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Home > Archive > Red Hat Installation > April 2004 > GRUB Read Error
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| Paul Fedorenko 2004-04-06, 1:35 am |
| Hi people. I just installed a copy of RedHat Fedora. The first time I
rebooted the computer, GRUB worked great, and I could boot into both Windows
XP and Linux. The second time, I got an error message that said "GRUB read
error" followed by something on not being able to read stage two.
I made a boot disk during installation, but the disk was bad, so it kind of
stops after loading vmlinuz and doesn't go any further. I've also got a
copy of knoppix that I can use to access my hard drives.
Is this a fairly straight-forward problem to fix? Is it just a matter of
re-running grub off the install drive?
What causes this sort of thing? I'd like to know, so I can avoid it in
future once it's fixed. If more information is required, just let me know,
and I'll happily post more.
Thanks in advance.
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| Tommy Reynolds 2004-04-06, 2:34 am |
| On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 00:59:15 -0400, Paul Fedorenko wrote:
> Hi people. I just installed a copy of RedHat Fedora. The first time I
> rebooted the computer, GRUB worked great, and I could boot into both Windows
> XP and Linux. The second time, I got an error message that said "GRUB read
> error" followed by something on not being able to read stage two.
This kind of problem should not happen, so I suspect an operational
problem (read that as "pilot error").
"Stage Two" of GRUB is a bigger file that the tiny, tiny GRUB Stage
One code (from the Master Boot Record) reads into memory. That file
is most likely corrupted. We'll try to fix it in a moment.
Your machine originally had WindowXP on it, right? To make room for
Linux, you defragmented the NTFS C: drive and then booted the Linux
installer. You then used fdisk, or disk druid to cut back the size
of the C: drive to make room for Linux. How am I doing so far?
The important item that I've skipped should have been immediately
after the "defragnented" step. You must resize the NTFS partition so
that the filesystem metadata also matches the new partition size.
So, as a guess, I suspect that WinXP is overwriting stuff in the
Linux area.
To repair GRUB, insert the first Fedora CDROM into the drive and type
"linux rescue" when you see the "boot>" prompt. Allow the system to
initialize normally, and when it asks if you want to mount the
filesystems from the hard drive, permit it. This lets you access
your "/etc/" directory as "/sysimage/etc" and so forth.
DO NOT start mucking around with package groups or RPMs or anything
like that. In the rootshell, type the commands:
# fdisk -l /dev/hda <--Keep this output for us if
problems later.
# /sysimnage/sbin/grub-install --root-directory=/sysimage /dev/hda
to rewrite the GRUB bootloader and its files back into the Master
Boot Record of the hard drive.
Reboot and give it a try.
If this doesn't work, lots of other stuff we can try.
Cheers!
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| Paul Fedorenko 2004-04-06, 3:37 am |
| Tommy Reynolds wrote:
> Your machine originally had WindowXP on it, right? To make room for
> Linux, you defragmented the NTFS C: drive and then booted the Linux
> installer. You then used fdisk, or disk druid to cut back the size
> of the C: drive to make room for Linux. How am I doing so far?
My boot floppy miraculously started working, so I'm posting this from Knode,
logged in under Linux.
Close, but no cigars... I should have mentioned this in my original post.
Must've forgotten. I've got 2 hard drives. The Master drive on IDE0
(/dev/hda) (40 GB) is where Windows XP lives, on an NTFS partition. Master
on IDE1 (/dev/hdc) is partitioned as follows:
/dev/hdc1 /boot (80MB)
/dev/hdc2 / (20GB)
/dev/hdc3 extended partition
/dev/hdc5 swap (1GB)
/dev/hdc4 NTFS, 1GB swap drive for XP
> So, as a guess, I suspect that WinXP is overwriting stuff in the
> Linux area.
OK... Going with this possibility, and the info above, could it be possible
that my XP swap partition is messing things up on one of my Linux parts,
causing geometry problems?
Would running RedHat's up2date program cause any problems? Once I decide to
run it, are there any upgrades/patches I should avoid? I'm guessing that
downloading a kernel upgrade without knowing what I'm doing could cause
problems?
Sorry about missing that critical bit about partitioning there...
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| Paul Fedorenko 2004-04-06, 3:37 am |
|
"Tommy Reynolds" <TommyReynolds@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:pan.2004.04.06.05.44.13.716112@yahoo.com...
> On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 00:59:15 -0400, Paul Fedorenko wrote:
> This kind of problem should not happen, so I suspect an operational
> problem (read that as "pilot error").
I'm not doubting it. I'm pretty sure I did *something* to mess it up, I'm
just not sure what.
> DO NOT start mucking around with package groups or RPMs or anything
> like that. In the rootshell, type the commands:
>
> # fdisk -l /dev/hda <--Keep this output for us if
> problems later.
>
> # /sysimnage/sbin/grub-install --root-directory=/sysimage /dev/hda
I'll post the fdisk output and the results of reinstalling GRUB tomorrow.
Right now, I'm heading to bed.
Thanks for the pointers. Like I mentioned previously, my boot floppy's
working, so that'll let me bypass GRUB completely and still boot up my
installed system. I'm guessing it'll be a bit easier that way than booting
off CD-ROM.
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