Fedora Core 5 boot problem: 'GRUB_' ?

[arjun1 0]

I have first time installed the FC 5 from 5 cd sets downloaded from web and as per installation instructions from redhat site on my home PC which has XP on hda and new installed FC 5 on hdb, installation went through error free..., rebooted the PC, since hda was the default boot option, I changed the boot order in set up and set it to boot from the hdb and continued, it did go to hdb and I got text mode screen with the word GRUB folllowed by the blinking cursor, I waited for 10 mins. but no response...

 

Being first time installer, I have no idea where to start troubleshooting, Did installation go wrong ? or Is it something else...

 

Has anybody come across this kind of situation and what was the solution without the reinstallation ?

 

PC is HP Vectra with PIII 930 MH, 512MB ram,had 15GB,hdb 120 GB

[danleff 0]

the potential answer lies in another post, located here.

 

Look at the information and tell us what you did exactly. Pay special attention to the following;

 

1. Did you accept the deafult options to set the partitions on the drive that you installed Fedora to?

 

2. Where did you tell Fedora to install the Grub bootloader to? The MBR of hda, or the boot partition of hdb? Or, did you accept the defaults.

 

You can't change the bios boot order unless you are sure that Grub was installed correctly on the MBR on hdb, or, if it exists, the /boot partition is the first partition on that drive and set as active (to be the bootloader partition). So, was anything on the hdb drive before you installed Fedora?

 

 

[arjun1 0]

1. Did you accept the deafult options to set the partitions on the drive that you installed Fedora to?

 

- Yes on hdb

 

2. Where did you tell Fedora to install the Grub bootloader to? The MBR of hda, or the boot partition of hdb? Or, did you accept the defaults.

 

- the boot partition of hdb

 

hdb is a new hard disk, added as slave disk, has ntfs, while installing FC 5, I removed ntfs from hdb and chose defailt partition layout for FC5 also asked to insall boot loader on hdb

[danleff 0]

Quote:

I have first time installed the FC 5 from 5 cd sets downloaded from web and as per installation instructions from redhat site on my home PC which has XP on hda and new installed FC 5 on hdb, installation went through error free..., rebooted the PC, since hda was the default boot option, I changed the boot order in set up and set it to boot from the hdb and continued,

Can you send me a link to the article/instructions that you used? What I want to see, is if the instructions were for installing on a second hard drive.

The issue is, that the instructions probably were for installing Fedora on a system with one hard drive.

If you change the boot order in the bios to reach Grub on hdb, you confuse Grub, as you changed the boot order, which changes the physical designation of the drives.

The default installation options generally assume that you are installing Fedora one a single hard drive, hence, the partitioning utility default option assumes that this is the only drive in the system and makes a /boot partition.

Was your XP preinstalled on the system, or did you install XP from a full XP cd disk? In other words, do you have a full copy of XP, or the recovery disks from HP only? We need to know this to decide what to do and if you can recover in case something goes wrong with the proposed fix.

[arjun1 0]

Originally posted by danleff:

Quote:

Quote:

I have first time installed the FC 5 from 5 cd sets downloaded from web and as per installation instructions from redhat site on my home PC which has XP on hda and new installed FC 5 on hdb, installation went through error free..., rebooted the PC, since hda was the default boot option, I changed the boot order in set up and set it to boot from the hdb and continued,

 

Can you send me a link to the article/instructions that you used? What I want to see, is if the instructions were for installing on a second hard drive.

 

The issue is, that the instructions probably were for installing Fedora on a system with one hard drive.

 

If you change the boot order in the bios to reach Grub on hdb, you confuse Grub, as you changed the boot order, which changes the physical designation of the drives.

 

The default installation options generally assume that you are installing Fedora one a single hard drive, hence, the partitioning utility default option assumes that this is the only drive in the system and makes a /boot partition.

 

Was your XP preinstalled on the system, or did you install XP from a full XP cd disk? In other words, do you have a full copy of XP, or the recovery disks from HP only? We need to know this to decide what to do and if you can recover in case something goes wrong with the proposed fix.

