no grub after install

[slaterson]

i install linux mint 13 in a system with 3 hard drives, sda, sdb and sdc. sda is running gentoo and it my primary daily use system. sdb is for stuff like installing linux mint and giving it a test drive. sdc is windows 7.

after installing linux mint on sdb, when i reboot i get grub from sda (gentoo) as expected, however the entry for linux mint (i created manually) does not work. it simply shows a black screen with a blinking cursor (no text at all). sooooo, i went to extremes and unplugged sda and sbc, leaving only sdb (which is now sda since all other drives were removed). reinstalled linux mint, reboot and the exact same issue - black screen with a blinking cursor. not even a grub menu.

i found a manual grub install topic and tried that (sorry, no link right now) but no dice. any advice? i have linux mint on a laptop running great and would like to evaluate it on my desktop, possibly switch to it for daily use (replace gentoo).

any advice is appreciated.

[kc1di]

if you let it sit will it eventually boot into mint?

I would give boot repair a try first you can get it here.

[urlhttps://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair][/url]
if that does not work let me know.
by the way plug your other drives back in and allow boot repair to find all your partitions.
so it can configure grub correctly then you won't have to do it again later.

[slaterson]

if i let it sit (5-10 minutes), nothing happens. grub never appears to even try to start, so thats not too surprising.

i'll give the boot repair a try. my concerns are that it will hose my perfectly good grub (not grub 2) mbr which gets me into my stable desktop environment and windows (when needed).

[kc1di]

if i let it sit (5-10 minutes), nothing happens. grub never appears to even try to start, so thats not too surprising.

i'll give the boot repair a try. my concerns are that it will hose my perfectly good grub (not grub 2) mbr which gets me into my stable desktop environment and windows (when needed).

It will install grub 2 if you want to keep legacy grub you'll have to find the fix by hand.

[wayne128]

if i let it sit (5-10 minutes), nothing happens. grub never appears to even try to start, so thats not too surprising.

i'll give the boot repair a try. my concerns are that it will hose my perfectly good grub (not grub 2) mbr which gets me into my stable desktop environment and windows (when needed).

If all you want is to retain GRUB legacy or grub 0.97, then this is the procedure

1. boot from distros with grub legacy
2. open a root terminal
3. type grub, it should give you grub> prompt
4. type find /boot/grub/stage2, it should give you the root partition of the distros with grub legacy
if you know exactly which root partition , then you can skip this step.
5. type root (hdx,y) replace x,y with your actual number
6. type setup (hd0) , it should install grub legacy to MBR of first hard disk
7. type quit to exit grub prompt and proceed on terminal, or follow by reboot on terminal to reboot the computer.


I keep using grub legacy for simplicity on all multiboot laptops and comps.

[slaterson]

what i am looking for is to leave sda untouched. it boots grub 1 into my gentoo system and works perfectly. i want linux mint on sdb, i'll add an entry into grub legacy on sda to boot sdb using grub mapping, a la map (hd0) (hd1), etc just like i do for windows. so, when the system boots, sda launches grub, i select mint which loads the grub from sdb, and i boot to mint.

right now, i can't even get mint to boot if i have just single drive in this computer. thats kind of ridiculous.

[slaterson]

if i let it sit (5-10 minutes), nothing happens. grub never appears to even try to start, so thats not too surprising.

i'll give the boot repair a try. my concerns are that it will hose my perfectly good grub (not grub 2) mbr which gets me into my stable desktop environment and windows (when needed).

It will install grub 2 if you want to keep legacy grub you'll have to find the fix by hand.

so i tried boot repair. i reported a gpt error and said (i think) that my hard disk needed to be partitioned specially. i didn't pay much attention to the message. seems kind of extreme since this computer and hard drive boot all other os's fine.

[bigj231]

Did you try making sure that everything installed by mounting sdb via gentoo and poking around in there? Also, you might try chrooting into the mint install and seeing if everything works there. I'm not sure if it will work, just putting suggestions out there.

It seems that boot repair is trying to repartition your disk with a GPT partition table. GPT requires a separate BIOS boot partition, which is not the same as /boot. From the ARCH wiki:https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GU ... ges_of_GPT. Actually, that might be what is causing your issue with GRUB legacy. I don't know if it supports GPT disks, or if it only works with MBR. Maybe try manually partitioning sdb with something like fdisk.

[slaterson]

Did you try making sure that everything installed by mounting sdb via gentoo and poking around in there? Also, you might try chrooting into the mint install and seeing if everything works there. I'm not sure if it will work, just putting suggestions out there.

i can do this without problem. all the regular command line tools work great, so i think the install went fine.

