Grub Problems

[cameron10]

Hello,

I am sure you have all seen a wealth of Grub-related problems. I have one that I have not been able to solve despite hours of searching and messing around. So much so that I have decided to join this forum to find a solution.

Anyway, here is how my system is set up.

I have three hard drives, hda, hdb and hdd. hda has Gentoo Linux on it, as well as Grub (hda1). hdb is just a spare hard drive that I use for backups. hdd has Windows XP on it.

Here is the output of fdisk -l just for the sake of it:

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 155061 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1          63       31720+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2              64        1056      500472   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda3            1057      155061    77618520   83  Linux

Disk /dev/hdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 155061 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1   *           1      155061    78150712+  83  Linux

Disk /dev/hdd: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdd1   *           1        9728    78140128+   7  HPFS/NTFS

What I want to be able to do is use Grub to boot either Windows XP of Linux. I have read about two billion and twelve sites all saying similar things. I have seen about another one billion with people having a similar problem to me, and not finding a solution. I have tried all sorts of things. Most of the time it results in Grub giving me an Error 13.

Because of this I have removed the Windows XP part from my grub.conf completely and I am hoping that you guys can provide me with some ideas. I will try them, and then report back.

Any help would be most appreciated as this is driving me insane.

I just had a though, is it possible that the configuration of the drives' jumper pins affects this at all? (Seeing as I have 3 hard drives, two on one IDE channel and one on another, with a CD drive).

Thanks.

[gruven]

Try this in your grub.conf

title=Windows XP
        map (hd0) (hd3)
        map (hd3) (hd0)
	rootnoverify (hd3,0)
	makeactive
	chainloader +1

If that doesn't work, just play around with the map option. You have to make XP think it is on the first hard drive, and that is essentially what we have done. Also, make sure in this setup that you have provided, that the jumpers are set correctly as master/slave.

Grub counts your hard drives from 0, so hda=0, hdb=1, hdc=2, and hdd=3. Your partition would follow that, counting from 0. Post back and let me know if this works.

Also, if it doesn't, post your old grub.conf so I can look over it.

[cameron10]

I have tried that at least 20 times.

It gives me an error 13.

I will try it again now just incase.

By the way, hdd is actually hd2, not 3. Here is my device.map fille.

(fd0)	/dev/fd0
(hd0)	/dev/hda
(hd1)	/dev/hdb
(hd2)	/dev/hdd

My old grub.conf looked the exact same as the one you posted except with hd2 not hd3.

[cameron10]

Your advice did not work. It resulted in the same error.

Error 13. The one about non supported executable format.

Thanks anyway.

[gruven]

You can try setting the harddrive as master on the second IDE channel, which would make it hdc, and make sure your jumpers are set for master and slave. It is usually recommended to set the harddrive as master if on the same cable as a cdrom anyway (not sure why, but I haven't had problems doing it so far).

I am looking for other possible solutions also.

I guess it is possible that windows has to be on the primary channel, but I don't know. That is just a shot in the dark. It is worth a try though. I would try putting it on the first channel and see if it makes a difference. It may really mess with the windows install though.

[cameron10]

I don't think that Windows has to be on the primary chanel as I can boot it by changing the drive order in my BIOS.

Another interesting point: If I change rootnoverify to root (so I can get some more info) it says that the filesystem is ex2fs. I dunno what that's on about.

I will try your suggestion though.

[gruven]

I am just throwing things out there. I am actually searching around, but much beyond "error 13" is asking a lot, haha.

Here is an idea also, the partition type ID
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedor.../msg00294.html

And you also may want to make sure the partition is bootable (with the bootable flag in fdisk).

I am sure I can think of something else, and will post it when I think of it.

[Rainskellr]

Grub - what a maggot!

Another interesting point: If I change rootnoverify to root (so I can get some more info) it says that the filesystem is ex2fs. I dunno what that's on about.

After remaping the drives in grub.conf with map Try ponting rootnoverify to (hd0,0). I think since they have been remaped (hd2,0) should now be at (hd0,0).

[cameron10]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I have tried changing the rootnoverify thing to (hd0,0), gives me the same friggin error. I haven't, however, tried using root(hd0,0) I will try that and see what messages come up.

On the drive that Windows is on, the partition certainly has the bootable flag active.

I haven't tried messing around with the jumper pins and IDE chanels YET. Hopefully I will find time to do that later today.

Thanks again.

Edit: I am sad to report that by changing (hd2,0) with (hd0,0) made no difference at all.

[ajn131]

Hello, I just finished installing gentoo, and after installing Grub I cannot boot the system. I could swear I followed the instructions to the letter, but this looked like the place to post for grub related issues. The specific error I receive is Error 15: file not found

booting ‘Gentoo Linux 2.6.16’
root (hd1,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.16-gentoor12 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda3 udev vga=0x307

Error 15: file not found

My grub.conf reads:

default=0
timeout 30
splashimage=(hd1,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.16
Root (hd1,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.16-gentoo-r12 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda3 udev vga=0x307
initrd /boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.16-gentoo-r12

I have a SATA HD on which I installed Gentoo, and there is a regular IDE HD installed as well. The SATA hd is partition as

/dev/sda1 /boot
/dev/sda2 – swap
/dev/sda3 /

I reloaded the install cd and chrooted, both the initrd and kernel appear to be in /boot, and grub-install reported installing grub without any errors. The system.map sees /sda as (hd1). Any ideas or feedback is appreciated. Thanks in advance.