Installing 10.04 to 2TB disk, does not boot

[Matthias Brennwald]

On May 17, 2010, at 9:50 PM, Preston Hagar wrote:

> On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Matthias Brennwald
> <matthias at brennwald.org> wrote:
>> 
>> If fails before GRUB shows up. I just get a message saying that there is no bootable disk.
>> 
>>> This might help out in determining if it is an installation problem,
>>> disk problem, hardware/bios problem, etc.
>> 
>> In the meantime I found something on the internet which make me believe the problem is related to the motherboard, which needs to be convinced to boot a drive with a GTP partition table on it:
>> 
>>       http://communities.intel.com/thread/9779
>> 
>> However, I do not really understand what the author means by "The trick was to set the partition in the protective mbr as active", and how to do that. What does he mean by "active"? What is the "partition in the protective mbr"? How can I change these things?
>> 
>> Thanks
>> Matthias
> 
> Try this:
> 
> Boot to either a live CD, or your working 160 GB drive with the 2 TB
> drive in the machine.  Figure out which drive the 2 TB drive is (fdisk
> -l from the command line should list all disks with partition
> information, so you can then just look for the one that is 2 TB)
> 
> run
> 
> parted /dev/sdX
> 
> replacing the X with the 2 TB drive.
> 
> Once in parted, type print and press enter.
> 
> You should see something more or less like this: (my disk is a 320 GB
> with 3 partitions)
> (parted) print
> Model: ATA ST3320620AS (scsi)
> Disk /dev/sda: 320GB
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
> Partition Table: msdos
> 
> Number  Start   End    Size    Type     File system  Flags
> 1      32.3kB  148MB  148MB   primary  ext3         boot, raid
> 3      148MB   316GB  316GB   primary               raid
> 2      316GB   320GB  4096MB  primary               raid
> 
> 
> On the partition that is your boot partition (or if you only have one
> partition then that will be it), you want the boot flag like I have on
> my #1 partition above.  To turn it on, enter
> 
> set X boot on
> 
> in parted where X is the partition number.  For example, I would do
> set 1 boot on to turn on the boot flag in my partition.
> 
> If you already see the boot flag, then this won't help much
> unfortunately.    I think you may have already tried this, or this may
> be where you currently are, but you might need to make a small boot
> partition as your first partition.  Make it say 150 MB or so.  Then
> make sure the boot flag is set.  Some motherboards have trouble seeing
> past a certain point in large disks, so by making your boot partition
> first and set as bootable, it might help.  You might also want to see
> if there are any bios updates for your motherboard that might
> fix/improve its ability to see and handle large drives.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> Preston

Here is my partition table:

-----------------                                                                      
Error: The backup GPT table is corrupt, but the primary appears OK, so that will
be used.

                                                                          
OK/Cancel? o
Model: ATA WDC WD2003FYYS-0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdd: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system     Name  Flags
 1      17.4kB  8225kB  8208kB  ext4                  bios_grub
 2      8225kB  5248MB  5240MB  linux-swap(v1)
 3      5248MB  5453MB  206MB   ext4                  boot
 4      5453MB  2000GB  1995GB  ext4
-----------------                                                                      

So, as you see, I already have the boot flag set (partition 3, which is my /boot). However, my /boot is not on the first partition. Yet, I believe the partition with the GRUB stuff (with the bios_grub flag) should be first, no? Did I get this wrong?

Also, note the error regarding the GPT backup table. What's that? I have no clue...

Matthias