SuSE works...just can't access it without Grub installed. Help?

[Ryupower]

Hello,
I have a quite unconventional problem.

My computer has Windows 7 on one hard drive, the other contains a partition with SuSE Linux.

Now, what happened is that my computer went to repair, drive C with Windows was formatted. Drive D with a smaller SUSE linux partition on it remained untouched.

I had SUSE installed with MBR on the now wiped and reformatted Windows Hard Drive. I can only access SUSE with SuperGrubDisk now.

My question is ...how can I get the Grub reinstalled to manage my windows and linux partition again, without reinstalling SuSE? Which once again, works fine.

Can I use SuperGrubDisk to do this, if so, how? I have researched but not quite understood.

[yancek]

It's not clear to me from your post if you have windows 7 on one physical hard drive and Suse on a second physical hard drive?
or if you just had a partition on the same drive with windows 7/suse?

In either case, you could configure the windows 7 bootloader with third party software such as EasyBCD to boot Suse as windows bootloaders won't boot Linux. An easier method would be to reinstall Grub to boot both but we don't know your intentions. Which release of Opensuse do you have? Which version of Grub do you have in Opensuse?

[Ryupower]

It's not clear to me from your post if you have windows 7 on one physical hard drive and Suse on a second physical hard drive?
or if you just had a partition on the same drive with windows 7/suse?

In either case, you could configure the windows 7 bootloader with third party software such as EasyBCD to boot Suse as windows bootloaders won't boot Linux. An easier method would be to reinstall Grub to boot both but we don't know your intentions. Which release of Opensuse do you have? Which version of Grub do you have in Opensuse?

Physical Internal HDs: C and D
C contains: 1 partition, Windows Partition
D contains: 2 partitions, SuSE Linux and Windows Backup Partition.

OpenSuSE 12

Thanks.

No Grub, that's the problem...

[Ryupower]

Is that it? Any other suggestions? Can the third party windows boot loaders boot into suse without Grub?

[lystor]

how can I get the Grub reinstalled to manage my windows and linux partition again, without reinstalling SuSE?

You can reinstall grub easy:

# fdisk -l
/dev/sda1               1         523     4200966   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2   *         524        3135    20980890   83  Linux


# grub
grub> root (hd0,1)
root (hd0,1)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
grub> setup (hd0)
setup (hd0)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"...  27 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+27 p (hd0,1)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/grub.conf"... succeeded
Done.

[yancek]

I don't know how EasyBCD works but if it similar to chainloading, you would need Grub in the Suse root partition. Since you previously had Grub in the mbr of the windows drive, why not do that again?

[Ryupower]

I don't know how EasyBCD works but if it similar to chainloading, you would need Grub in the Suse root partition. Since you previously had Grub in the mbr of the windows drive, why not do that again?

Because I didn't know how to install GRUB again...

Now,

# fdisk -l
/dev/sda1 1 523 4200966 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 * 524 3135 20980890 83 Linux


# grub
grub> root (hd0,1)
root (hd0,1)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
grub> setup (hd0)
setup (hd0)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"... 27 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+27 p (hd0,1)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/grub.conf"... succeeded
Done.

Stupid question but...is this from the boot up shell when I try to boot into SuSE with SuperGrubDisk?

[yancek]

You would be better off using the Suse installation disk to install Grub since it has the same version of Grub you have on your installed Suse system. The method posted above should work to install Grub Legacy to the master boot record of the first hard drive with its boot files on the second partition of that drive. You haven't posted any partition information so all we know is you have two physical hard drives and don't know on which partition your system or boot files are for Suse. Boot the Suse CD, login to a terminal as root and run the command: fdisk -l(lower case Letter L in the command) and post the output here.

[Ryupower]

You would be better off using the Suse installation disk to install Grub since it has the same version of Grub you have on your installed Suse system. The method posted above should work to install Grub Legacy to the master boot record of the first hard drive with its boot files on the second partition of that drive. You haven't posted any partition information so all we know is you have two physical hard drives and don't know on which partition your system or boot files are for Suse. Boot the Suse CD, login to a terminal as root and run the command: fdisk -l(lower case Letter L in the command) and post the output here.

OK, I booted into SUSE with SuperGrub, used this on the SuSE partition:

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe0c5913d

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1              63    40949684    20474811   1c  Hidden W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2   *    40949760   625137663   292093952    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xbbc58b91

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *        2048   573266594   286632273+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT  

/dev/sdb2       573267968   596348927    11540480   83  Linux

/dev/sdb3       596348928   625141759    14396416   83  Linux


Disk /dev/sdc: 2017 MB, 2017460224 bytes
208 heads, 37 sectors/track, 512 cylinders, total 3940352 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *          47     3940351     1970152+   6  FAT16

[yancek]

I don't know which partition is your / filesystem for Suse. Both sdb2 and sdb3 are very small partitions. If you can boot Suse with the SuperGrubDisk, do that and open a terminal, log in as root and then type grub at the prompt. This should get you a grub prompt (grub>) which I guess you are familiar with. You would use commands similar to the ones suggested previously. If your / filesystem is on sdb2 do: root (hd1,1) (hit the Enter key) then do the setup command: setup (hd1) (hit the Enter key) and then type quit and hit enter again. You will have to figure out whether sdb2 or sdb3 is the / filesystem.