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Ubuntu not starting from GRUB
Posted: 2007-04-30 02:01pm
by Braedley
So after installing XP twice last night (the first time I had a RAID 0 array that linux didn't like all that much), I installed Ubuntu. The install went fine, and when I restarted, I was greeted with grub, as expected. When I selected Ubuntu, I got an Error 17, which is something along the lines of grub can see the partition, but can't load what it needs. I can still boot into windows.
My partition map (approx.):
Code: Select all
name boot size fs function
sda:
sda1 30GB NTFS Windows main drive (C:)
sda2 * 60GB ext3 Ubuntu root
sda3 1GB swap
sda4 ~160GB NTFS primarily windows storage
sdb
sdb1 125GB FAT32 shared storage
sdb2 125GB FAT32 shared storage
I've tried editing the grub loading file (menu.lst) to change the Ubuntu drive to sda2, but that still didn't work.
Posted: 2007-04-30 06:36pm
by Darth Holbytlan
What's the relevent line in menu.lst look like? You want to make sure that the "root" line really references the correct partition. You may also want to re-run grub-install.
My lines look like this (for Debian, with /boot on hda2):
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root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/mapper/main-root ro
initrd /initrd.img
I think your menu.list should currently have something more like this:
Code: Select all
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-10-generic root=/dev/sda2 ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17-10-generic
(Assuming that your BIOS is mapping your SCSI disk to the first drive.)
Also, what does your WinXP menu.lst lines look like, and do they work? And what are the contents of device.map?
Posted: 2007-04-30 07:19pm
by Braedley
It's fixed now. It was trying to boot from the windows partition. Amazing what one little letter will do.
Posted: 2007-04-30 07:56pm
by Pu-239
No point in making shared partition FAT- Ubuntu writes to NTFS (safely) now. So you can just make the partitions in sdb1 one big partition.
Ubuntu root is also unnecessarily large- you should have it around 10 gigs or so, and mount /home as a separate partition, so when you do upgrades or something it's safe to blast away the root partition (after backing up /etc) .
Posted: 2007-04-30 10:10pm
by Braedley
Pu-239 wrote:No point in making shared partition FAT- Ubuntu writes to NTFS (safely) now. So you can just make the partitions in sdb1 one big partition.
Yeah, well I read that some NTFS writes may fail, so I didn't want to take the chance.
Ubuntu root is also unnecessarily large- you should have it around 10 gigs or so, and mount /home as a separate partition, so when you do upgrades or something it's safe to blast away the root partition (after backing up /etc) .
I'll remember that for next time.
Now for another problem that I've gotten myself into. Despite removing it from the autostart, Beryl still wants to start up when I log on. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, except that it isn't configured properly and produces only a white screen. Apparently, I can interact with the desktop, but not being able to see what I'm doing makes it next to impossible to change anything.
Posted: 2007-04-30 10:34pm
by Braedley
Beryl's solved now. I just need to decide if I want to try and reinstall it.
Posted: 2007-05-01 02:17am
by Pu-239
Braedley wrote:Pu-239 wrote:No point in making shared partition FAT- Ubuntu writes to NTFS (safely) now. So you can just make the partitions in sdb1 one big partition.
Yeah, well I read that some NTFS writes may fail, so I didn't want to take the chance.
There are actually 3 ntfs drivers- the one that comes w/ the kernel w/ unsafe write (which is usually disabled by default, captive-ntfs that uses the windows drivers, and ntfs-3g, which runs using the FUSE interface. The latter two should be safe (and ubuntu uses the last if you install the package for enabling NTFS write).