This is the death of the bootloader blues thread, folks. My bootloader
problem has been solved by Tim. Thanks and a tip of the hat to all who
offered advice and twice to Tim for his hundred-proof solution.
* I booted from the CD into rescue mode (F5 key at menu)
* At the command prompt, I typed "chroot /mnt/sysimage <enter>"
* "root (hd1,0) <enter>"
* "find (hd1,0) /grub/stage1 <enter>"
* "setup (hd0) <enter>"
* "quit <enter>"
* Out of Grub, back at the command prompt, I ejected the CD and
rebooted the machine. Grub came up just as it should have done in the
first place. I can now boot into FC5 (default) or "other" (which is what
the Grub menu calls Windows).
Thanks again to Tim and to everyone who contributed.
Jimmy
Tim wrote:
On Thu, 2006-04-13 at 14:15 -0500, Jimmy Montague wrote:
Sorry: I can't decipher the MAN page.
I found "man grub" to be next to useless on each Fedora Core Linux that
I've tried, but the *full* manual is available as an info file:
info grub
I don't know how to copy bootloader to the MBR of the Windoze drive..
When I ran fdisk -l, as you suggested, here is the result:
Disk/dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40027029504 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track/ 4866 cylinders
units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk/dev/hdb: 40.0 GB, 40027029504 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track/ 4866 cylinders
units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
dev/hda1 * 1 4865 39078081 7 HPFS/NTFS
dev/hdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
dev/hdb2 14 4866 38981722+ 8e Linux LVM
Looks the same as a friend's foray into FC5, and he had a similar
problem (after installation, it booted straight into Windows, without
any GRUB menu, despite being told to install GRUB to the MBR of the
first, Windows, drive during the installation routine). I think this
(below) is the procedure I used to fix things up. It's a while since I
did it, and didn't note precisely what I did.
1. Booted a rescue disc.
2. Entered the command "grub" (we're now are in a command line
interface shell for GRUB). I may have had to chroot into
the /mnt/sysimage, but I cannot remember. You'll soon know if
you have to, if there's no response to the grub command.
3. Entered "root (hd1,0)" (setting the boot drive and partition for
where most of GRUB, and the system kernel files
are: /dev/hdb1).
4. Entered "find (hd1,0)/grub/stage1" (the first file GRUB uses to
boot up from). (This step may not be necessary, but should
demonstrate that the required file is where it's needed.)
5. Entered "setup (hd0)" (to install the bootloader to the drive my
system BIOS boots up).
6. Entered "quit" (to properly exit from the GRUB command line
interface shell).
(Example commands shown between the quotes, just type what's inside
them, don't also type the quotes.)
If all goes well, you'll install the first stage of GRUB into the MBR of
the drive your motherboard boots from, and set up the other stages of
GRUB (and its menu) correctly in the boot partition of your Linux drive.
Now, when you boot, you use GRUB to determine which system to boot up.
Alternatively, some people use the Windows bootloader, adding in the
files needed for it to switch over to the other (Linux) drive. I've not
tried that, so can't offer any tips.
