Mint and PclinuxOS 2009.2 boot problems

[tharbour1]

Let me introduce my self. I am a 5 year linux user. I am a long time user of PClinuxOS. I heard some great things about linux mint 8 so I decided to install it on a spare 20 gig partition. I must say linux mint 8 works very well. It is smooth and well put together. It is much like PclinuxOS in that regard. The problem I have is that the grub menu list all my os's. I have vista, PCLinuxOS and mint 8 listed. It uses the mint grub screen. Vista boots, mint 8 boots but PClinuxOS does not. It starts to boot but then says that there is "no such file" and then returns me to grub. I know the PClinuxOS install is there as I can get to it from within mint. Mint and PClinuxOS are both on seperate partitions with seperate root and home partitions. They use a common swap partition. I love my PClinuxOS. Does anyone know of a fix for this?. I can edit the menu.lst but I dont think it will do any good. Any Idea's?.

Thanks.

[exploder]

I just have one OS on my machine but I know there are some posts about this. I know there is something in grub 2 that needs edited. Hopefully someone will give you an answer to this soon. In the meantime I will see what I can find out.

Edit: I found some good information on Grub 2 here.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2

I know this problem has been solved before, hopefully someone that has answered this one before will jump in with the solution.

[tharbour1]

Thanks for the reply. I assume it is something simple. What confuses me is that grub list the correct partition for PClinuxOS. It list all the installs correctly. Maybe I can do a grub reinstall in PClinuxOS to fix it but I would rather not if it is not necessary. Mint is a good distro. I wont leave PClinuxOS but it is good to know there are other outstanding distros out there. I would recommend this distro. It is that good.

[rhodry]

I have a test machine here with lots of os's on it. The mbr is controlled by Grub2 from the Mint Helena install. All others have boot from partition set at install and "sudo update-grub" run from Helena finds them all. The only one not to boot properly is PCLinuxOS. I know why and I can give you a temporary fix but I have no permanent fix worked out yet. I have in fact posted on this over in the PCLinuxOS forums, because the problem is largely theirs to resolve.

The problem is that the os-prober run by Grub2 in Helena picks up the location of the initrd file from PCLinuxOS with a reference to its partition location. Trouble is pclos still talks grub-legacy addresses whereas Grub2 uses a new numbering system for partitions. Result is it finds the wrong partition therefore cannot find the initrd file when it tries to boot.

The quote shows you an extract from the os-prober section of the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file here on Helena. There are many other entries but these will highlight what I am saying:

menuentry "Linux Mint 8 Helena - KDE CE, linux 2.6.31-17-generic (/dev/sda7) (on /dev/sda7)" {
insmod ext2
set root=(hd0,7)
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set b9c5f01b-12bb-4b29-9bdb-e23682f7ecde
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-17-generic root=UUID=b9c5f01b-12bb-4b29-9bdb-e23682f7ecde ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-17-generic
}

menuentry "linux (on /dev/sda8)" {
insmod ext2
set root=(hd0,8)
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 3baa1bc1-8647-4112-b7d3-97c6d9aebcef
linux /boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=3baa1bc1-8647-4112-b7d3-97c6d9aebcef acpi=on resume=UUID=820df2a0-24e7-44a2-a662-c7c826548690
initrd (hd0,7)/boot/initrd.img
}

menuentry "Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.31-6.slh.1-sidux-686 (on /dev/sda9)" {
insmod ext2
set root=(hd0,9)
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set cb6e4bd2-daea-4bcb-8fb8-248458053e03
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-6.slh.1-sidux-686 root=UUID=cb6e4bd2-daea-4bcb-8fb8-248458053e03 ro quiet vga=791
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-6.slh.1-sidux-686
}

Notice the highlighted line from the pclos entry - the os is on /dev/sda8 and this is the legacy address for it; however, Grub2 now reads /dev/sda8 as (hd0,8); so when it comes across the address (hd0,7) it thinks it is looking for /dev/sda7!!!! It therefore does not find the initrd file referred to and hence cannot boot.

You can certainly overcome this in the short term by simply pressing the letter "e" when you have the pclos entry highlighted on boot. This lets you edit the line, change the number to the correct one - in my case 7 to 8, then Control-X to continue booting. Works fine.

