boot loader not installed (solved)

Fri Oct 30 07:43:09 UTC 2009

 Oh yea, now that I'm thinking about it I forgot to mention that when the installer gets to the partitioner, choose manual to set the mount points. The one install I tried with this installer that failed, I chose the second option, which was "Empty and use entire disk". I though I would try letting the installer do everything. Didn't work.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com>
To: ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
Sent: Fri, Oct 30, 2009 7:53 am
Subject: Re: boot loader not installed (solved)

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 3:43 AM,  <fyrbrds at netscape.net> wrote:
> Ok, finally got it to work. In the midst of all the troubleshooting today,
> the final 9.10 was released. Since I had never even booted into the old
> install, I cut my losses and reinstalled with a freshly downloaded copy.
> This had the exact same problem and would not boot so my hopes that this
> would be fixed in the release version were not realized. Then I found this
> document:
> http://grub.enbug.org/BIOS_Boot_Partition
> It talks about setting aside space for grub to install itself on the raid in
> a special partition with the boot flag set. It says that if grub sees such a
> partition it will automatically install itself there thus overwriting
> whatever was there before. So here is what I did:
> Fired up the live cd. Ran the partitioner directly. I wiped all the old
> partitions from the drive.
> I made an extended partition using the entire drive
> I made a small ext4 logical partition (the instruction says no file system
> is needed but I took no chances) using the minimum 8MB
>     The example command given on the howto page DID NOT WORK. Just right
> click the partition after it is created and select Flag->boot
> Made an ext4 partition for the root fs.
> Made a 8GB swap partition and a 8GB ext4 /tmp partition
> I committed the changes and let the partitions be formatted
> I started the installer
> At the partitioning section I set the small 8MB partition as "unused" by
> highlighting it and clicking "Change"
> I assigned the mount points for the other partitions and left the format
> unchecked since that was just done.
> At the Summary screen that displays before the copy process starts, I
> clicked "Advanced." Here you have to select the boot partition.
>   Here were two new options I did not have before
>    /dev/mapper/nvidia_fhgbbaae (dmraid)
>    /dev/mapper/nvidia_fhgbbaae (linear)
> I overrode (hd0) which had always failed, and selected
> /dev/mapper/nvidia_fhgbbaae (linear)
>   for this choice I assumed that the dmraid option would depend on the raid
> being mounted properly and the linear method would keep it simple.
> Then I clicked forward to let the installation commence. When it was
> finished I opened a file manager and looked in the new file system at
> /target/boot/grub/. Where it had always been empty before, now it had 13
> files in it.
> These included default, device.map, menu.lst, stage1, stage2, etc. I
> immediately recognized these as files other troubleshooting howtos had
> referenced. Also encouraging was the device.map containing this entry:
> (hd0)    /dev/mapper/nvidia_fhgbbaae
> It is possible that leaving the (hd0) in the advanced setting earlier would
> have worked with this value being set. It had never been set before. But
> there is no guarantee that it would not have chosen the dmraid option and
> that it would still have worked.
>
> Here is the entry in menu.lst that makes this work.
> title        Ubuntu 9.10, kernel 2.6.31-14-generic
> root        (hd0,5)
> kernel        /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic
> root=/dev/mapper/nvidia_fhgbbaae6 ro quiet splash
> initrd        /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic
>
> Before rebooting, I opened a terminal for good measure and typed
> # sudo update-grub
>
> Then I rebooted and everything worked. The caveat is that my Vista boot
> loader is on hd1, which is the default in my bios. To boot linux I have to
> hit escape to manually select the boot drive. I can change that any time by
> modifying the order of preference. I only mention that in case someone
> follows this method and sets their raid as the boot drive as I did but
> forgets that they were actually booting from their Windows or old OS drive.
> Grub added an entry for Windows on the boot menu but I haven't tested it
> yet. After I do, I will switch the boot order.
>
> I now have a fully functioning Ubuntu 9.10
>
> Thanks for all who offered assistance especially Tom and Goh Lip. It was the
> documents you guys pointed out that led me to the fix. You also taught me a
> lot about grub on the way.  Thanks.

:)

I had read the http://grub.enbug.org/BIOS_Boot_Partition in the past
but would never have tried it for DMRAID because I associated it with
GPT and EFI (helping a friend install Linux on a Mac Mini...). Thanks
for the (surprising) info.

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