LMDE32, /boot, and grub

[Sassinak]

As I have a 10-year-old computer, I have to install grub to a separate /boot partition, for my BIOS can't handle the large disk (s). I have the latest LMDE 32-bit supposedly installed on it's own partition, with Ubuntu 10.04 on another. I asked LMDE not to install a bootloader, thought I specified the existence of the /boot. I did an update-grub from Ubuntu; it saw and offers LMDE; but I can't get it to boot. Fails to find the / and falls back on the minimal bash. I edited the fstab, that was a bit weird, but no cookie. This is my third attempt. The first, with the sept. issue, installed but failed update; the X-mas issue would stall at that famous single prompt on black screen. Does Ubuntu really mean "can't install Debian " ?

[CiaW]

What processor does your computer have? I'm not sure if that makes the difference or if it's the bios or what, but I have a now 11 year old amd k6 machine that currently has Mint 9 lxde installed; I'm using it as a print server only. It doesn't have a dvd drive, so I couldn't try lmde on it.

It has a whopping 15gb hard drive, partitioned with a / and a swap only. I tried to add another partition to dual-boot something else (I forget what), and it appeared to work but it wouldn't boot either. I finally decided to just go with the 2 partition scheme, and that works. So there's something that made it appear to accept more than 2 partitions, but it'll only work with 2 (even adding an extended partition after sda1 didn't work...). For the most part it wasn't worth it for me to spend a lot of time trying to make it boot more than 1 distro, so I left it with what works.

[Sassinak]

Okay, here goes: it's a IBM Netvista 6792-11u, with a p4, 1.66Ghz cpu and 1.5 Gb Ram. On it are two disks, both eides: an 80Gb with 7 partitions, including the /boot on it's first partition. The second is 320 Gb and contains data, and /home. I keep all my OS's on the small drive (no Windows)
this is the fdisk (no laughing!) of sda:

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Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00083075

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1         512     4112608+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2            5925        8236    18571140   83  Linux
/dev/sda3            8237        9729    11992522+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4             513        5924    43471859+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5             513        2418    15309913+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6            2826        5176    18884376   83  Linux
/dev/sda7            5177        5924     6008278+  83  Linux
/dev/sda8            2419        2825     3269196   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

these are the uuids

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anabel@anabel-desktopLynx:~$ sudo blkid
/dev/sda1: LABEL="boot" UUID="6b648eaa-cbe4-4eee-9492-db8cc76efe85" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda2: LABEL="LMDE" UUID="ba8cadff-520b-4087-9c19-9a6b8526bdb0" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda3: UUID="ea6a06ae-1cec-4da0-89cb-5c2c06b579f0" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3" 
/dev/sda5: UUID="6c1f8c93-71e4-4cfd-91cb-86634c942d98" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda6: UUID="ca959c6d-2914-4bf0-ae82-cfd468ecfccc" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda7: LABEL="MiniLinux" UUID="98d89362-966d-4a96-ac8d-8783f351388b" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3" 
/dev/sda8: UUID="38850c66-aac2-4f2d-81d2-ab05bfd957d4" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="STOREB" UUID="d0df1633-8675-481a-9288-1666877c5536" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sdb2: LABEL="oldHome" UUID="1644ac3c-a9e8-4b07-b655-6deda5d3fe8d" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3" 
/dev/sdb5: LABEL="MULTIMEDIA" UUID="1476c361-a563-4e65-9930-9a4ddd4118dd" TYPE="ext3" 
/dev/sdb6: LABEL="STOREA" UUID="407a2c8a-39d3-43c2-a01c-78161c81a90d" TYPE="ext3" 
/dev/sdb7: LABEL="ext4" UUID="12d8cd1d-5b4e-43bd-8f5c-b8f65b405f54" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sdb8: LABEL="Ext4" UUID="20a53faf-6e79-4277-82d6-aeab32571786" TYPE="ext4" 

and finally, this is the fstab:

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# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'vol_id --uuid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
#UUID=39dce7bc-28c6-4d48-a3e1-b2d48712856e /               ext3    errors=remount-ro 0       1  #commented for debugging
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=f5355ad1-6de9-497b-a8d4-e2abe7336d4d none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0
/dev/fd0        /media/floppy0  auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0
proc	/proc	proc	nodev,noexec,nosuid	0	0
/dev/sdb5	/media/MULTIMEDIA	ext3	rw,errors=remount-ro	0	0
/dev/sda1	/boot	ext4	rw,errors=remount-ro	0	0
/dev/sda2	/	ext4	rw,errors=remount-ro	0	0

that's everything, I think.

