An old LILO has confused my new GRUB?

[N5SBP]

My SuSE 11 install and configuration completed normally, I think. (I stepped away several times and may have missed something) During the boot loader creation phase, I assume GRUB must have seen my old LILO in the MBR and chose not to replace it because when I cold boot the machine, my old LILO comes up with my “windows xp” default and my old “suse 7.3” options. The Windows XP choice works fine but the SuSE option takes me to god knows where! A SUSE kernel of some flavor DOES appear to start but he gets all sorts of “fs mount” problems and “kernel panic” messages. I’m not even sure the old MBR LILO is pointing to the right physical disk, partition, etc.
I don’t know what SUSE I’m actually looking at on the screen! Maybe all the messages I’m seeing are actually generated by the 446 byte “first step” LILO code from the boot sector??? Hard to believe. Surely other code like /boot/boot.b, /boot/map, and /boot/message have already been called into play…but where did he get them?

I need to gather some doc to get to the bottom of this:

Using a rescue system (RS) I think I need to do one or more of the following:
1) chg the RS::/etc/lilo.conf to point to the new SUSE partition then run RS::/sbin/lilo to install a good LILO in the MBR –or-
2) clobber the old LILO MBR with a standard DOS MBR and somehow manually boot the new SUSE using some live CD or install DVD (???) –or-
3) while on the RS, mount the new SUSE file systems to say RS::/mnt/s11root, and RS::/mnt/s11usr so I can examine and correct certain FSTAB entries that are bad (?).

If #3 is my best bet, where do I look for clues? Where does the kernel log his errors? (they roll by so fast I can’t read them all and I don’t know how to page back). Is there still a /var/log/messages file where I can find clues?

Thanks in advance for your advise.

[gogalthorp]

I don't think that the installer will replace LILO by default, you must tell it.

Try running the install disk again and select repair. Be sure that grub is selected.

[N5SBP]

I ran "installation" "repair installed system" "install new boot loader" and it reported it was succesful. But all it did was flag SDA4 (the SUSE root) with an asterick ("BOOT") and did not modify the MBR at all. Rebooting machine says "missing operating system" and DOS FDISK reports that the Linux partition is "active" and the Windows partition is not. I have to change the active partition with DOS FDISK to the Windows partition in order to get anything to boot. My DOS/Windows MBR is intact and unmodified it appears!

I ran the automatic detection feature of "repair installed system" and it reported success too. It detected GRUB and had no complaints.

Looking at the /boot/grub/menu.lst it says that the default partition is "opensuse etc" and its "root (HD0,3)" - that's relative zero, right, so this is saying SDA4, which is right. OR IS IT SAYING THAT IS WHERE ITS GOING TO WRITE THE BOOTLOADER? I need it in the MBR which is HD0,0 (I guess). Did it write the bootloader in the Linux partition???

Getting back to your suggestion - I did not see a place to "make sure GRUB is checked" - was I suppose to be reinstalling GRUB?

[Jonathan183]

If you can boot from a live CD you should be able to install grub manually to the MBR. Lets say you have /boot/grub/menu.lst on sda4 then you should be able to use

su -

or

sudo -s

to gain root rights and then

grub
find /boot/grub/menu.lst

and confirm you really have this on sda4 - should return (hd0,3) assuming it does you can then run

root (hd0,3)
setup (hd0)
quit

to install grub to the MBR of sda.

Ed: similar process to this

[N5SBP]

I've been back thru the install process several times using different DVDs and Live CDs. I don't think I am missing GRUB itself; I believe the default for where GRUB writes its stage0 bootloader thingee is what's got me. You have to click on the installer's BOOTLOADER section and dig around for the SETUP command (as you mentioned above). If you change it to HD0 (or maybe it's SD0) it seems to work fine. When you click on <NEXT> the screen clearly shows where it's going to lay down it's bootloader.

I'm not sure what good it does to let GRUB write his bootloader into the partition where the Suse root is. You would still need a bootloader in the MBR of HD0 and I guess that bootloader would have to be capable of using GRUB's stage0 from the other partition? I thought I had tried the old DOS/Windows stage0 in the MBR and it didn't work.

Thanks for the help,
Jim

[Jonathan183]

Hi Jim,

My suggestion in post #4 is to boot from a live CD, open a terminal and install grub manually rather than to run through the install or recovery process. Because you know your system you will be able to select correct partition for root (eg hd0,0 or hd0,1 etc), and correct location for grub to be installed (eg hd0). The installer will have a guess at the devices and gets it right most of the time ... but not all of the time.

[N5SBP]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I now understand what you meant. What confused me initially was the "install GRUB manually" was interpreted to mean installing the binary GRUB (IE: the application itself). I now see that when LILO and GRUB talk about installing, they mean to store their bootloader (stage1 code) on some boot sector. Also at the point you asked me to do those steps, I was missing my command line interface (EG: BASH) and could not issue ANY commands. I'm over that now also. Thanks for your help...I'm now on to my next Linux challenge; connection to a LAN and the Internet (that didn't happen automatically either). I bought a SuSE book the other day on amazon.com - it should help a lot.

[Jonathan183]

Glad you have got the bootloader sorted ... good luck with the network.