Boot problem

[guest]

try option 5 for this=>http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... ur_Live_CD add the

Code: Select all

all_generic_ide

hope that helps

[Fred]

Layor wrote:

It boots fine if the hard disc it is on is the only one connected... boot from the boot menu when starting the computer(I do not want a dual boot), it gets stuck on the 'Busybox'... I do not want to disconnect the drives each time I want to start 'Mint'.

Well... That is the way you installed it. It appears that you installed Mint with only the one drive connected. When you plug the other drives in, the drive partition designators change from what it was on a single drive to the multi drive setup. You say that you don't want a dual boot, but at the same time you don't want to have to manually swap drives. You can't have it both ways. If all the drives stay connected and you wish to select which of the two OSs to boot, that is by definition a dual boot system.

And yes, if you install Ubuntu the same way, you will get the same result. I would suggest you rethink what you want to accomplish, read some of the partitioning and dual boot threads in the forum, and take a look at the user guide and wiki. If you do this you will have a much better chance of having a stable, serviceable system regardless of which distro you choose to install.

Fred

[keithp]

My setup here is 2 hard drives. DriveA has XP and DriveB has Mint. As the BIOS boots, I use F8 to select which drive I want to use.

When I installed Mint, I too unplugged the XP drive. On replugging, I had the busybox problem.

Going to /boot/grub/menu.lst, I found that Mint was listed as sda (which was the wrong drive). I changed this to sdb.

All is now well.

I'm not saying that yours is similar, just telling you what I did.

Hope this helps.

Keith

[Guest]

Hi Keith,
I think you may have the answer. I've checked the 'menu.lst' file and it does have an 'sda1' in it. Now my problem is getting it to let me change it! I'm not sure where the permissions are for doing that. I've tried several changes in the 'Administrations >Authorisations' but to no avail.
Can anyone help, please?
By the way, as I mentioned before, I have had this type of setup, XP and Linux, running on two separate HD's and just selecting the Linux on pressing the 'boot' key, with XP as the default start up OS. That way my better half could not accidentally start Linux via a dual boot screen.
Many thanks, Layor

[Fred]

Layor,

My point was that you are still dual booting. You have two OSs and you can choose to run either of them. There are multiple ways of doing that, but you are still dual booting.

If you wish to edit your menu.lst file you can do so by running in a terminal:

gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

This will open that file for editing. I can't tell you what you need to change your boot sequence to though. That would depend upon how the bios reassigned the drive partition when it is in combination with the other drives.

If you will post screen shots of the partition tables for each drive when they are all connected I can tell you what to change your menu.lst to.

In the future, you don't have to disconnect drives to make installs and dual boot with the bios selections. ie using the F8 key or whatever key combination your system uses. When installing, select to install grub to the drive you are installing to with the "advanced" button on the screen of the installer before it starts the actual install. Then the installer will set everything up correctly for you.

Fred

[lead67]

this is for Keithp, on your post:
"...Going to /boot/grub/menu.lst, I found that Mint was listed as sda (which was the wrong drive). I changed this to sdb.

All is now well."

I had the same issue, since i am new to Linux i could not use the advance settings and found the easy way to unplug the other drive (Wvista Ultimate) what i do is the at the log in screen i see a line at the bottom and i entered the right letter for my drive which is sdb1 instead of sda1 and log in, now is it safe to just go into the menu.lst and enter the letter and that is it? i saw it but i was afraid to just type the letter and save, is it really safe to do just that? i found that at the bottom of the menu.lst i think that is where the change must take place, right?
i will appreciate it if you can help me w/this issue so that i don't have to be typing the letter everyday at the log in screen.

thanks,
Fabio