[DrHu]

I would check the flags on the partition that is not booting (LMDE), from parted (disk partition editor) in the Linux that does boot (Ubuntu..), and see the status and if that / is a bootable or active partition..
--or something like testdisk to check the partitions..
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TestDisk

[Sassinak]

gparted is satisfied with the partitions. Only sda1 is flagged as bootable. Is the problem not something with grub ? Do you want a copy of grub.cfg ? (FYI, I hate grub2)

[wayne128]

gparted is satisfied with the partitions. Only sda1 is flagged as bootable. Is the problem not something with grub ? Do you want a copy of grub.cfg ? (FYI, I hate grub2)

Not sure what is your BIOS limit to the size of hard disk, like 512M? 4G? 8G?etc
When you hate grub2, hmm, may be you are familiar with Grub legacy, then why not use grub legacy as your boot loader?
Perhaps you could do a sudo fdisk -l on terminal and post your partition, to see if fdisk can see all your 80G for both hard disk.

I do not have 10 year old computer, but my 8yr old Pentium have not problem accessing 40G hard disk size on its BIOS, however I read from old posts some time ago, and understand that as long as you boot from bios to a partition containing grub, then when grub took over, it will look for kernel and initrd as specified in its stanza, go to that partition and pass over to kernel/initrd, at which point, all the disk access are at the hand of the kernel.
So you probably just need to overcome the first BIOS limit and get into Grub, then let grub do its job to load the proper kernel.
By the way I use grub legacy to boot and let it chain load to all other partitions, including USB drive also.

[spandey]

If you have not done any changes yet..based on your screen shot here is a solution..

Boot with LMDE install disk and open a terminal

1. Sudo SU
2. grub-setup -d /media/6b648eaa-cbe4-4eee-9492-db8cc76efe85/boot/grub /dev/sda
3. Reboot your PC
You should be able to boot.
Once in LMDE, Please do a sudo Update-Grub.
Reboot again and enjoy..

[Sassinak]

I see that the grub, and the fstab, have gotten UUIDs all wrong ! The same problem is reported elsewhere on this forum,http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... id#p365863 I will have to make some manual changes. brb.

edit:

I just tried editing the grub at boot, got the flashing prompt problem. Since friday, I have recuperated a third hard disk (has bootable, but old, debian, on it) and a friend persuaded me to get the iso to flash the bios. I will thus attempt this. then I will restart the whole LMDE installation, correcting any UUIDs on the run. I will keep you posted with my progress. Thx !!

edit 2:

Flashing the BIOS has failed (it would hang), without killing the machine (ouf!). Grub still sorta works, with old OSs installed.

[Sassinak]

32- bits : grub is definitely screwing up the uuids, have to fix manually. Reinstalling went well, but a Xorg upgrade did me in again, BSOD. Saw somewhere we should wait for a "service pack" later this month, and retry re-installing.

64-bit: Grub was a killer.....now no wifi on my laptop.A thread on this forum brought me to a Debian page with some instructions to build it myself: oh well, that's why it's called the bleeding edge.

On another note, I temporarely re-installed Ubuntu lts on my laptop : lost wifi, even the prop driver wont work. Kernel-upgrade, or what?

Thx for your patience.

Edit: Ugh! had to turn it on in the bios by activating pxe boot since the "action keys" don't work. Bummer, but it works now!

[Sassinak]

update
32-bit: (jan2011 version) still does not get pass the updates. I guess I will stop trying to update 'till I get better news. Will now have to reinstall.Either I will get this thing working, or get a bigger hammer!

64-bit: OK.....am getting more competent with building from source....like for hotot (.deb, actually) and minitube (I love it)

lastest catch : CheckGmail's gtk2::sexy dependencies....wait a minute, I had a thread going here: http://www.uluga.ubuntuforums.org/showt ... ?t=1171927 lets see if it still works !

edit: It didn't,

[Sassinak]

update: Nope, can't get it to work on my desktop. It boots, it don't, it boots again. It reboots after grub selection (weird)...
Reformated the whole OS disk, as I think my partition table was getting "confused".
Back to Lucid (I still have that iso kicking around, lost the Mint). Anyone know when the next update will be ?