Grub Boot - boot_v8 Blinking Cursor?!

[reeve]

hey all,

 

smashing my face into a wall. About 1 week of reinstalls and all have finally gotten me to post for help!

 

Stats are in my sig, my setup is as follows (laptop)

 

I'm installing OSX on an external (usb) hd via my Laptop. Ubuntu is already installed on the external. I am using iDeneb v1.3 10.5.5. In my Bios, I had the external set as the 1st hd (so that if it was plugged in, i could boot to grub, if it wasnt, straight to vista).

 

Now, 10.5.5 installed successfully! (updating .kext's is another story, injects don't work in 10.5.5 apparently and i'm getting lots of link/load errors)

 

When I first tried to boot from the external hd after the iDeneb 10.5.5 install, I got an infinite loop of

 

boot0: MBR
boot0: done
boot0: MBR
boot0: done

 

So I went 'zomg no my mbr!' and booted off of Ubuntu CD and reinstalled GRUB. Now, GRUB loads up fine, and I need to put my entry. I've tried two things:

 

root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/boot_v8
boot

 

which points to netkas boot_v8. This loads the screen where it says Press a key in 2 seconds to change boot device. I don't press a key, and it loads up into a blinking cursor with a fixed cursor above it (the bar in Darwin that usually spins).

 

If I press a key and enter 81 (hex for hd 2, my internal) I get to boot into Vista.

 

Any ideas how I can go about fixing this? I'm so close!

 

I've also tried

root(hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader --force +1

 

But all this does is load up "stage 2" and then reloads to GRUB menu almost instantly.

 

 

Any ideas? Thanks for the help in advance...my brain hurts so much =(

 

-reeve

[reeve]

no luck =/

 

was thinking maybe that when efi loaded it reset the disk #'s s.t. the dvd drive was messing things up and the external was hd 82. no luck though - just checked and the mac partition is active and has the boot flag on it, i just took off the boot flag to see if i'd have any luck but still nothing. I can boot from dvd fine with rd=disk1s2 -v, no idea what's going on now. going to look for manual install of MBR

[reeve]

Did I read somewhere that OSX had to be on a certain part of a HD? My external is 500gb, and the OSX partition starts ~360gb in. (linux ext3 partition is 357.88gb) Could this be it? Anyone?

[reeve]

going to try making a small partition in front of the osx partition, FAT32, and throw the boot_v8 on there and try to boot that way...just went back in with fdisk to check if it was active, it was, but made it active again just to be sure. still no luck.

 

when booting from DVD, it doesn't work if I don't hit f8 and do rd=disk1s2. It will just stall on blinking cursor and a "\" waiting to spin, but never finds anything to boot from.

 

*tears

 

-reeve

[rickdekart]

sorry for the late reply, been busy

 

I've seen threads on both grub +pc_efi or grub + chameleon ... seen those?

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=85508

 

http://netkas.org/?p=31

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=126885

 

Personally I'd get an extra USB drive to dedicate to OSX. It installs and works flawlessly if the external USB drive is all to OSX.

 

 

 

going to try making a small partition in front of the osx partition, FAT32, and throw the boot_v8 on there and try to boot that way...just went back in with fdisk to check if it was active, it was, but made it active again just to be sure. still no luck.

 

when booting from DVD, it doesn't work if I don't hit f8 and do rd=disk1s2. It will just stall on blinking cursor and a "\" waiting to spin, but never finds anything to boot from.

 

*tears

 

-reeve

[reeve]

Thanks for the reply rick! you've brightened my day.

 

I'm going to try chameleon right now - I did read one of those threads to no avail. But the second chameleon thread leads me to think i might not have enough files in my /boot/ folder in the linux partition.

 

Will report back

 

Thanks again!

 

-reeve

 

ps i'll also start digging up another external hd

 

EDIT: Nothing is able to find the bootable partition on the HD. I'm still thinking maybe its too far deep in the HD. Chameleon gave the same exact thing boot_v8 did - blinking cursor with a stationary cursor above it. I'm going to try to create a little partition in front of the osx one, and hope that it searches forward and not from the beginning of the drive.

 

I've checked that the partition is primary, active, and boot flagged. Not sure what else needs to be done...

 

EDIT2: Checked with Vista, and the osx partition did not have the boot flag. It does with gparted via ubuntu live cd. This might be what's going wrong.

[kellogs]

boot0: MBR
boot0: done
boot0: MBR
boot0: done

 

 

root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/boot_v8
boot

 

 

 

If I press a key and enter 81 (hex for hd 2, my internal) I get to boot into Vista.

-reeve

 

 

Hi

 

that eror with boot0: ..... etc is what i had experimented just today. Dunno if its gonna help u but I think http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Vista_bootloader might help you. Take the time to read below:

 

My system: one single hdd

First installed Win XP (on PRIMARY "partition")

Then installe Linux (on LOGICAL "partition")

Then resized Win XP partition which means the primary "partition" (e.g. zone of HDD) now has 2 partitions on it. Installed Mac OS on also in the PRIMARY "zone"

 

first OS - booted no prob.

second OS - the linux & GRUB detected WIN XP. So it installed GRUB in the MBR and automatically made the adjustments to multiboot Win / Lin - no prob.

third OS - the Mac, as I hve said, has got installed on the same Primary partition as Win XP. So it stuck his own bootloader (darwin) on the MBR, overwriting what GRUB had written there before.

 

Result: the boot0: ... etc screen at startup.

Fix: reinstall Linux OS (and ofcourse GRUB - dunno how to install it separately) and I have again a multiboot system - more precisesly DUAL BOOT. Mac OS was installed on my PC, but it is not autodetected by GRUB. So I have used bootv8 trick just like you and here I am wit TRI boot once again.

 

So if I wanna boot into Mac it goes like this:

GRUB shows its options. I select Mac OS entry.

HDD choice screen shows up. I hit <enter> twice

Darwin bootloader gets called, containing all of my OSes. Of ourse it can only boot Mac Os in this situation.

 

Any similarities between our 2 systems ?

 

Well, instead of my Primary zone of hdd (XP + Mac), whose bootsector contains Darwin Botloader, you have got the internal HDD (Vista + Mac), whose boot sector contains Vista botloader.

I am using GRUB bootloader in MBR , you are doing the same.

I have another linux OS on my logical partitions, yo have it on an external HDD.

 

It sems to me you have 2 choices:

Either get the Darwin bootloader into ur internal HDD's bootsector (no ideea how)

Or get your Vista bootloader to recognize other systems that might live on its HDD with the easybcd tool in the shortcut. It didnt work for me (i think because it didnot find any Windows bootloader in the MBR). It will not find any Windows bootloader in ur MBR as well. Hopefully, I am wrong, and it will work for u.

 

Good luck!

[reeve]

Hey! So -- i've figured it out. The problem is coming from OSX being >128gb into the HD. 28bit LBA ftl. I'm resizing my ubuntu partition to 60gb, putting osx on the next 60 gb, and making the rest a hfs+ storage drive.

 

Hope this helps someone else who had all of these problems!

 

ps Also - i've tried vista bootloading, chain0 etc =/

 

Edit: Not sure if my situation has improved - it can now boot from boot0 into the hd (eg, no infinite loop!) but now i'm stuck with blinking cursor (w/solid one above it). From grub, chainload +1 also brings this up!! So, some progress, kinda... now to tackle this blinking cursor!