[Bug 1018419] Re: grub fails to boot OS images on second hard drive

[dlotton]

Okay, so typing the 'ls (hd1,5)/' command twice fails both times.  If I
exit and re-enter, it works...

HOWEVER, 
if I 'exit' a second time I get 

No boot device available - 
 strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility
  Press F5 to run onboard diagnostics

Pressing F1 seems to get me back to the beginning of the cycle.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1018419

Title:
  grub fails to boot OS images on second hard drive

Status in “grub2” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  
  Dell Precision T3400
  SATA Slot0: (sda) Xubuntu 12.04 + Win7 (new hard drive)
  SATA Slot1: DVD-RW drive
  SATA Slot2: (sdb) Kubuntu 10.04 + Win Vista (old hard drive moved from SATA slot0)

  
  I recently installed Xubuntu 12.04 on my machine. I wanted to preserve the Win Vista and Kubuntu 10.04 installs that already existed on the machine and add a Win7 install.

  Here are the steps I took:
  1) remove original hard drive from SATA slot0
  2) install new hard drive on SATA slot0
  3) install win7 on first partition of new HD
  4) install the old HD in SATA slot2 (SATA slot1 has DVD)
  5) install Xubuntu 12.04 on second partition of new HD

  During Xubuntu install, all of the OS's were detected (Xubuntu 12.04 +
  Win7 on SATA slot0, and Kubuntu 10.04 + Vista on SATA slot2).

  When I boot, there are grub menu entries for all four OS's, but only
  Win7 and Xubuntu (both on the new HD in SATA slot0 - sda) are
  bootable.

  If I select either OS (Vista or Kubuntu 10.04) on the original HD (now
  in SATA slot2 - sdb) I get the message "you need to load the kernel
  first" and I eventually get returned to the grub menu.

  
  On advice in this thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2007743) I used the boot-repair utility to try to fix the problem.  

  Boot info output from boot-repair is here
  (http://paste.ubuntu.com/1053651/), or see attached text file.

  
  After running boot-repair, the error I now get when trying to boot from either OS on sdb is "no such partition".  **Intersetingly**, If I hit 'c' on the grub menu and type in the 'ls (hd1,5)/' command, I get 'no such partition'.  I then type 'exit' to get back to the menu and hit 'c' again and repeat 'ls (hd1,5)/' and it works. There is a vmlinuz and an initrd.img. If I continue with the commands below, the screen eventually goes blank and seems to hang.

  linux (hd1,5)/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb5 ro
  initrd (hd1,5)/initrd.img
  boot

  
  Note that if I boot into the Xubuntu 12.04 OS I can mount and inspect all of the other OS partitions on sda and sdb.

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