septor

I've installed Slackware 10.1 on my old box (Pentium 233/128MB RAM/10GB HDD).

I created the partitions and installed everything default. It says it's all installed and I just need to reboot, I reboot, and when it loads up it says:

At which point it stops, and does nothing.

I've searched and found that this is linked to GRUB not being able to select the partition to boot? I haven't found anything regarding this matter when installing Slack, so.. does anyone have any idea on how I can fix this?

Nephroth

You can find the formal documentation for GRUB here:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/

Error 17 claims that the partition that you're attempting to boot is of a format that GRUB does not recognize.

Make certain that:
-The GRUB configuration file points to the correct device AND partition.
-Make certain that the partition on the device is formatted and of a format that GRUB can read (such as EXT3).

budman7

Using a livecd such as Knoppix or Mepis, could you post the contents of your /boot/grub/menu.lst and the result of "fdisk -l".

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New users read The FAQ

Panzer General I

Find a blank floppy disk.

Find this two files from internet(google):

grub.img
rawrite.exe

if you are using MS windows:

Write grub.img to a blank floppy disk using rawrite.exe.

Reboot your computer with this floppy.

And enter this command:
grub> find /boot/grub/stage1

It gives the result like this:
(hd0,5)

Put it in this command:
grub> configfile (hd0,5)/boot/grub/grub.conf
and hit enter.

If it is ok, linux on your partition will boot.

Then from your linux command console, type this as root(su root) to install GRUB to MBR(Mastr Boot Record) of the first IDE harddisk drive:
grub-install /dev/hda

or wherever you want to install it.

And reboot.

satimis

Hi Panzer General I,

Googling brought me to this thread. I got the same problem after installing Slackware 11.0

On reboot by pressing [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Del] it failed to boot hanging on;

GRUB Loading stage1.5
GRUB Loading please wait
Error 17

I further discovered grub not installed yet as follow.

Booted up the PC with a LiveCD. On terminal:

# fdisk -l
/dev/sda1 *
/dev/sda2 /
etc.

# mount /dev/sda1 /media/sda1
# ls /media/sda1
README.initrd
System.map-ide-2.4.33.3
System.map
config
config-ide-2.4.33.3
diagl.img
vmlinuz
vmlinuz-ide-2.4.33.3

grub not installed.

I have to find grub.img and get it installed there. I think I can find it and rawrite.exe on Internet. Another problem is this PC does not have floppy drive.

Any suggestion? TIA


B.R.
satimis

saikee

In septor's case I would recommend boot up a Linux Live CD and use it to post the output of "fdisk-l" as well as /boot/grub/menu.lst of Slackware here. The former tells us your partitioning scheme and the latter tells us how Grub boots Slackware.

Panzer General I information is very useful and definitely worth to get one made. However I tbelieve only the Red Hat family distro use grub.conf while overwhelmingly other distros stick with the standard Grub configuration file menu.lst. The two if exist are of course symbolic-linked. Also Grub bootable floppy can be "sourced" from any Live CD that supports Grub and the standard method of making one in described in Chapter 3.1 of Grub Manual.

Satimas should be please to know the good folks at GNU/Grub have thought of him and in Chapter 3.4 of Grub Manual the method to produce a bootable Grub CD is given.

I am a bit sceptical about Satimas assertion that Grub has not been installed. If this is the case it wouldn't be possible for him to get a Grub error 17, would it?

Slackware is a die-hard devotee to Lilo and all my Slackware including V11 have only Lilo and no Grub. I have to build Grub into Slackware by following Appendix A of the Grub Manual and reasonably certain its configuration file would be called menu.lst.

Grub if installed properly always resides in /boot or /boot/grub and must have stage1, stage1.5 and stage2. If menu.lst isn't there or defective Grub will default to a Grub prompt.

As far as I am aware there is no PC system Grub cannot boot with a Grub prompt.

satimis

Hi saikee,

At time of installing Slackware I did not recognise LILO being its default bootloader. It asked whether to install LILO with no other choice-Grub. I did not select LILO and it came to the present situation.

Any suggestion to install LILO back to Slackware rather than to reinstall the complete OS. TIA


B.R.
satimis

saikee

Satima,

You can continue with getting Grub fixed or switch back to Lilo. Think the latter may be slightly quicker whereas with the former you may learn the complete process of building Grub on a distro.

You need a Live CD to do both.

If Slackware's root partition say is in hda6 you can make a directory to mount it on /mnt of the boot-up Live CD Linux, change root to Slacakware (to be inside it) and do a "liloconfig"
Remeber to exit back to the boot-up Linux on completion.

The above can be done with any Live CD.

Alternatively Slackware's own installation can be run again and navigate to the menu with which you can install Lilo.

Mind you Slackware's installer uses liloconfig same as you do with a Live CD and liloconfig can frequently return "installation fail". You may still need to do a bit of work but to repair Lilo is trivial once you know how to mount it, change root to it, to edit its lilo.conf and re-validate Lilo as often as you want.

If you are still interested to repair Grub let us know.