GRUB Error 17

[Seonix]

Hi all,

Im very new to linux, only played with it a little and am still very inexperienced so bare with me.
After a lot of fiddling to get graphics working properly I finally have a "working" installation of Kubuntu. All is working fine except for one problem with GRUB.

I am booting XP with kubuntu on two seperate hard drives. GRUB works fine in identifying both of them and allowing me to select one. The problem is however, whenever I have my 1TB lacie big disk plugged in i get GRUB error 17 and have to reboot, as soon as I unplug the drive it works fine.

I have tried reinstalling Grub and even a whole reinstall of Kubuntu, all with the lacie plugged in, still no luck.

The lacie is picked up fine by Kubuntu if i plug it in after booting.

Any ideas?

PS: Quick question about installation of applications; i have read through the documentation about installing from source tarballs etc however I cant see how this relates to installing things like firefox and thunderbird, the steps just dont seem to match up.
Is there any standard way of doing these installs? Id prefer not to use an application manager if i can avoid it.

Thanks in advance

Seonix

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Im very new to linux, only played with it a little and am still very inexperienced so bare with me.
After a lot of fiddling to get graphics working properly I finally have a "working" installation of Kubuntu. All is working fine except for one problem with GRUB.

I am booting XP with kubuntu on two seperate hard drives. GRUB works fine in identifying both of them and allowing me to select one. The problem is however, whenever I have my 1TB lacie big disk plugged in i get GRUB error 17 and have to reboot, as soon as I unplug the drive it works fine.

I have tried reinstalling Grub and even a whole reinstall of Kubuntu, all with the lacie plugged in, still no luck.

The lacie is picked up fine by Kubuntu if i plug it in after booting.

Boot up Kubuntu, plug-in Big disk, open Konsole and execute this

sudo fdisk -l

Post output here.

PS: Quick question about installation of applications; i have read through the documentation about installing from source tarballs etc however I cant see how this relates to installing things like firefox and thunderbird, the steps just dont seem to match up.
Is there any standard way of doing these installs? Id prefer not to use an application manager if i can avoid it.

You should install packages through Package Manager only but your machine must have internet access.
Either use apt-get in Konsole or Adept Package Manager.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox thuderbird

I prefer Synaptic over Adept. Synaptic is GUI of apt-get and easy to use.

sudo apt-get install synaptic

Look for Synaptic Package Manager in Menu.

[Seonix]

Thanks for the reply casper,

The output from sudo fdisk -l was as follows:

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x282d282d

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13001 104430501 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 13003 14462 11727450 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda3 14463 14593 1052257+ d7 Unknown

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc93fb362

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 13995 112414806 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 13996 14593 4803435 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 13996 14593 4803403+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.2 GB, 1000215724032 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121602 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x454c1889

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 121602 976768033+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

You should install packages through Package Manager only but your machine must have internet access.

The issue I have with that is that I live in a boarding house, our internet is very expensive and I can get free source downloads from an educational network. I have firefox working, just wondering if there is any standard way of "installing" it from source or where do people generally store files that are installed like that? I just made a folder under ~/Applications

I have run into another problem that I thought I had fixed. When i restart into Kubuntu, my screen resolution is stuck on 640x400 (i think) its very small anyway. I am unable to change the resolution or refresh rate.
I have had a look around on the forums trying to fix this but cant realy find anything that has managed to fix it. From what I can see it is something to do with my xorg.conf files so they are posted below. I keep a backup of the xconf from when it was working so i can revert back to it until i resolve it completely:

The current xorg.conf (working at the moment):
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection




The backup file xorg.conf_backup:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

When it stuffs it only has "640x400@60" under modes.

Thanks again

[Seonix]

Btw, just worked out the package situation so dont worry about that, got it sorted
Would really like to get some thoughts on the HDD issue and graphics though