What is loading stage 1.5 ?

[cousinlucky]

Every Saturday I update my Suse 10 os and lately loading grub changed to loading stage 1.5 when I turn my computer on.

Has anyone any idea what stage 1.5 is? Has some bad software been installed on my computer?

[likwid]

You may have corrupted your grub installation. If you know how to use a rescue cd you could try re installing grub with the command

grub-install /dev/hda

Or whatever your boot drive is. You may need to move the /boot/grub directory to like /boot/grub.old and just copy over grub.conf.

[smolloy]

Loading stage 1.5 is perfectly fine. It seems that one of your updates has updated Grub as well.

Now that I've started writing this I've completely forgotten what stage 1.5 refers to, but I remember reading in a Grub tutorial that this is a perfectly normal part of the startup procedure.

[oz]

Yep, no need to worry... GRUB will report errors if something isn't working right.

You can learn more about GRUB by reading through the GRUB Manual:

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

[cousinlucky]

Ouch! I got a slight headache just reading the table of contents to the grub manual. My being so technology challenged is a real drawback.

Thanks everyone for your replies!!!

[oz]

Ouch! I got a slight headache just reading the table of contents to the grub manual. My being so technology challenged is a real drawback.

Yes, there's definitely too much to comprehend all at once in the GRUB manual. Take your time with it, think about what GRUB is doing, and study just one section or small part at a time.

[hughitt1]

yea. don't worry- that is a normal part of grub's process...

from wikipedia:

When a computer is turned on, the computer's BIOS finds a bootable device (hard disk) and transfers control to the master boot record (MBR), the first 512 bytes of the hard disk.

The MBR contains GRUB stage 1. Given the small size of the MBR, Stage 1 does little more than load the next stage of GRUB (which may reside physically elsewhere on the disk). Stage 1 can either load Stage 2 directly, or it can load stage 1.5: GRUB Stage 1.5 is located in the first 30 kilobytes of hard disk immediately following the MBR. Stage 1.5 loads Stage 2.

When GRUB Stage 2 receives control, it presents an interface to the user in order to select which operating system to boot. This normally takes the form of a graphical menu, although if this is not available or the user wishes further control, GRUB has its own command prompt, where the user can manually specify the boot parameters. GRUB can also be set to automatically load a particular kernel after a timeout period.

Once boot options have been selected, GRUB loads the selected kernel into memory and passes control on to the kernel. At this stage GRUB can pass control of the boot process to another loader using chain loading if required by the operating system.

Take care!

[likwid]

I thought you were saying that it hung at stage 1.5... sorry.