64 Studio installation has overwritten my GRUB instead of adding to it.

mjpatey

Posted: Tue, 06/02/2009 - 14:26

Hi, group- I've installed 64 Studio on a free partition to test it out, and instead of adding its entry to my existing GRUB menu, it seems to have created its own GRUB menu.lst which stands alone on the 64 Studio partition. Now when I boot, I only see that menu, listing only 64 Studio. On my main partition (running Ubuntu 9.04), the original /boot/grub/menu.lst is still intact, but I'm at a loss for how to use it instead of the one created by 64 Studio. I'd eventually like to add 64 Studio to that list, but for now, I just want to restore my original setup. Any idea how I boot from my original menu.lst? Thanks for any light you can shed! -Mark

Add new comment

64studio 3.0beta4

skullnotions
Joined:09/29/07

Posted:Sat, 06/06/2009 - 14:43

Hi Mark, Yes, Install 64studio first... or ubuntu 9.04 as ext3... 64studio 3.0beta4 is in the pipeline and there's a lot of work going on in the background. You might be better off holding back until the beta4 release. Whichever choice you make I look forward to your future posts. Cheers! Dave.

Ah, I see...

mjpatey
Joined:06/02/09

Posted:Sat, 06/06/2009 - 14:20

Sometimes you have to spell it out for me. :-) So, 64 Studio is built on Ubuntu Hardy? And if so, that's why it can't see my Ubuntu 9.04 partition, which is ext4. Got it! I will definitely be back in a bit to check out 64 Studio. Thanks for all your help! It certainly has been a good learning experience. I'd probably be better off if I wiped the entire drive, installed 64 Studio first, then installed Ubuntu 9.04 in ext4, no? That way the newer GRUB would be in charge and would see everything. -Mark

grub & ext4

skullnotions
Joined:09/29/07

Posted:Sat, 06/06/2009 - 06:42

Hi Mark, Good to see you up and running. The answer was in the google in my last post, 64studio *hardy* grub won't mount ext4 partitions. It's still been a good journey we've covered mount, fstab, and menu.lst variations and they all are good tools for later use. See you soon:) Cheers! Dave.

White flag

mjpatey
Joined:06/02/09

Posted:Sat, 06/06/2009 - 04:04

Dave, I've thrown in the towel for now. Thanks so much for your guidance with this, but I've had work to do on my main Ubuntu installation all week that's been piling up and it's been driving me crazy! I'm taking the coward's way out for now. I reverted menu.lst and fstab on my sda7 partition to their original states, and overwrote 64 Studio with a fresh install of Mint, only because it was the closest live CD I could find. After installing Mint, I now boot to a fully functioning GRUB menu, and am now posting from within my Ubuntu 9.04 installation on sda7. I do want to hang out here and report any info you think would be useful in diagnosing the problem, though. I don't know if this is useful, but here it is... a link to the /boot/grub/menu.lst that Mint created during its installation on sda1, and which works fine: http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/189415/ If any other info would be useful, please let me know! I'll keep checking back here. When I have time to noodle around again, I'll try another install of 64 Studio.

UUID to /dev/

skullnotions
Joined:09/29/07

Posted:Fri, 06/05/2009 - 09:31

Hi Mark, I've made the change from UUID to /dev/hda entries on my own system to test these changes and it works fine here on ext3 system. When you have had no problems with Grub in the past, is this also when you install a standard ubuntu "hardy"?. It could be related to 64studio because the alpha release had issues with sata\pata devices, but the newer kernel fixed most problems. $ sudo mount -o loop /dev/sda7/ /mnt/ $ df -h $ sudo cp /mnt/etc/fstab /mnt/etc/fstab2 $ sudo gedit /mnt/etc/fstab New fstab & menu.lst *change the entries in the link below, leave the rest for now* $ sudo umount /mnt/ Check partition is unmounted: $ ls -la /mnt/ Back up your ubuntu /mnt/fstab before you make any changes and leave the menu.lst (recovery-mode) in 64studio's ubuntu entry as a backup until you know everything is fine. Good luck:) Cheers! Dave. PS: /dev/sda? doesn't work for me it just halts at boot, /dev/hda? is fine. **Update**: ext4 filesystem Googled: ubuntu hardy boot ext4 partition

