8 replies to this topic

[TellusCitizen]

Ok I had nuff of this... I need a "Jeep" option here!

So here is my situ in brief:
My PC is running Vista64, openSuse64, Ubuntu 8.04 64bit.

The HD circus is something like this:

2 x Seagate 320Gb SATA2s', in nForce bios RAID0 - Vista Partition
2 x WesternDigital 500Gb SATA2s', singels both go their own nix distro and fair ammount of space in general usage
2 x WesternDigital 500Gb SATA2s', in nForce bios RAID1 - Secure data storage

I really do not know where, why or whos fault (prolly myself) for not getting a working bootloader to manage all this from one place. Something keeps forcing the Vista parttion to dominate the tabels for me. And then the GRUB keeps loosing the right HD routes.

-NEVERMIND-

Moving on, so I thought that an old small 256MB USB stick in the rear would be a dandy boot loader parttion? I see the main reason for using a USB it's lack of mechanical parts (vs. floppies and CD's) and the possibility to quickly reconfigure the loader if something changes (which happanes quite often on my computer).

Then I found this forum and frankly now I am awash with options to use.

What is the "General Purpose" (ie. 'GP' ~ 'Jeep') option here? Or is there a special veraiety that you'd suggest for my ever-mutating rig? Feel free to ask, comment and give feedback.


Cheers fellas!

Ps. If, just if, there is a really fast booting linux option here that could be, lets call it "pre-load-OS", loaded to act as a fast grafical boot option chooser? And had like the basic desktop features like a browser, putty, command line promt. This would be heaven!

[sda1]

Hi,

the only reason could be if you disconnect/power down/remove a disk or leave an external disk in the pc whilst booting doing so corrupting the menu.lst where GRUB searches for the root in the wrong (hd). First install your Vista then Suse and finally 8.04 let 8.04 arrange the pre-configured menu.lst rewriting the master boot record to:

2.6.24-17

chainloader /bootmgr

2.6.22.5-31

If you don't plan on formatting you can repair the GRUB master boot record withSupergrubdisk burn the iso to disk and
boot off it it can repair GRUB/Lilo and Legacy based Windows master boot records.

In your case just run Linux manual hit enter and fix mbr and hit enter again once booted.

sda1

[TellusCitizen]

Thx sda1,

Never the less that is exactly what happens. Say I set suse (sdd1) as the last one to be installed. In bios I set it to boot from that HD. I get one of four results:

1 - GRUB yelds an error 17; can't do nothing
2 - GRUB freezes mid load; just says GRUB and I have to HW-reboot
3 - GRUB errors and I can get into it's own console to point it to the correct HD partition
4 - The sky falls down, Mircosoft goes bankrupt and I actually boot into the OS

First I thougt it was a BIOS issue, but I just resently switched MOBO's. Currently running MSI P7N Diamond. One thing that I been considering myself: all the WD HDs' have identical ID's in BIOS. Could this cause this kinda mayhem?

[was_jaclaz]

Are we talking os GRUB (Legacy GRUB, 0.97) or grub4dos?

What you most probably want to do is to use the "--find-setroot" command against a "tag" file.

Start with a known to be working release of grub4dos, I would use the 14-05-2008 release.

Example:
Have on each disk ROOT a unique "tag" file, say, for the drive where Vista bootmgr reesides, an empty file named "Vista_hd.tag", then:

title Vista on whatever volume
find --set-root /Vista_hd.tag
chainloader /bootmgr

The grldr and menu.lst can be on a USB stick, on a floppy, on a CD, wherever.

jaclaz

[paraglider]

I use boot-us when I have multiple primary partitions on multiple physical hard disks. You can configure it to hide primary partitions before the os is started:

http://www.boot-us.com/

[TellusCitizen]

Are we talking os GRUB (Legacy GRUB, 0.97) or grub4dos? ...

Legacy GRUB.

I'll past full grub files once I get back from my current trip, back on Sunday, so you guys can disect em properly.

Paragliders boot.us suggestion sounds like real viable option here. Gotta check it out.

[was_jaclaz]

Well, grub4dos has more features when we are talking of Dos, Windows and Vista, the most important of which is obviously that of directly chainloading system files, while mantaining almost full compatibility with GRUB Legacy.

Boot-us is a "traditional" bootmanager, less flexible.

jaclaz

[TellusCitizen]

Ok, as I am the noblet here, what do You guys need to sort this mess out?

While trying boot-us out, I got some disturbing HD and MBR errors. I fired up UBCD to take a peek, it's a mess. Period.


Please tell me with what tools and what data you need to try and help me sort this all out.

[TellusCitizen]

I might derail this subject now and uncertain if it is ok, moderators, plz pm me if any issues arrise.


I took a peek inside the HD's. What a mess.

The suse partition has an odd /boot folder, where it should be. menu.lst was there without _any_ text in it. So was device.map. Now for the really weird part: that folder contained an extact identical copy of this /Boot folder. That contained again a copy of it. I was 50ish folders deep in this before I gave up on it.
WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot?! What could cause this?

The Vista boot config was ok, but the it had a /Grub folder with some really old linux setups I had way back.

The other Linux HD I just janked out for now, as it was mess as well. This one had a wery small 128mb first parttion that was unmountable in any format know to me.

I disasembled the RAID1 array to ease the mess for now (unhooked the other HD fully). Had a /Grub folder in it's rootdir as well (?!)



What I am doing right now is to clean up all of these, going to reinstall suse later on, make a small first parttion somewhere to contain a space for just the boot loder.