Finally installed! but no boot loader...

[Dotan Cohen]

On 20/06/06, Gary W. Swearingen <garys at opusnet.com> wrote:
> "Dotan Cohen" <dotancohen at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > After two hard days, I finally got kubuntu to install, but with no
> > boot loader. This is the message I got during install:
> > "You will need to boot manually with the /vmlinuz kernel on partition
> > /dev/hda1 and root=/dev/hda1 passed as a kernel argument"
> >
> > When I booted up I got to a prompt that asked for a user name. I gave
> > root and got a prompt with no password. What must I do now to get grub
> > installed and to have a gui? Thanks for putting up with me!
>
> Weird.  I don't even know what it means to "boot manually".  And your
> subject says "no boot loader", while it's impossible to boot basic
> OSes like kubuntu without a boot loader.  I wish you'd explained
> better what you saw between starting the boot and getting the
> user-name prompt.  It sounds like you got a normal Unix terminal
> prompt.
>
> The kubuntu install leaves "root" without ability to log in, so
> you should have answered the prompt with the user info that you
> should have entered during the install.
>
> Back to the boot, I'll guess that you booted the install CD and
> answered it's prompt with some magic I forget to boot your new OS off
> hda1.  In any case, I guess you'd want to learn how to configure grub
> (there's lots on the WWW) and try installing to the MBR, etc.  Look
> into "update-grub" as this can make the process easier (it makes a
> menu.lst file for kernels in /boot, at least).  Remember that one or
> more of the commands you use will need to be proceeded by "sudo ",
> unless you become the root user.  Finally, you'll probably need to
> configure KDE's kdm to give you GUI logins.  I forget, but it's a
> FAQ that Google or the (k)ubuntu wiki should help with.
>
> I don't know why you didn't get a grub MBR during the install, nor
> why it didn't give you an automatic boot to a GUI.
>

No, I logged in as root without a password. I remind you that in
[k]ubuntu there _is_ a root user, but the password is random and we
are discouraged from using it. I suppose that I was at runlevel 1 as
it did not ask for a password.

I did of course google the grub installation. I can't remember all
that I did, but I could not install from the web or from the disk. I
did get the grub MBR during install, but it failed with the message
that I posted.

Dotan Cohen
http://essentialinux.com
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