Can anyone explain the Grub problem?

  • johne53
Posted: Fri, 05/29/2009 - 08:33
My laptop has two primary partitions (hda0 and hda1) which I use to boot into WinXP and Win2K respectively. Then there's an extended partition with a few logical partitions (FAT32) also used for Windows. Then finally, there's hda9 which I use to boot into 64studio. I back up all my partitions regularly and rarely need to restore any of them. However, on the rare occasions that I need to restore hda9, something strange always happens. After deleting the old partition and restoring a recent backup, grub always fails at stage 1.5. Bizarrely, the only way I can fix this is to change the 'hidden' status of hda1. If it's hidden, I need to unhide it. If it's unhidden, I need to hide it. Every time I restore hda9 I need to toggle the status of hda1 to enable grub to load. Does this make sense to anyone?
‹ Accelerated Nvidia graphics driver Jackd distortion or Jackmp xruns... ›

Actually, the Win2K

  • johne53
  • 10/07/07
  • Fri, 05/29/2009 - 11:51
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Actually, the Win2K partition is a leftover which I no longer use. However, I had to leave its partition in situ. Otherwise, deleting it would always throw up the same grub problem. My backup software is Paragon Drive Backup. It simply makes copies of partitions which it restores, block-by-block. There's no real intelligence involved. When restoring, it just creates an exact block-for-block image of whatever was backed up. I don't think it even compresses or decompresses the data. Thanks for that tip about checking file permissions Dave. I'll give you an update on the situation, over on the original thread.

WinXP Win2K & savedefault

  • skullnotions
  • 09/29/07
  • Fri, 05/29/2009 - 10:42
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I don't see how you're booting into Win2k and I think the confusion might be because of the savedefault settings, Here's an old menu.list without the quiet and savedefault options for comparison. I'm not experienced with your backup solution, are you sure it's configuring correct permissions etc., Cheers! Dave. Update: If your graphics problem is related to file permissions here's a way to check and reconfigure your user settings. $ find . -type f -exec ls -s {} \; | sort -n -r | head -50 | cat -n | tee ~/bigfile.list The code above will display the 50 largest files in ~/ and also create the file bigfile.list. It will also inform you of any files you don't have permission to read\write. The code below will set your user files to the default settings. To change it or set it up you need to be root or sudo so it's best from a terminal. Run: $ sudo chown -R dave: ~dave $ sudo chmod -R u+rw,go-w ~dave Use your own username! This should reset your setting to the defaults. Cheers! Dave.

Partition layout

  • skullnotions
  • 09/29/07
  • Fri, 05/29/2009 - 08:58
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Could you post back the return when you run: $ sudo fdisk -l And also the link to your menu.list as it is now. Cheers! Dave.

Hi Dave,After all my

  • johne53
  • 10/07/07
  • Fri, 05/29/2009 - 10:14
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Hi Dave, After all my shennanigans with the nvidia driver, I've now restored the previous backup, so menu.lst should look a bit more sensible now. Anyway, here it is:- and running that fdisk command produced this:- ~/> sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 1721 13823901 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/hda2 1722 3442 13823932+ 1c Hidden W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/hda3 3443 14593 89570407+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/hda5 3443 3573 1052226 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/hda6 3574 5294 13823901 b W95 FAT32 /dev/hda7 5295 7015 13823901 b W95 FAT32 /dev/hda8 7016 12553 44483953+ 83 Linux /dev/hda9 12554 14593 16386268+ 83 Linux

Actually, I think I meant

  • johne53
  • 10/07/07
  • Fri, 05/29/2009 - 08:48
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Actually, I think I meant hda1 and hda2 (there's no hda0 IIRC).