 

 

 

Good news, that I could resove the issue, which was caused because of me, the first time installer.... I re-read the boot loader instuction part, what was happened that during the first time installation of FC 5, at the boot loader stage of installtion prcess I had selected to install the boot loader GRUB on boot partition of hdb instead of MBR of hdb, which I corrected in my second time installation and every thing went through fine, FC 5 was booted successfully...

 

Now the FC 5 has been installed, I have a question, How to make the PC dual boot with Windows XP on hda and FC5 on hdb ?

 

Right now, If I have to boot either of OS, ever time I have to change the BIOS boot order through F2 set up and proceed, which is of not that difficult, but If there is a simpler way of doing it, let me know...

 

 

 

 

[arjun1 0]

Good news, that I could resove the issue, which was caused because of me, the first time installer.... I re-read the boot loader instuction part, what was happened that during the first time installation of FC 5, at the boot loader stage of installtion prcess I had selected to install the boot loader GRUB on boot partition of hdb instead of MBR of hdb, which I corrected in my second time installation and every thing went through fine, FC 5 was booted successfully...

 

Now the FC 5 has been installed, I have a question, How to make the PC dual boot with Windows XP on hda and FC5 on hdb ?

 

Right now, If I have to boot either of OS, ever time I have to change the BIOS boot order through F2 set up and proceed, which is of not that difficult, but If there is a simpler way of doing it, let me know...

 

[danleff 0]

You jumped one step ahead of what I asked. Now you have the following;

 

1. The MBR of hds is still the Windows bootloader.

 

2. The MBR of hdb has Grub as the bootloader.

 

If you want to dual boot off of hda, without changing the bios boot order, then you need to have Grub on hda.

 

However, HP, Compaq and Dell systems sometimes have unique a partition on the Windows drive, that hold recovery and sometimes bios related settings. Before you go any further, can you answer my question about your Windows installation and cd disk media?

 

What I want to see, is if you have a full installation of Windows on this system from a full installation cd of XP, or only the recovery disks for an HP system that includes Windows XP if you recover the system.

[arjun1 0]

danleff, Thanks a lot for you time and expert advice...,

I was not trying to jump ahead, may be little excited with the new installation of FC5...

 

Allright, actually I have done this installation of FC5 on new second hard drive hdb on of PC from the office, which I use sometime to work from home, So the XP(sp2) has been installed on hda, using the XP core build software from installtion dept of my office, and also I have other work related software on hda, wanted to avoid doing anything on hda, thats why installed FC5 on hdb.I do have a copy of XP SP2 from office.

 

If there is any easy way of making dual boot, I will give a try

 

 

 

[andrewluo 0]

well you lnow what? it's not that you can't have two hdds. you have to install linux on the primary master, 1st IDE channel (to simplify: install linux on hda.)but after that linux is fine but windows has problems.

[danleff 0]

Originally posted by andrewluo:

Quote:

well you lnow what? it's not that you can't have two hdds. you have to install linux on the primary master, 1st IDE channel (to simplify: install linux on hda.)but after that linux is fine but windows has problems.

 

 

Not true. You can have Linux set up on a second hard drive, as long as you have the bootloader set up on the boot drive, as you say the primary master.

 

When you install on one single hard drive to dual boot, this is often easier, as less mistakes can be made. Most defaults with installing the grub bootloader are on the same hard drive as Linux is installed on. The assumption is that most users will be using one hard drive, or have one hard drive in their systems and will be dual booting with Windows, or have Linux as their only OS.

 

Most users have systems with one hard drive, so the default method is fine.

 

If you want to tell Linux to install to a second hard drive, this is also fine, as long as you tell grub to boot from the actual boot drive set in the bios, usually the primary master. The mistake that is made is that most users accept the default for everything, when in fact installing to a second hard drive is a custom installation. You need to tell grub where to boot from.

 

Now, after reading your other post and this one, we see that you have a dual boot situation on one hard drive. So, you have posted a little bit of information on two different posts.

 

Please take this information and answer the questions that I posed on the other post and start a new thread. This way we can follow what your exact issue is more accurately. makes it a little more easy to follow!