Grub Observations and Possible Solution

[theKbStockpiler]

Grub will only boot linux O.S's that installed grub it's self without chainloading. Will chainload other O.Ss though.

Grub will not boot any O.S manually. Reads error of not recognized file system.

Basically it looks like stage 2 will not work except for the O.S that installed it. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

[MASONTX]

Not sure if my recent problem is related to yours, but I had a situation where only the last of the 3 linux OS's I had installed would show up. The solution was to download os-prober (missing from the install), then from a terminal run os-pober, then apt-get update-grub. After that all 3 os's showed up and let me choose at boot.

[yancek]

Grub will only boot linux O.S's that installed grub it's self without chainloading

You are talking about Grub Legacy, right? If you install system1 with Grub Legacy and then install system2 also with Grub Legacy and copy the entry from the system2 menu.lst or grub.conf file and put it in the menu.lst or grub.conf file of system1 which has Grub in the mbr, the system2 will not boot but if you have a chainloader entry from system1 for system2 it does boot. Is that what you are saying? I have found that to be the case. It may be due to ext4 filesystem but I really don't know.

You refer to the Grub stage2 so I expect you are using Grub Legacy as there is no stage2 file in Grub2.

Also, it is my understanding that the os-prober and update-grub commands only work with Grub2 but I'm not positive about that.

[Jonathan183]

example of showing other distro grub menu with grub legacy here use the configfile command to show the menu ... I'm assuming you have two distros using grub legacy

[theKbStockpiler]

I am using Grub legacy as Fedora , CentOS and Knoppix are still using .97. I'm installing these using ext3 but I think the default is ext4. In the error I get when I try to manually boot it states that the file system is unknown but also that grub has tried to boot it with ext3 and 4. I'm going to install a different version of grub because I have read where Distros will change grub to their liking. The distro I can't boot on to is Ubuntu 7.10 so I will install that in the MBR and see what the hell happens.

[BoDiddley]

First report I have heard of that particular error, especially when Grub states it has tried both ext's... let us know.

[yancek]

The distro I can't boot on to is Ubuntu 7.10 so I will install that in the MBR and see what the hell happens

I believe Ubuntu 7.10 uses Grub 0.97 also. I seriously doubt if that will help any but I would be interested in the results of your experiment.

Without specific information on how many drives/partitions/ you have and where they are and which bootloader of which operating system is booting, any suggestions here would just be guesses.

I have read where Distros will change grub to their liking.

I would expect that to be true although I really don't know.

[theKbStockpiler]

When I try to manually boot I get the error (Kernel Panic-not syncing :VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown -block(104,3) ).

I have had major issues with grub multibooting on three different machines with Mandriva ,Ubuntu and Fedora/CentOS. All it will do is boot the distro that installed it or chainload the others.

Grub does not run the shell the same way when it reads the menu.lst file or is used interactively. I think when the OS builds grub it hard copies stage one so it will find stage 1.5 or 2. So if you reinstall grub it does not configure where it should go but makes it's self look in the last place it looked for stage 1.5 -2.

[BoDiddley]

I assume you are doing a "remove" before the "install". If yes, I would try "purge". Then "install".

[theKbStockpiler]

Especially the commands. Nothing better than being turned onto a new command!