I am looking at ways we might make a more permanent change so that the os-prober section of grub.cfg contains the right entry. Please DO NOT anyone suggest editing the file directly. Even though this can be done (not recommended) it will be blown away every time "sudo update-grub" is run.

I have tried a custom chainloader entry for pclos and that works too but I have not found a way to run os-prober without it picking up the erroneous entry again?!

I will post updates if I learn more.

This problem is a result of developers/packagers rushing to adopt something new (Grub2) without adequately testing enough scenarios in which it will be expected to work - almost seams like Windows again? Having said that, when pclos catches up with Grub2 use and partition numbering the problem should disappear.
Hope this helps,
Rhodry.

[tharbour1]

I reinstalled grub from PClinuxOS live cd. Now I can boot PClinuxOS. Now mint 8 is missing from that menu list. Windows is there. I can't win for loosing. There is about to be a new release of PClinuxOS. It will have a new kernel etc. Maybe that release will fix the problem. Now I have to find a way to edit the menu.lst and put mint 8 back in there. I like it. It is a fine distro.

[hal8000]

I reinstalled grub from PClinuxOS live cd. Now I can boot PClinuxOS. Now mint 8 is missing from that menu list. Windows is there. I can't win for loosing. There is about to be a new release of PClinuxOS. It will have a new kernel etc. Maybe that release will fix the problem. Now I have to find a way to edit the menu.lst and put mint 8 back in there. I like it. It is a fine distro.

I can help you here as I also Multi Boot PClinuxos2009.2, Mint 8, Ubuntu Karmic and others across 2 hard drives.

First issue is that PClinuxos 2009.2 Grub can boot Mint, as long as you've not installed it as ext4 filesystem. The current
kernel on PCLOS will not recognise ext4, however if youve installed Mint on ext3 filesystems, then use grub legacy controlled
by PCLOS and edit /boot/grub/menu.lst

If you've installed Mint with ext4 file systems or (any other distro) then you need a distrribution with a recent kernel that is compiled
with ext4 support.
For me, I have Mandrake 2009.1 installed and use grub legacy from Mandrake to control the booting.


Heres, a sample of my grub legacy menu.lst

orac grub # cat menu.lst
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd1,12)/boot/gfxmenu
default 0

title PCLinuxOS 2009.2
root (hd1,8)
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

title Mint Helena
root (hd1,10)
kernel (hd1,10)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=/dev/sdb11 ro quiet splash
initrd (hd1,10)/boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic


title Mandriva 2009.1
kernel (hd1,12)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=Mandriva_2009.1 root=LABEL=Mandriva splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd1,12)/boot/initrd.img

title Desktop BSD
root (hd0,2,a)
kernel (hd0,2,a)/bootloader

title Ubuntu Karmic 9.10
kernel (hd1,4)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=UUID=3777a2e3-a664-404c-9417-5a6189967d5e ro quiet splash
initrd (hd1,4)/boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic

--snip--

As you can see from above, with grub legacy, you dont have to both with UUID names for root partitions, as long
as you know drive and partition, you can set root=/dev/sdbx etc and even slices (if you multi boot FreeBSD).
One point with grub legacy is that it starts counting partitions from zero so root(hd1,10) is actually second hard drive
partition 11, or /dev/sdb11

Other solutions (though perhaps not ideal) reinstall mint using ext3 or reiserfs (if youve used ext4) or try the solution from
ubuntu forums

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1313207

look for the post y h0ffmeister

Hope that helps

[Andy Axnot]

I had exactly the same problem, PCLinuxOS wouldn't boot, I got the error message about a file or partition not found. The reason for this is as rhodry explained, a conflict in numbering systems between Grub and Grub2, and as he points out:

You can certainly overcome this in the short term by simply pressing the letter "e" when you have the pclos entry highlighted on boot. This lets you edit the line, change the number to the correct one - in my case 7 to 8, then Control-X to continue booting. Works fine.

To make this permanent what you need to do is open /boot/grub/grub.cfg and copy the entry for PCLOS. Then open

Code: Select all

sudo kwrite  /etc/grub.d/40_custom  # replace kwrite with your text editor of choice

and append what you copied from grub.cfg. Change the partition number and save the file.

Now run
sudo update-grub

That should do it.

Andy