Tired of pulling out my hair I'll see if I can get some help here.
The problem:
On my single physical drive, partitioned, dual boot system with xp and FC2, grub can no longer boot to any of the fc2 kernels, I can only get WinXP to run.
This started after I did two things. 1st I ran QTparted from knoppix on
my system to get rid of a small partition which nothing else could seem
to delete. It was the first partition of my extended partition
(hda3?). PartitionMagic had complained 'unknown partition type' when I tried with it, even though it shows up as being fat32 - which is what I originally made it as. Because my wife has nearly killed me several times when I screw up the computer so she can't use it, the second thing I did was run windows rescue mode (or whatever it's called) and ran fixboot. This got WinXP back for me.
Here's what I've been trying to fix this: (I've added the '>'s hoping it'll be easier to read for you)
my first error message, looking rather grim was:
>GRUB Loading stage1.5.
>GRUB loading, please wait... >Error 22
If I put the Fedora Core 2 CD1 in and run root>linux rescue I get the following:
An error occured trying to mount some or all of your system. Some of it may be mounted under /mnt/sysimage
If I then press F3 (or whichever one it is) I get some more info as follows:
<3>FAT:bogus number of reserved sectors <4>EXT2-fs warning:mounting uncheked fs ... .. <6>EXT3 FS on hda8, internal journal <6>EXT3-fs:mounted filesystem with ordered data mode <6>Kjounrnal starting. Commit internal 5 seconds <6>EXT3 FS on hda8, internal journal <6>EXT3-fs:mounted filesystem with ordered data mode <6>Kjounrnal starting. Commit internal 5 seconds <6>EXT3 FS on hda8, internal journal <6>EXT3-fs:mounted filesystem with ordered data mode
(yes, it repeats itself)
So, I run grub (version 0.94) to see of it can fix things:
grub>root (hd0,8) Error 22: No such partition grub>root (hd0,7) filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83 grub setup (hd0) checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"... 15 sectors are embedded. succeeded running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0)(hd0)1+15p (hd0,7)/boot/grub/stage2/boot/grub/grub.conf"... succeeded Done
Looks fine, but makes absolutely no difference. I think it was at about this stage that I ran the window xp install disk recovery console and ran fixboot. Now (because XP was my default in grub) windows starts fine. On each startup it gets to the grub os selection screen (which is missing but apparently running in the background). If I do nothing XP starts fine after timeout=10.
If, instead of allowing it to boot to XP I press the up arrow and select one of the linux kernels I get:
To see what the problem is I tried to run PartitionMagic and it reported:
>Booting 'Fedora Core[whichever kernel' >root (hd0,8) >Error 22: No such partition >Press any key to continue...
... which takes me back to timeout=10 again. So I put in the PartitionMagic disk hoping to learn something...
Partition table error #114 found
There's no info on the net about error #114, so I don't know exactly
what #114 is. It's in the category which means something is wrong with the partition table.
So, grub is telling it that it's been told root is hda8, but it says the partition doesn't exist (I know it does). And PartitionMagic says there's a partition table error, great - what now?
Next I thought I'd see what happened to my partition hda8, so I ran knoppix and looked at the results in qtparted:
01 /dev/hda1 ntfs active ... 02 /dev/hda2 extended ... 03 /dev/hda-1 free 04 /dev/hda5 fat32 05 /dev/hda6 ext2 06 /dev/hda7 linux-swap 07 /dev/hda-1 free 08 /dev/hda8 ext3
So, grub.conf is correct, my installation is on hda8. It didn't magically get moved. And yes, from knoppix I can browse it no problem. So why can't grub find it?
Here's my grub.conf file:
# grub.conf generated by anacondafile
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,8)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda9
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=4
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,8)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.6.8-1.521smp)
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8-1.521smp ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.8-1.521smp.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.8-1.521)
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8-1.521 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.8-1.521.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.5-1.358smp)
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.358smp ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.5-1.358smp.img
title Fedora Core-up (2.6.5-1.358)
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.358 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.5-1.358.img
title WinXP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
So I'm left thinking that grub is okay, my data is okay, but something fishy is going on with the partition table or something in that direction. As a one month newbie to linux I'm at a loss for what to do. I've considered going into DOS again and running fixmbr, but I get the impression that's risky and I'm not sure that's where the problem is.
Now is when I ask for help, I promise I've done all in my power to fix this myself.
Cheers, Duncan
--
In case it helps, below is the part of the file PartitionMagic makes for tracking down problems...
==========================================================================
Partition Information for Disk 1: 114,471.0 Megabytes
Volume PartType Status Size MB PartSect # StartSect
TotalSects
==========================================================================
C: NTFS Pri,Boot 15,006.0 0 0 63
30,732,282
ExtendedX Pri 99,464.9 0 1 30,732,345
203,704,200
EPBR Log 85,102.1 None -- 30,732,345
174,289,185
E:SHARED FAT32 Log 85,055.0 30,732,345 0 30,828,798
174,192,732
Error #114: Logical starting at 30828798 is not one head away from EPBR.
EPBR Log 204.0 30,732,345 1 205,021,530
417,690
Linux Ext2 Log 203.9 205,021,530 0 205,021,593
417,627
EPBR Log 204.0 205,021,530 1 205,439,220
417,690
*:SWAPSPACE2 Linux Swap Log 203.9 205,439,220 0 205,439,283
417,627
Unallocated Log 6,573.5 None -- 205,856,910
13,462,470
EPBR Log 7,381.4 205,439,220 1 219,319,380
15,117,165
Linux Ext3 Log 7,381.4 219,319,380 0 219,319,443
15,117,102... and here's the two relevant partitions ... =========================================================================================================== Boot Record for drive *: (Drive: 1, Starting sector: 205,021,593, Type: Ext2) =========================================================================================================== Ext2 file system super block: 1. Inodes count: 52208 2. Blocks count: 208813 3. Reserved blocks count: 8352 4. Free blocks count: 202203 5. First data block: 1 6. Logical block size: 0 7. Logical fragment size: 0 8. Blocks/group: 8192 9. Fragments/group: 8192 10. Inodes/group: 2008 11. Mount time: 0x41765011 12. Last write time: 0x419CCECD 13. Mount count: 21 14. Max. mount count: 27 15. Magic number: EF53 16. State: 0x0000 17. Error behavior: 0x0001 18. Minor revision level: 0 19. Last check time: 0x417654C9 20. Max. time bet. checks: 15552000 21. Creator oper. system: 0 22. Major revision level: 1 23. Reserved block def. UID:0x0000 24. Reserved block def. GID:0x0000
=========================================================================================================== Boot Record for drive *: (Drive: 1, Starting sector: 219,319,443, Type: Ext3) =========================================================================================================== Ext3 file system super block: 1. Inodes count: 946560 2. Blocks count: 1889637 3. Reserved blocks count: 94481 4. Free blocks count: 913840 5. First data block: 0 6. Logical block size: 2 7. Logical fragment size: 2 8. Blocks/group: 32768 9. Fragments/group: 32768 10. Inodes/group: 16320 11. Mount time: 0x419CCECE 12. Last write time: 0x419CD4E0 13. Mount count: 102 14. Max. mount count: -1 15. Magic number: EF53 16. State: 0x0001 17. Error behavior: 0x0001 18. Minor revision level: 0 19. Last check time: 0x417677C8 20. Max. time bet. checks: 0 21. Creator oper. system: 0 22. Major revision level: 1 23. Reserved block def. UID:0x0000 24. Reserved block def. GID:0x0000
