Install failure at grub installation step

[Tod Merley]

Hi again Mike!

As promised, an itty bitty how-to on making a copy of your Master Boot
Record and the first portion (often containing partition and content
info) of the boot disk.

In this case I was fascinated by the "boot" flag set looking at my new
flash drive so I wanted to take a look at it's MBR.  The command I
usually use to do this is:

dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr.bin bs=512 count=1

and the command to take a "snapshot" of the first sectors:

dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr63s.bin bs=512 count=63

To read the flash drive I modify the command to:

root at tod-desktop:/boot/grub# cd /home/tod
root at tod-desktop:~# pwd
/home/tod
root at tod-desktop:~# dd if=/dev/sda1 of=pnymbr.bin bs=512 count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes (512 B) copied, 0.000423 seconds, 1.2 MB/s

This yeilds "pnymbr.bin" in my /home/tod directory.  This is a copy of
my Master Boot Record.

root at tod-desktop:~# dd if=/dev/sda1 of=pny63s.bin bs=512 count=63
63+0 records in
63+0 records out
32256 bytes (32 kB) copied, 0.01087 seconds, 3.0 MB/s
root at tod-desktop:~#

Which yeilds "pny63s.bin which is a copy of the first 63 sectors.

Likely this will loose formatting but here is a hexdump of the PNY
flash drive MBR:

root at tod-desktop:~# hexdump -C pnymbr.bin

00000000  eb 3c 90 44 4f 4b 30 31  2e 30 32 00 02 20 01 00  |.<.DOK01.02.. ..|
00000010  02 00 02 00 00 f8 f1 00  20 00 10 00 20 00 00 00  |........ ... ...|
00000020  e0 07 1e 00 80 00 29 c5  4b f6 f0 00 00 00 00 00  |......).K.......|
00000030  00 00 00 00 00 00 46 41  54 31 36 20 20 20 33 c9  |......FAT16   3.|
00000040  8e d1 bc fc 7b 16 07 bd  78 00 c5 76 00 1e 56 16  |....{...x..v..V.|
00000050  55 bf 22 05 89 7e 00 89  4e 02 b1 0b fc f3 a4 06  |U."..~..N.......|
00000060  1f bd 00 7c c6 45 fe 0f  38 4e 24 7d 20 8b c1 99  |...|.E..8N$} ...|
00000070  e8 7e 01 83 eb 3a 66 a1  1c 7c 66 3b 07 8a 57 fc  |.~...:f..|f;..W.|
00000080  75 06 80 ca 02 88 56 02  80 c3 10 73 ed 33 c9 fe  |u.....V....s.3..|
00000090  06 d8 7d 8a 46 10 98 f7  66 16 03 46 1c 13 56 1e  |..}.F...f..F..V.|
000000a0  03 46 0e 13 d1 8b 76 11  60 89 46 fc 89 56 fe b8  |.F....v.`.F..V..|
000000b0  20 00 f7 e6 8b 5e 0b 03  c3 48 f7 f3 01 46 fc 11  | ....^...H...F..|
000000c0  4e fe 61 bf 00 07 e8 28  01 72 3e 38 2d 74 17 60  |N.a....(.r>8-t.`|
000000d0  b1 0b be d8 7d f3 a6 61  74 3d 4e 74 09 83 c7 20  |....}..at=Nt... |
000000e0  3b fb 72 e7 eb dd fe 0e  d8 7d 7b a7 be 7f 7d ac  |;.r......}{...}.|
000000f0  98 03 f0 ac 98 40 74 0c  48 74 13 b4 0e bb 07 00  |..... at t.Ht......|
00000100  cd 10 eb ef be 82 7d eb  e6 be 80 7d eb e1 cd 16  |......}....}....|
00000110  5e 1f 66 8f 04 cd 19 be  81 7d 8b 7d 1a 8d 45 fe  |^.f......}.}..E.|
00000120  8a 4e 0d f7 e1 03 46 fc  13 56 fe b1 04 e8 c2 00  |.N....F..V......|
00000130  72 d7 ea 00 02 70 00 52  50 06 53 6a 01 6a 10 91  |r....p.RP.Sj.j..|
00000140  8b 46 18 a2 26 05 96 92  33 d2 f7 f6 91 f7 f6 42  |.F..&...3......B|
00000150  87 ca f7 76 1a 8a f2 8a  e8 c0 cc 02 0a cc b8 01  |...v............|
00000160  02 80 7e 02 0e 75 04 b4  42 8b f4 8a 56 24 cd 13  |..~..u..B...V$..|
00000170  61 61 72 0a 40 75 01 42  03 5e 0b 49 75 77 c3 03  |aar. at u.B.^.Iuw..|
00000180  18 01 27 0d 0a 49 6e 76  61 6c 69 64 20 73 79 73  |..'..Invalid sys|
00000190  74 65 6d 20 64 69 73 6b  ff 0d 0a 44 69 73 6b 20  |tem disk...Disk |
000001a0  49 2f 4f 20 65 72 72 6f  72 ff 0d 0a 52 65 70 6c  |I/O error...Repl|
000001b0  61 63 65 20 74 68 65 20  64 69 73 6b 2c 20 61 6e  |ace the disk, an|
000001c0  64 20 74 68 65 6e 20 70  72 65 73 73 20 61 6e 79  |d then press any|
000001d0  20 6b 65 79 0d 0a 00 00  49 4f 20 20 20 20 20 20  | key....IO      |
000001e0  53 59 53 4d 53 44 4f 53  20 20 20 53 59 53 7f 01  |SYSMSDOS   SYS..|
000001f0  00 41 bb 00 07 60 66 6a  00 e9 3b ff 00 00 55 aa  |.A...`fj..;...U.|
00000200

It does have the "AA55" magic number at the end and probably a jump
command at the beginning doing a read of the error message seen.

Have fun!

Tod