<div> 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. </div> <div> </div> <div> </div> -----Original Message----- From: Tom H <tomh0665@gmail.com> To: ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Sent: Fri, Oct 30, 2009 7:53 am Subject: Re: boot loader not installed (solved) <div id="AOLMsgPart_0_13527426-08a3-4746-9bcf-d8fc4ff8b92a" style="margin: 0px; font-family: Tahoma,Verdana,Arial,Sans-Serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> <pre style="font-size: 9pt;"><tt>On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 3:43 AM, <<a href="mailto:fyrbrds@netscape.net">fyrbrds@netscape.net</a>> 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: > <a href="http://grub.enbug.org/BIOS_Boot_Partition" target="_blank">http://grub.enbug.org/BIOS_Boot_Partition</a> > 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 <a href="http://grub.enbug.org/BIOS_Boot_Partition" target="_blank">http://grub.enbug.org/BIOS_Boot_Partition</a> 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. -- ubuntu-users mailing list <a href="mailto:ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com</a> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users</a> </tt></pre> </div>