topic Re: GRUB console on when booting from floppy. in Operating System - Linux

GRUB console on when booting from floppy.

Samuel_10 — Wed, 11 Jun 2003 16:26:41 GMT

I got SuSE 8.2 running on an Intel machine. It's set to dual boot with a GRUB image on a floppy. The root partition is the last partition on the drive and the rest of the Linux volumes are LVM. I added space from a new partition to an LVM volume rebooted and went into W2K where I added a FAT32 partition there. Now I come back and when I try to boot from my floppy I just get a GRUB console prompt and nothing else. I don't think the floppy had a filesystem, only enough to get me the menu. Not sure how this works. ANy know what happened and how to correct it? Why don't I get a menu anymore?

Re: GRUB console on when booting from floppy.

Caesar_3 — Wed, 11 Jun 2003 17:55:45 GMT

Hello!

The floppy do have a filesystem.
Maybe when you added new windows partition
it step on the LV or it maybe that your
MBR was changed.
Can you up to windows?
If do (or not) find the way to run fdisk
and check what's up with your partitions.

Caesar

Re: GRUB console on when booting from floppy.

Samuel_10 — Wed, 11 Jun 2003 18:49:16 GMT

Yes Windows 2000 is fine. However I don't understand how anything got messed up. My root partition is NOT LVM and I didn't mess with that. If I made another primary partition in Linnux could this have somehow messed up the numbering of the primary partitions that GRUB looks at?.

For instance in order on drive:

1. 1st primary partition - W2K
2. Extended partition - Linux LVM,swap file,Ghost partition (tryed deleting this after problem started to no effect)
3. 2nd primary partition - another physical volume for the LVM
4. 3rd primary partition - Linux root partition non-LVM reiser filesystem

Re: GRUB console on when booting from floppy.

Samuel_10 — Wed, 11 Jun 2003 18:51:38 GMT

The 3rd primary partition (my root Linux partition) was the 2nd created on the drive and then I created the one listed as my 2nd primary. Does this mess up the numbering? IF Linux trying to boot from here instead of the root partition?

Re: GRUB console on when booting from floppy.

Steven E. Protter — Wed, 11 Jun 2003 21:24:05 GMT

When LVM updated your configuration the grub configuration on your floppy diskette probably wasn't updated.

Being dependent on a diskette to boot is an inherently unreliable way to go. They fail frequently and are on the way to being made obsolete.

The root partition should be the first partition in the Linux portion of the hard disk.

I would consider some changes in approach and configuration to insure that this doesn't happen again. GRUB can be used to manage the entire disk with a nice NTFS partition for Windows 2000.

SEP

Re: GRUB console on when booting from floppy.

Andrew Cowan — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 04:15:06 GMT

Some BIOS's have a limit on the cylinder location of your boot strap. If this is a particularly large Disk (>1024cyls) it could be causing Grub not to be able to map this location.

Can you boot the system from the install cd? If so run Grub and store the boot strap onto the /boot slice of the hard disk then "dd" it into the Windows 2000 partition and alter the c:\boot.ini" to load this as another operating system. Alternatively write the boot loader to the mbr and it should add Windows as a boot option.