

sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst
then

Code: Select all

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
Wherever you see hd0 cahnge it to hd1. This should solve your issue, so save and then shutdown. Switch the drives to the way you want. Now you should be able to boot.

EDIT: I believe you can do this from the grub menu on bootup, by hitting 'e' on the menu item that needs to be edited. Once you hit 'e' you will be able to edit the hd0 to hd1.

EDIT2: You could also boot into the live cd and do this. You will have to mount the mint drive to do that and then follow my original directions.
Second set of directions are most convenient, and these third set would be the next most convenient.
evworld

Re: Need help with install and boot up

Post by evworld »

lvleph wrote:Most likely your grub menu is trying to use the incorrect drive. You will need to edit the grub menu. Plug the drive in like you had when you installed Mint. Now boot into Mint.
Once in mint open a terminal and do the following.

Code: Select all

sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst
then

Code: Select all

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
Wherever you see hd0 cahnge it to hd1. This should solve your issue, so save and then shutdown. Switch the drives to the way you want. Now you should be able to boot.

EDIT: I believe you can do this from the grub menu on bootup, by hitting 'e' on the menu item that needs to be edited. Once you hit 'e' you will be able to edit the hd0 to hd1.

EDIT2: You could also boot into the live cd and do this. You will have to mount the mint drive to do that and then follow my original directions.
Second set of directions are most convenient, and these third set would be the next most convenient.

I did what you stated and now when I boot I get error that it can't mount partition. When I changed hd0 to hd1 it looked like this hd0,0 then I changed to hd1,0 is that right? should I have changed the 0 after the comma too.

I have the two drives pluged in now.
lvleph

Re: Need help with install and boot up

Post by lvleph »

That should have worked. What Grub error is it posting? It should give you a number. Grub counts from 0. So hd0 means first hard drive and hd1 means second hard drive. While hd0,0 means first hard drive and first partition.
evworld

Re: Need help with install and boot up

Post by evworld »

Grub error is 17

I have know idea how to re-edit grub with live cd. I tried to do it just to put it back the way it was when I started, but could not figure it out.
lvleph

Re: Need help with install and boot up

Post by lvleph »

Grub Error 17 Means you still don't have the correct drive number. What I would suggest is having both drives in the computer. Try booting to the linux drive and then use grub command line to look around at what the hd# should be.

Here is some more info on that.
More info on booting from Grub CLI
DrHu

Re: Need help with install and boot up

Post by DrHu »

lvleph wrote:Grub Error 17 Means you still don't have the correct drive number. What I would suggest is having both drives in the computer. Try booting to the linux drive and then use grub command line to look around at what the hd# should be.
More info on booting from Grub CLI
http://www.uruk.org/orig-grub/errors.html
--grub errors list

http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/ ... ernel_boot.
..from link given by lvleph;
find /boot/grub/stage1
--that command should be useful to find grub directory for you: the location of the boot files for grub /boot/grub

In terminal, check
--for a running system that does boot
  • ls /boot/grub/stage1
    /boot/grub/stage1

    Code: Select all

    ls -l /boot/grub
    total 244
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root    197 2009-06-19 08:03 default
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root     30 2009-06-19 08:03 device.map
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   9440 2009-06-19 08:03 e2fs_stage1_5
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   9120 2009-06-19 08:03 fat_stage1_5
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root     17 2009-06-19 08:03 installed-version
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   8224 2009-06-19 08:03 iso9660_stage1_5
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  10144 2009-06-19 08:03 jfs_stage1_5
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   5805 2009-07-28 13:26 menu.lst
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   5810 2009-07-10 20:38 menu.lst~
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   8480 2009-06-19 08:03 minix_stage1_5
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  11296 2009-06-19 08:03 reiserfs_stage1_5
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root    512 2009-06-19 08:03 stage1
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 125866 2009-06-19 08:03 stage2
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  10856 2009-06-19 08:03 xfs_stage1_5
--rest of the files in my /boot/grub location, with one backup file
  • -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5810 2009-07-10 20:38 menu.lst~
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