It seems that boot repair is trying to repartition your disk with a GPT partition table. GPT requires a separate BIOS boot partition, which is not the same as /boot. From the ARCH wiki:https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GU ... ges_of_GPT. Actually, that might be what is causing your issue with GRUB legacy. I don't know if it supports GPT disks, or if it only works with MBR. Maybe try manually partitioning sdb with something like fdisk.

i created partitions on sdb using the linux mint installed. odd thing about it, after creating my /boot (/dev/sdb1), swap (/dev/sdb2) and / (/dev/sdb3) partitions, there was still a 0 block 'free' entry in the partition table. i couldn't make any partitions on it of course. sdb3 starts at the block immediately follow sdb2 and consumes the rest of the disk.

for proper linux mint install/start up, do i need to make a small (2 mb) partition at the beginning of the disk for gpt?

[wayne128]

what i am looking for is to leave sda untouched. it boots grub 1 into my gentoo system and works perfectly. i want linux mint on sdb, i'll add an entry into grub legacy on sda to boot sdb using grub mapping, a la map (hd0) (hd1), etc just like i do for windows. so, when the system boots, sda launches grub, i select mint which loads the grub from sdb, and i boot to mint.

right now, i can't even get mint to boot if i have just single drive in this computer. thats kind of ridiculous.

i reported a gpt error and said (i think) that my hard disk needed to be partitioned specially

If I were in that situation , I would avoid using GPT partitions.

1. format sdb to msdos, then partition to whatever I am accustomed to
2. retain sda to be controlled by grub legacy
3. install Mint on sdb, and, install its grub2 boot loader to its own root partition, when this is done, the root partition become chainloadable.
4. chainload from grub legacy to sdb Mint root partition ( says it is sdb3)
title mint at sdb3
root (hd1,2)
chainloader +1

[keghn]

Are you willing to upgade to grub 2 on sda which has your Gentoo distro.
i did my third Mint 13 Mays mate install to day. For some reason
grub 2 will not install and never shows up on the grub screen at bootup.
So I booted up on my Ubuntu partition,
opend a terminal and typed:
sudo grub-install
sudo grub-update
I rebooted up and Mint showd up on the grub table. sudo gives me root powers.
You could do all this inside Gentoo.

[slaterson]

If I were in that situation , I would avoid using GPT partitions.

1. format sdb to msdos, then partition to whatever I am accustomed to
2. retain sda to be controlled by grub legacy
3. install Mint on sdb, and, install its grub2 boot loader to its own root partition, when this is done, the root partition become chainloadable.
4. chainload from grub legacy to sdb Mint root partition ( says it is sdb3)
title mint at sdb3
root (hd1,2)
chainloader +1

i did exactly this. found out there was a gpt partition on sdb, got rid of it, made new partitions and installed mint. installed grub to / (sdb3).

when i do 'root (hd1,2)', no problems
next, when i hit 'chainloader +1', grub complains with 'Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format'.

bummer.

[slaterson]

Are you willing to upgade to grub 2 on sda which has your Gentoo distro.
i did my third Mint 13 Mays mate install to day. For some reason
grub 2 will not install and never shows up on the grub screen at bootup.
So I booted up on my Ubuntu partition,
opend a terminal and typed:
sudo grub-install
sudo grub-update
I rebooted up and Mint showd up on the grub table. sudo gives me root powers.
You could do all this inside Gentoo.

i am hesitant to replace a perfectly working grub legacy that boots into two daily used os's for me without issue. what i am willing to do, though, is go into my bios and make sdb the first drive so i can boot to mint when i want to. unfortunately, even when i make this as simple as possible - just a single drive with mint in the computer, it still won't bring up grub...

[wayne128]

i did exactly this. found out there was a gpt partition on sdb, got rid of it, made new partitions and installed mint. installed grub to / (sdb3).

when i do 'root (hd1,2)', no problems
next, when i hit 'chainloader +1', grub complains with 'Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format'.

bummer.

