Grub Grief aGain

[Dave Howorth]

Goh Lip wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:25:26 +0800
> Goh Lip <g.lip at gmx.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:05:58 +0100
>> Dave Howorth <dhoworth at mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi, I'm having a bit more trouble with grub again. I've a box with
>>> both Ubuntu and openSUSE on various disks, using Ubuntu's grub2 to
>>> control booting. It was working fine but now grub is giving me 'you
>>> need to load the kernel first' errors when I try to boot openSUSE.
>>>
>>> I can still boot into Ubuntu (karmic) and I can see the partition
>>> that contains openSUSE. I've rerun update-grub but that didn't
>>> solve the problem. I'm stuck for ideas as to what might be wrong
>>> (perhaps because it's Monday?), so I'd be grateful for any ideas
>>> what to try next.

> My message was sent prematurely, do this at ubuntu and see if this
> woks
> sudo grub-install /dev/sda

Thanks for the suggestion.
I did that but it didn't make any difference.

>> It would really help if you can explain what changed from "It was
>> working fine" to "but now grub is giving me 'you...."; for
>> example...new kernel update of openSuse? etc..

Yes, there have been kernel updates for both Ubuntu and openSUSE. There
was also something that looked like a failed disk /dev/sdb but all those
symptoms have disappeared after unplugging and replugging the disk and
rebooting; that disk now appears perfectly normal.

>> Also,
>> o  list partitions of /, /boot, if any, of Ubuntu and OpenSuse.

/dev/mapper/ubuntu-root
                      448G  2.9G  422G   1% /      (this is ubuntu - sda1)
/dev/sda5             228M   57M  159M  27% /boot  (this is ubuntu)
/dev/sdb1             9.7G  6.0G  3.2G  66% /suse-11.2  (both root and boot)

>> o  grub version of opensuse

not used - booting via ubuntu's grub2

>> o  kernel numbers of ubuntu and suse
>> o  initrd of suse  (have not used suse for a long time)

menuentry "Ubuntu, Linux 2.6.31-22-server" {
        recordfail=1
        if [ -n ${have_grubenv} ]; then save_env recordfail; fi
        set quiet=1
        insmod ext2
        set root=(hd0,5)
        linux   /vmlinuz-2.6.31-22-server root=/dev/mapper/ubuntu-root
ro   quiet splash
        initrd  /initrd.img-2.6.31-22-server
}


menuentry "Desktop -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.12-0.2 (on /dev/sdb1)" {
        insmod ext2
        set root=(hd1,1)
        linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.12-0.2-desktop
root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD1503FYYS-01T8B0_WD-WMAUR0310828-part1
resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD5001AALS-00L3B2_WD-WCASYA878047-part2
splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31a
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.12-0.2-desktop
}

Cheers, Dave