A Tale of GRUB and Woe

[jackt283]

Wingrub is dead. It has been killed by god knows, and now it is over. Erased from the MBR, gone for ever.

 

In its place is a void. An empty space filled only by the eternity it will take my computer to start up with an empty MBR. I can boot though - I can boot into the masterful OS we refer to as OSx86. Using it's birth tool. The mother of our creation - the OSx86 Install DVD.

 

Windows is gone. I haven't seen it for days. It seems it's mother is past it, unable to boot the computer and fix the MBR, unable to reinstall Windows, useless. A CD in my wallet better not to exist.

 

So there is indeed a solution to my woes. And this solution lies in GRUB. A multiboot, boot extravaganza. GRUB, if it could be installed some how into the MBR - without Windows, I could have my beutiful boot menu back.

 

I have tried, and oh I have tried. Ubuntu Live CD, worked like a charm. It booted and before I new it I was into Linux. Amazing. What do you know? Unbuntu can install GRUB into your MBR. Yet - if you are on a live CD there are problems. It recognizing root as the cd drive instead of my /dev/sda (and chroot not working?). Still I found some guides and it seemed like a straight forward process. I installed the GRUB stage files, created the menu.lst, then loaded up the GRUB command line by tapping out "grub" into a terminal. Alas the command "root (hd0,0)" failed. Error 21 - It could not find the drive. I tired, Oh how I tried, I could not get it to install.

 

Unbuntu, was ejected, and I booted back into OSx86. I thought OS X is unix, why can't I just compile GRUB and install it from Mac OS? Well you can't. The ./configure fails with some reason to do with mach - or something. I am not sure. But it can't be done, not by me - of course I'm not willing to put it out of my head just yet.

 

In the dispair of hours of time up in smoke, I am turning to you; brothers and sisters of this project: Has any one of the diverse souls who call osx86project their home had any experience with GRUB, linux live cds, compilling, and are you able to help me? Be weary my friends and compatriots it seems my actions are cursed. It seems everything I try lands on my head. I will need sage advice, and committed souls.

 

The tale hath just begun.

[belgrano]

Nice tale... although a sad one, but nice....

[jackt283]

Now one has purchased another 2oo GB Hard Drive. Identical to my previous one. This drive will become backup. It was that or 20 Dual Layer DVDs.

 

Just to be safe. Losing one's data is like losing ones dog - painful and inevitable. At least this way I have a (1) safeguard.

 

EDIT: I am now downloading CentOS 4, iso 1 so I can attempt to use it to reinstall GRUB... and install Linux... 6 hours to go...

[jackt283]

Update:

 

CD1 CentOS: Done

CD3 CentOS: Done

CD2 CentOS: Downloading for the second (maybe 3rd) time!!!! arg... damn that speed download. It seemed to think restarting the already finished download while I was asleep was a great idea.

 

So I tried to add a partition to my new drive using pdisk - I'm getting some strange error I've never seen before (Google doesn't help) "No Valid Block 1 on /dev/rdisk0"

 

Anyone had that before?

 

Why is nothing working for me... Maybe I'm not thinking positive enough.

[jackt283]

So now i have Lunix on the computer, in fact I am typing from it now. GRUB works - sort of.

 

I can't load Windows - It loads and then resets two seconds after showing "windows XP" - but GRUB is loading it.

 

Linux works fine.

 

OSX does not load! I'm getting "Error 13: Invalid or Unsupported Executable Format"

using this code:

 

rootnoverify (hd0,1)

makeactive

chainloader +1

 

or

 

root (hd0,1)

chainloader +1

 

either way, i get the same error. I tried using the chain0 file by entering in:

 

chainloader /boot/chain0 (path to chain0 file)

 

and I'm getting a "Chain Booting Error"

is there any chance I have wiped the boot code from the hfs partition...?

[edav]

Hi jackt283,

 

[...]

I can't load Windows - It loads and then resets two seconds after showing "windows XP" - but GRUB is loading it.

Your XP installation seems to be damaged. I would try to boot and repair from a XP install CD.

 

Linux works fine.

Surprised? :-)

 

OSX does not load! I'm getting "Error 13: Invalid or Unsupported Executable Format"

using this code:

 

rootnoverify (hd0,1)

makeactive

chainloader +1

 

or

 

root (hd0,1)

chainloader +1

 

either way, i get the same error. I tried using the chain0 file by entering in:

 

chainloader /boot/chain0 (path to chain0 file)

 

and I'm getting a "Chain Booting Error"

is there any chance I have wiped the boot code from the hfs partition...?