Two methods

A: retain chainloading,
your grub2 installation might not be successful, if that is the case,
try reinstall grub2 onto its own root partition with these
1. boot and run live
2. sudo os-prober, to confirm mint root partition is at /dev/sdb3
3. sudo mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt
4. sudo grub-install --force --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdb3
5. reboot to see if chainloading is working

B: if chainloading still refuse to work, go with direct boot method
1. boot and run from your gentoo with grub legacy
2. open a root terminal
3. mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt
4. cat /mnt/boot/grub/grub.cfg
5. you see the grub2 config file, go to this section
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
6. scroll down to find the menuentry, below is just my example,

menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.2.0-32-generic-pae' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
recordfail
gfxmode $linux_gfx_mode
insmod gzio
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,msdos7)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root aa105a85-b1df-4685-b2bb-b08ee58054f4
linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-32-generic-pae root=UUID=aa105a85-b1df-4685-b2bb-b08ee58054f4 ro splash quiet $vt_handoff
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-32-generic-pae
}

7. use your editor, copy the two lines, linux and initrd.. make a little amendment ( change linux to kernel), and create your grub legacy stanza similar to this

title mint at /dev/sdb3
root (hd1,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-32-generic-pae root=UUID=aa105a85-b1df-4685-b2bb-b08ee58054f4 ro splash quiet $vt_handoff
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-32-generic-pae

or simpler one, drop all kernel argument if you wish
title mint at /dev/sdb3
root (hd1,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-32-generic-pae
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-32-generic-pae

[breaker]

If I were in that situation , I would avoid using GPT partitions.

1. format sdb to msdos, then partition to whatever I am accustomed to
2. retain sda to be controlled by grub legacy
3. install Mint on sdb, and, install its grub2 boot loader to its own root partition, when this is done, the root partition become chainloadable.
4. chainload from grub legacy to sdb Mint root partition ( says it is sdb3)
title mint at sdb3
root (hd1,2)
chainloader +1

i did exactly this. found out there was a gpt partition on sdb, got rid of it, made new partitions and installed mint. installed grub to / (sdb3).

when i do 'root (hd1,2)', no problems
next, when i hit 'chainloader +1', grub complains with 'Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format'.

bummer.

You don't want to install GRUB2 boot loader to a partition, generally. To be clear, I'm talking about the IPL (initial program loader), or boot loader (called BOOT.IMG) installed to the MBR of the disk. The rest of GRUB (CORE.IMG, modules, menu), is then loaded. You can force install GRUB2 to a PBR (partition boot record), but since it uses blocklists to locate the rest of GRUB, the location of those blocks can change, unless you use the workaround, which I won't get into. (using chattr https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR ... nless_Disk)

Long story short, if you install GRUB2 to the MBR of sdb, then to chainload from GRUB Legacy, chainload the disk, not the partition;

Code: Select all

title Mint
rootnoverify (hd1)
chainloader +1

When you installed Mint, did you specify /dev/sdb for where to install the boot loader (in the "advanced" menu of the install), or some partition, like /dev/sdb3 ? Did you partition with a separate /boot like the first install, like /sdb1 = /boot ?

Or did you manually install GRUB2 after the fact? You still can, of course, from the Live DVD / USB. Basically like Wayne details, except /dev/sdb is the device instead of /dev/sdb3, and wherever /boot is, that is the partition you mount and make root for the GRUB2 install.

I hope this is clear. Let us know if not. No offense to Wayne, this is just a difference of method to get GRUB2 installed and chainloaded via GRUB Legacy.

[slaterson]

B: if chainloading still refuse to work, go with direct boot method
1. boot and run from your gentoo with grub legacy
2. open a root terminal
3. mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt
4. cat /mnt/boot/grub/grub.cfg
5. you see the grub2 config file, go to this section
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
6. scroll down to find the menuentry, below is just my example,

menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.2.0-32-generic-pae' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
recordfail
gfxmode $linux_gfx_mode
insmod gzio
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,msdos7)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root aa105a85-b1df-4685-b2bb-b08ee58054f4
linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-32-generic-pae root=UUID=aa105a85-b1df-4685-b2bb-b08ee58054f4 ro splash quiet $vt_handoff
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-32-generic-pae
}

7. use your editor, copy the two lines, linux and initrd.. make a little amendment ( change linux to kernel), and create your grub legacy stanza similar to this

title mint at /dev/sdb3
root (hd1,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-32-generic-pae root=UUID=aa105a85-b1df-4685-b2bb-b08ee58054f4 ro splash quiet $vt_handoff
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-32-generic-pae

or simpler one, drop all kernel argument if you wish
title mint at /dev/sdb3
root (hd1,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-32-generic-pae
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-32-generic-pae

i'm in business now. thanks!

next question - i have 64 bit mint installed. my employer uses juniper vpn, which requires the 32 bit java plugin in firefox. in gentoo, i run firefox using 'linux32' and have the emul java binaries installed. any advice on where to go to get this working in mint? after that, its on to things getting mint setup as a client to me openldap directory.

[breaker]

There you go, you were able to directly boot the kernel from GRUB Legacy's menu, excellent! After you repartitioned and reinstalled Mint, that probably got you past whatever was not letting it work before.