Having problems booting Gentoo

[GotAMD]

Okay, here goes:

I have three hard drives. Two run Windows in RAID 0 off of my nVidia nForce4 RAID. The third is also a SATA drive on the nForce controller, but not in the RAID set. I've been trying for the past few days to get Gentoo installed on this drive--installing it completely separately so Linux doesn't even try to touch the RAID array. I'm going to change the drive order in the boot priority to change OS's...at least that's the plan. However, I can't boot it for the life of me. Everything installs just fine (during the installation, the boot CD picks up the non-RAIDed drive as sdc and that's where I've been installing it to), but I can't get GRUB to boot this configuration. When I set my GRUB.conf file like I think it should be...

root (hd2,0)
kernel /kernel-2.6.11-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/sdc3

...it says that the disk is not found. However, I've found that when I change it to...

root (hd0,0)
kernel /kernel-2.6.11-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/sdc3

...it seems to work, but then gives me a kernel panic and says that I need to point the root= to the right place. However, I've tried all possible combinations and none seem to work (sdc1, sdc2, sdc3). I thought that maybe it was something I did or something, so I've now actually installed up to this point a total of 3 times. 2 stage1's and 1 stage3 (my latest because I got tired of doing stage1's).

BTW, I'm using ext2 for the boot and swap and reiserfs for the rest of the drive. I've made sure to enable SCSI and SATA support as well as the filesystem support in the kernel when compiling it too. In case it matters, my fstab looks like this:

/dev/sdc1 /boot ext2 defaults,noatime 1 2
/dev/sdc3 / reiserfs noatime,notail 0 1
/dev/sdc2 none swap sw 0 0

Does anyone know what could be going on here? I don't think it's a kernel configuration error, I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the software RAID array screwing stuff up or something with the drive labeling or something because I also tried installing Ubuntu, and though it installed fine, it wouldn't boot and gave me a "No Operating System Found" message or something like that. I'm at my wit's end here

[drakebasher]

First thing you need to do is to lose the sig at the bottom of your post (check the forum rules).

Grub understands certain filesystems and devices, but not all My guess is, you have a candidate for the latter. Here's a trick that may work for you depending on how you can arrange it. Grub may be limited in what it knows, but if your kernel is correctly configured, your kernel knows all. It doesn't matter where the kernel lives during off hours, as long as it gets to work on time, in RAM. If you have a device that has enough space for your kernel and that Grub can recognise, then you should be able to have your way. You tried this:

root (hd0,0)
kernel /kernel-2.6.11-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/sdc3

Grub recognises hd0. If Grub can recognise the filesystem on hd0,0 (not just the device, but also the filesystem) and you can copy the kernel (and initrd, if you use one) to hd0,0 then I think that will work okay. Now, if hd0,0 has a non-Linux filesystem, then Grub's stage 1.5 will have to match. If hd0,0 is NTFS, I think it's safe to say you need another way.

Bottom line is:
1. Grub needs to be installed (setup) to a bootable device
2. The kernel (and initrd if you use one) need to be on a device recognizable by Grub
3. Grub needs to be told where the kernel is ("root" as in the "root" line) and it needs to know where the root ( / ) filesystem is (as in "root=/dev/sdc3")

[CoffeeMonster]

Personally I use lilo, easier to configure.

[drakebasher]

Personally I use lilo, easier to configure.

The 'Monster has lots of opinions...but I like that! I left LILO when I gave up on Mandrake. Since then I've read that Grub is more robust and, from my own experience, I gotta say that it works in a lot of situations. Is LILO okay with the fix that I described in this thread? I'm always open to what works

[GotAMD]

First thing you need to do is to lose the sig at the bottom of your post (check the forum rules).

Grub understands certain filesystems and devices, but not all My guess is, you have a candidate for the latter. Here's a trick that may work for you depending on how you can arrange it. Grub may be limited in what it knows, but if your kernel is correctly configured, your kernel knows all. It doesn't matter where the kernel lives during off hours, as long as it gets to work on time, in RAM. If you have a device that has enough space for your kernel and that Grub can recognise, then you should be able to have your way. You tried this:

root (hd0,0)
kernel /kernel-2.6.11-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/sdc3

Grub recognises hd0. If Grub can recognise the filesystem on hd0,0 (not just the device, but also the filesystem) and you can copy the kernel (and initrd, if you use one) to hd0,0 then I think that will work okay. Now, if hd0,0 has a non-Linux filesystem, then Grub's stage 1.5 will have to match. If hd0,0 is NTFS, I think it's safe to say you need another way.

Bottom line is:
1. Grub needs to be installed (setup) to a bootable device
2. The kernel (and initrd if you use one) need to be on a device recognizable by Grub
3. Grub needs to be told where the kernel is ("root" as in the "root" line) and it needs to know where the root ( / ) filesystem is (as in "root=/dev/sdc3")

Sorry about the sig. I still don't see any forum rules post or anything, but whatever.

Anyway, I'm basically trying to say that I have installed everything linux-related to the third, non-RAID hard drive in the system. So, I have my RAID array with Windows and no GRUB on it which does not have any idea that Linux exists (to boot from anyway) and I have my single hard drive (sdc) that is everything linux and nothing Windows. It can't boot Windows (well, I haven't tried, but I don't think it could because of the RAID incompatibility) and has no idea that Windows exists other than there being other drives that have nothing to do with Linux. To switch OS's I'm not trying to use the boot loader, I'm just switching the bootable drive. I also installed linux with the bootable drive set to sdc to avoid any conflicts/changes with the way it was detected had I had it set to the RAID array during the install. Anyway, I think it looks like it's basically just a limitation of GRUB (getting confused by the RAID array or something). Not sure.

So... Does anyone know how I'd go about getting rid of GRUB and installing LILO in its place?

[jaboua]

Personally I use lilo, easier to configure.

Same here. Espesially that you can use /dev/hdc3 and such instead of (hd0,3), you won't have to "convert" the disk-location from linux-language to grub-language...

[CoffeeMonster]

@GotAMD

emerge lilo
nano -w /etc/lilo.conf

Tweak this to your system's needs..(Or have a look at the gentoo handbook)

boot=/dev/hda
prompt
timeout=50
default=gentoo

#Gentoo Linux
image=/boot/kernel-2.6.11-gentoo-r6
 label=gentoo
 read-only
 root=/dev/ram0
 append="init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/hda1    video=vesafb:mtrr,ywrap,1024x768-32@85"
 initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.11-gentoo-r6

Then lilo in the shell
and finally /sbin/lilo

[dylunio]

Sorry about the sig. I still don't see any forum rules post or anything, but whatever.

FYI: FORUM RULES

[drakebasher]

root (hd0,0)
kernel /kernel-2.6.11-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/sdc3

If root (hd0,0) is on the same drive as the kernel, won't that put the root ( / ) on /dev/sda?

If you get the Grub command line and you do 'root ( <tab>' (that's the tab key), what is the result?

If you do:

root (hd0,0)
kernel /<tab>

you will se the files in (hd0,0) and your kernel should be there

If the kernel boots with Grub set to root (hd0,0) and root=/dev/sda3, you will need to change your fstab.

Edit: And look carefully at CoffeeMonsters boot parameters: Gentoo has some details different from some other distros, in my experience.

[nwoods29321]

I had a similar problem but it was with debian, and non raid. What I had to do was make mt linux drive h0,0 (/dev/hda). I'm not sure how this may help, but who knows.