Grub brings up command prompt

[plr4ever]

I've been trying lately to get a multi-boot running, and i've gotten windows installed on an 80GB hard disk, and my linux setup is running on a 160 GB disk. For a while i was able to boot to ubuntu by unplugging the windows drive until i could figure out how to get grub to recognize windows.

Anyway, now when i boot to linux, i get a grub prompt, and i cannot figure out how to boot from that. my /boot is a seperate partition, along with ubuntu and opensuse partitions and a seperate home. both distros share the same /home and /boot, but grub still wont boot.

When i attempt to use the command "kernel " followed by "boot", i get a kernel panic on the boot saying something about file system not synced. I am honestly at a loss as to how to boot either distro. Windows is beginning to get to me again!

Does anyone have ANY ideas. Im willing to try everything, as i DO NOT want to wipe that disk AGAIN.

[Jonathan183]

Boot from the Ubuntu live CD, open a terminal and post the output of

sudo fdisk -l

you probably already know the -l is a small L.
Next mount your boot partition by doing the following

sudo mkdir /manmount
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /manmount
sudo cat /manmount/boot/grub/menu.lst

Have either of your Linux OS booted properly with both hard drives connected? Is it possiblle to set boot order in BIOS for the disks?

[plr4ever]

fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00096b18

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 131 1052226 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 132 8023 63392490 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 9259 19457 81923467+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 132 2043 15358108+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 2044 3955 15358108+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 3956 5867 15358108+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 5868 7780 15366141 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 7781 8023 1951866 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9726 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000b8a3b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 4844 38909398+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

sorry i didnt post that the first time.

Anyway here is my partition translation:
sda1 -> /boot
sda2 - logical containing sda5-8
sda3 - /home
sda5 - ubuntu /
sda 6-7 - empty
sda8 - opensuse /

I've noticed that grub no longer boots to stage 1.5 like it used to, but boots to stage 2. im not quite sure of the exact difference, but i am sure that this is the root(hehe) of the problem.

Also, there is no /boot/grub directory under sda5, or a menu.lst under my /boot directory. I'm not quite sure where it went, but it was there not to long ago.

should i consider reinstalling grub?

[Jonathan183]

You are going to need a valid menu.lst to point to in order to get a menu list to pick from. Did you originally install either Ubuntu or SUSE without a boot partition?
Again booting from the live CD as before and manually mounting the boot partition using

sudo mkdir /manmount
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /manmount
ls /manmount
ls /manmount/grub

[dxqcanada]

The Grub user guide states:

GRUB looks for its configuration file as soon as it is loaded. If one is found, then the full menu interface is activated using whatever entries were found in the file. If you choose the command-line menu option, or if the configuration file was not found, then GRUB drops to the command-line interface.

So apparently in your case ... the configuration file was not found.

Do you have a /boot/grub/menu.lst or a /boot/grub/grub.conf link to menu.lst file ?

[plr4ever]

You are going to need a valid menu.lst to point to in order to get a menu list to pick from. Did you originally install either Ubuntu or SUSE without a boot partition?
Again booting from the live CD as before and manually mounting the boot partition using

sudo mkdir /manmount
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /manmount
ls /manmount
ls /manmount/grub

my grub directory:
default fat_stage1_5 minix_stage1_5 stage2
device.map installed-version reiserfs_stage1_5 xfs_stage1_5
e2fs_stage1_5 jfs_stage1_5 stage1


soooo, no menu.lst. I originally had one, and my /boot has always been seperate. This was happening before i install opensuse also, so that isnt the cause.

The Grub user guide states:So apparently in your case ... the configuration file was not found.

Do you have a /boot/grub/menu.lst or a /boot/grub/grub.conf link to menu.lst file ?

Nope, and i am 100% positive i had one before, as i was editing it before to get my dual boot setup working. Odd

[Jonathan183]

I suggest you try creating a /grub/menu.lst in your boot partition ... assuming you have SUSE 10.3 and Ubuntu 8.04 then you will need entries like ...

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 10.3 - 2.6.22.17-0.1
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel vmlinuz-2.6.22.17-0.1-default root=/dev/sda8 vga=0x317 resume=/dev/sda9 splash=silent showopts
    initrd /initrd-2.6.22.17-0.1-default

Based on my system entry

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 10.3 - 2.6.22.17-0.1
    root (hd0,5)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.17-0.1-default root=/dev/sda6 vga=0x317 resume=/dev/sda5 splash=silent showopts
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.17-0.1-default

Ubuntu entry

title		Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic
root		(hd0,0)
kernel		/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=/dev/sda5 ro quiet splash
initrd		/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic
quiet

based on my grub entry

title		Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generititle		Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic
root		(hd0,9)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=929c7eed-350b-4b3a-9c32-3c666480366e ro quiet splash
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic
quiet

[Jonathan183]

You should also add an entry to you grub menu.lst file to allow you to boot Windows ... try this

title		Windows
root		(hd1,0)
savedefault
makeactive
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader	+1

Once you have created the menu.lst file you can also reinstall grub if you want using

grub
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
quit

but you probably don't need to do the grub re-install.