OSes I've loved before... re-editing fstab and menu.lst...

mjpatey
Joined:06/02/09

Posted:Sat, 06/06/2009 - 01:54

Most of the OSes I've installed have been Ubuntu derivatives, like Ubuntu Studio, Linux Mint, Kubuntu... I've tried a few completely different flavors, like Sabayon, PCLinuxOS and others, and they've all been happy to live on sda1 with my main installation available on sda7 (currently Ubuntu 9.04, previously 8.10). I should have said this long ago... I'm using the latest 3.0 beta ISO of 64 Studio, not 2.1. It looks like you were assuming that, but I just wanted to confirm that. Regarding sda vs. hda... I believe "sda" is used to refer to SCSI, SATA and USB drives, while HDA is used for PATA IDE drives... or that seems to be the conventional wisdom. Just changed /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst... will report back shortly, after a reboot! -Mark

ubuntu fstab

skullnotions
Joined:09/29/07

Posted:Thu, 06/04/2009 - 13:08

Use the same method to mount your ubuntu partition, and use paste.ubuntu to link back the contents of /etc/fstab file for your ubuntu install. Tell me more about your second hard disk. Was it mounted when you installed 64studio? No I don't think you need to change anything, we just need to point grub in the right direction. I have more or less the same setup and it works fine. (without the second hard drive) Double boot 64studio & ubuntustudio Let's see what fstab has to say. Cheers! Dave. Update: oops we double posted:) If you can remove the second hard drive easily, it might be worth trying update-grub again without the second hard drive connected. I install 64studio many times for testing purposes and it always adds other entries to the menu list. So this second hard drive could be the problem. You could try reinstalling without the second drive connected, it doesn't take long to reinstall.

/etc/fstab from my Ubuntu install

mjpatey
Joined:06/02/09

Posted:Thu, 06/04/2009 - 14:13

http://paste.ubuntu.com/188263/ I'll wait for your response to the contents of /etc/fstab, and then if you think I should, I'll try removing the secondary hard drive and update-grub. EDIT: I wanted to say that I install other distros a few times a month on the partition where 64 Studio is. This is the first time I've had this weird GRUB issue. Not to say that it's 64 Studio's fault, just that if it's a hardware issue, then it's one that hasn't caused trouble until just now.

Contents of sda7's /boot directory

mjpatey
Joined:06/02/09

Posted:Thu, 06/04/2009 - 13:05

mjpatey@64studio:~$ sudo mount -o loop /dev/sda7/ /mnt/ mjpatey@64studio:~$ ls -la /mnt/boot/ total 13784 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-05-05 09:00 . drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 4096 2009-06-01 22:08 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 525592 2009-04-16 23:34 abi-2.6.28-11-generic -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 90584 2009-04-16 23:34 config-2.6.28-11-generic drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-04-23 14:32 grub -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7949726 2009-05-05 09:00 initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 128796 2009-03-27 16:12 memtest86+.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1871601 2009-04-16 23:34 System.map-2.6.28-11-generic -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1170 2009-04-16 23:39 vmcoreinfo-2.6.28-11-generic -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3522336 2009-04-16 23:34 vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic ...I noticed you referred to it as "hda" rather than "sda". I have no hda drives, only sda and sdb... could this impact how I should refer to the drives in menu.lst? By the way, I'd be more than happy to just reinstall. At this point, I've had a couple of days of downtime on my main machine, and just want to be able to boot back into my usual environment and get back to work. Would a re-install fix things? Do I need to change the "groot" parameter in menu.lst to point to sda7 (hd0,6) to boot into Ubuntu? Thanks in advance, again! -Mark EDIT: The FAT32 volume is not an external drive, though it has been before. It was connected during 64 Studio's installation. It used to be in an external USB enclosure but is now connected internally to my system's IDE (PATA) bus. It had been giving me permissions problems and occasional reliability issues, though the reliability issues have stopped since mounting it internally.