I'm afraid you're right : the FreeBSD bootloader is damaged. I would reinstall OSX from the install DVD: I had exactly the same problems and a reinstall solved them.

 

HTH,

edav.

[jackt283]

Today is the day of reinstall.

 

EDIT: Oh my install disk doesn't seem to work... A little circle with a slash comes up about half way through the white screen.

I am downloading 10.4.5 from ye'ar [bay] anyway so Ill have to wait another week or whatever.

 

Is there anyway of fixing the FreeBSD bootloader? I used Macdisk, and I believe that is what has caused me all the problems.

 

Also can I reninstall windows and not have it mess with the MBR and destroy GRUB...?

[edav]

Today is the day of reinstall.

 

EDIT: Oh my install disk doesn't seem to work... A little circle with a slash comes up about half way through the white screen.

Did you already use it to install OSX86? Verify the DVD surface and try again. Which OSX86 version is it?

[...]

Is there anyway of fixing the FreeBSD bootloader? I used Macdisk, and I believe that is what has caused me all the problems.

I don't know. You can try to use the 'startup disk' utility in 'System preferences' or from the install DVD... but none of these 2 aren't possible for you now, right?

 

Also can I reninstall windows and not have it mess with the MBR and destroy GRUB...?

If each of your partitions is bootable, you can use the bootloader you want in first position:

• use Grub and add a menu item for Windows and another for OSX86, if you select OSX the FreeBSD bootloader will come up
  
• use XP bootloader (ntldr) and edit your boot.ini to add a line for Linux and another for OSX86
  
• use FreeBSD bootloader and add lines for the others
  

Right now, i'm using the FreeBSD one to boot XP. Tomorrow, I'll reinstall the triple-boot (with Kubuntu) and I'll use Grub... and I also have a line for OSX in my XP's boot.ini. The reason why I don't like ntldr is because I use 'suspend to disk' feature of XP and this cause ntldr to not proposing the boot menu when you restart the PC : the menu appears only if you did a regular XP shut down. Anyway, this is off topic...

 

Let me know if you mess your partitions, i'll explain how to use Testdisk to recover them

 

edav.

[jackt283]

Thanks man.

 

I did manage to get my Install DVD to boot (the surface is real scratched... its seen too much usage) and I installed on another partition. So I added another entry in the menu.lst and it boots - sort of. Everytime I restart i get the message (in verbose mode) "Still Waiting for root device" - restart it a few more times and it finds the root device. I have no idea whats going on here... but it works sorta - maybe something to do with my scratched install DVD?

 

I'm just waiting for the 10.4.5 torrent to finish, then Ill repartition the whole lot, fresh XP, fresh OSX and fresh linux onto a freshly formatted drive.

 

Right now, I'm pretty happy with grub, it does the job well. As far as my partitions go, there is something messed up because I cannot use pdisk... fdisk in linux tells me the block length is 20445 or something instead of 1024 - and I'm getting that "No valid Block 1" message in pdisk when I try to create a new partition. Do you know anything about this?

 

Thanks again.

[edav]

Hi,

 

Are you sure the partition you installed OSX on is a 'primary' one? Linux can install on primary or logical but OSX needs primary.

 

If you plan to format and reinstall the whole stuff, then install XP first : remove all partitions during install process and recreate only one. Boot XP and use Diskpart to create the OSX partition. Install OSX from the DVD : format in 'HFS+ journaled' the partition created with Diskpart. Then install Linux on a new logical partition and edit your menu.lst.

 

edav.

[jackt283]

Cheers man, I am pretty good with partitions and all, it's just I am prone to making some mistake along the line that will ultimately mean doom for me. I know about primary partitions, type=af and all that gobbledegouk, and anyway my new install has rebooted the last three times without a hitch, there musta been some very minor error for it not to find the root device the first few times.

 

What do you think about using a boot cd - either UBCD, or ubuntu live or something to partition my sda harddisk so i don't have to use the Windows partition utilty when I am installing it first, as this block length thing is a real pain - fdisk should do it properly right?

 

I could then create two disks (or three depending if I install 10.4.5 and 10.4.6), one for windows and one for mac os (keep them at different sizes or whatever so i cant confuse myself) then install both OSes, then install linux and set up grub.

 

What do you think about NTFS over FAT32 for windows partitions on a dual boot machine? At the moment my winxp partition is Fat32 - could this be anything to do with it failing so often? I plan to have a fat32 "bridge" partition anyway, so I should keep windows on an NTFS right?

 

Cheers