You're welcome...

skullnotions
Joined:09/29/07

Posted:Thu, 06/04/2009 - 12:30

Hi Mark, You're welcome, it's good to see you've been researching. What is your second hard drive (/dev/hdb1) is it an external disk (usb)? Was it connected when you installed? If so I'm thinking it might be disturbing grub updating. I've installed 64studio three times since yesterday, and grub has worked fine each time. You can type anything you want on the title line, It's just to refresh your memory to the disk details. I just used your disk information as an example. title sda2-Extended, sda5-swap, sda6-Linux, hdb1-1-fat32 root title *Type what you want here, it's just notes for reference* root From 64studio, try running these commands to see if it shows the contents of ubuntu's /boot/ directory. Check my first post if needed for the howto. $ sudo mount -o loop /dev/hda7/ /mnt/ $ ls -la /mnt/boot/ $ sudo umount /mnt/ Make sure you run the last command (above) so the partition is unmounted when your finished. Check with. $ ls -la /mnt/boot/ You should see: ls: cannot access /mnt/boot/: No such file or directory Cheers! Dave.

Dave, you're an angel...

mjpatey
Joined:06/02/09

Posted:Wed, 06/03/2009 - 19:33

Thank you!!! I haven't performed the fix yet, but wanted to make sure you were properly and publicly thanked for single-handedly digging me out of this. Just found the GRUB manual online, and now I understand a little of what you did. sda7 would be (hd1,6) because it's the first drive, 7th partition (counting from 0, so it's #6). One question before I perform the fix... you said: "....& you can edit the title line with details of your partition details e.g Data-BackUp etc., title sda2-Extended, sda5-swap, sda6-Linux, hdb1-1-fat32 root" I *think* I understand what this is, just an annotation, and it names the partition, right?

I've just pasted the new

mjpatey
Joined:06/02/09

Posted:Wed, 06/03/2009 - 19:58

I've just pasted the new section into my menu.lst, and it's not working yet. I'm sure it's something I did. Here's a link to the revised menu.lst: http://paste.ubuntu.com/187625/ During boot, the new entries did appear in the list, though the title line at the end also showed up as text in the list. When I selected Ubuntu, I got a blinking underline cursor in the upper-left of a black screen, and it never went anywhere. When I rebooted and selected 64 Studio, it worked fine. But somehow, the Ubuntu entry isn't working. Can you tell where I made a mistake?

partition & menu.lst

skullnotions
Joined:09/29/07

Posted:Wed, 06/03/2009 - 04:07

Hi Mark, /dev/sda1 * 64 Studio /dev/sda2 Extended /dev/sda5 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda6 18238 42551 195302142 83 Linux /dev/sda7 Ubuntu 9.04 /dev/hdb1 1 FAT32 Here's your menu.lst edited. Click on *Download as text* and save to disk. Copy ### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST up to ### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST into your menu.lst first because you know your 64studio entry is already working. This entry I've added will show in your menu.list & you can edit the *title* line with details of your partition details e.g Data-BackUp etc., title sda2-Extended, sda5-swap, sda6-Linux, hdb1-1-fat32 root SimplyMepis: Is a great distro & really handy as a live rescue cd. If ever you can't boot into your install you can boot the live cd login as root=password=root and fix grub, edit your menu.lst or other config files. Cheers! Dave.

Partitions & menu.lst

skullnotions
Joined:09/29/07

Posted:Tue, 06/02/2009 - 18:26

Hi Mark, Which sda partitions are 64studio & ubuntu installed on? Post back links when you copy both your menu.lsts into paste.ubuntu Here's a dual boot example, note how sda7 = (hd0,6) title 64 Studio,sda7, kernel 2.6.29-1-multimedia-686 root (hd0,6) Cheers! Dave. Update: No problem. We posted at the same time. Post back your menu.lsts and we'll check them out. *paste.ubuntu*

Further info and menu.lst contents...

mjpatey
Joined:06/02/09

Posted:Tue, 06/02/2009 - 19:37

64 Studio is on sda1 (a 150-ish GB volume), and Ubuntu 9.04 is on sda7 (a 142-ish GB volume). Here's my menu.lst for Ubuntu 9.04: http://paste.ubuntu.com/186860/ ...and the same for 64 Studio: http://paste.ubuntu.com/186864/

Partition layout /mnt/

skullnotions
Joined:09/29/07

Posted:Tue, 06/02/2009 - 16:06

Hi Mark, First backup your menu.lst Then while on your last install (64studio) run: $ sudo update-grub This should find all your installs and update your menu.lst. If not do it manually, you'll need to find out your partition information first. $ sudo fdisk -l $ df -h or $ ls -a /dev/ Here's an example, you'll need to use your own partition info you got by running the commands above: mount your ubuntu partition. Use hda? or sda? depending on your info. $ sudo mount -o loop /dev/hda?/ /mnt/ $ sudo emacs /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst Add the information from the menu.lst to your present menu.lst. Check the *root (hd0,?)* entry is correct. Then unmount the partition. Note: use nano or the editor of your choice, I've used emacs in the example. $ sudo umount /mnt/ If you have any problems, post back the return when you run: $ sudo fdisk -l & $ df -h Cheers! Dave.

Thanks for all the info,

mjpatey
Joined:06/02/09

Posted:Tue, 06/02/2009 - 17:21

Thanks for all the info, Dave! I tried sudo update-grub, and rebooted. It still doesn't see Ubuntu. I should also say that in a moment of sheer brilliance, I had already tried manually adding the menu.lst lines from my Ubuntu 9.04 install to the 64 Studio GRUB menu.lst, but when I then booted and selected Ubuntu 9.04, it returned a "File not found" error. It continues to do this after running update-grub. I suspect the problem is somewhere in the area you mentioned here: "Check the root (hd0,?) entry is correct." My problem is that, in my menu.lst for the Ubuntu install, this part appears to be commented out: \## default grub root device \## e.g. groot=(hd0,0) \# groot=7c481210-616a-4f0f-b93a-d851f9b8b334 ...and in the 64 Studio menu.lst: \## default grub root device \## e.g. groot=(hd0,0) \# groot=(hd0,0) ...so maybe it doesn't know where to look in either case! Any idea what I should set those to? Here's the output of fdisk -l: mjpatey@64studio:~$ sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000b5439 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 18237 146488671 83 Linux /dev/sda2 18238 60801 341895330 5 Extended /dev/sda5 42552 43524 7815622+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda6 18238 42551 195302142 83 Linux /dev/sda7 43525 60801 138777471 83 Linux Partition table entries are not in disk order Disk /dev/hdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000618f9 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdb1 1 60801 488384001 b W95 FAT32 Disk /dev/sdb: 2031 MB, 2031091712 bytes 16 heads, 32 sectors/track, 7748 cylinders Units = cylinders of 512 * 512 = 262144 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 16 7748 1979456 e W95 FAT16 (LBA) mjpatey@64studio:~$ ... and here's the output of df -h: mjpatey@64studio:~$ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 139G 2.4G 130G 2% / varrun 1.8G 244K 1.8G 1% /var/run varlock 1.8G 0 1.8G 0% /var/lock udev 1.8G 104K 1.8G 1% /dev devshm 1.8G 0 1.8G 0% /dev/shm /dev/sdb1 1.9G 804M 1.2G 42% /media/KINGSTON /dev/sda7 131G 59G 66G 48% /mnt mjpatey@64studio:~$ Thanks for all your help!!! -Mark (edit-syntax-Dave:)

Correction...

mjpatey
Joined:06/02/09

Posted:Tue, 06/02/2009 - 18:06

Sorry, the forum software read my "##" marks above as text markup, I guess, and changed the font size instead of just displaying the characters from my menu.lst files. The 2 snippets from my menu.lst files should show pound signs (a.k.a. number signs) in front of each line, as that's how they appear in the files.

Company

Community

Developers

Endorsements

Search

User login