Re: Sabayon 5.2_64 live disk installation.Brkn.Grub [Solved]

[onederer]

I installed Sabayon 5.2_64 live version on one of my desktops. This was done twice! Twice, I got the GRUB troubleshooting mode. No OS menu to choose from, and no GRUB GUI. I did install it twice because I thought that I did something wrong the first time. So now, that desktop machine is just a brick. Can't get to Sabayon, or to Windows Vista. Grub supposedly was to be installed on the Linux MBR. The desktop is dual booting with two separate hard drives. Is this repair doable, or should I just chuck out Sabayon, and move on? The latest Sabayon 5.2_64 version was to replace an older working version of Sabayon.

I need someone to give me step-by-step directions on how to fix this. I'm lost when it comes to GRUB (especially the newer version), and quite disappointed. This GRUB occurance was really unexpected.

[Fitzcarraldo]

I assume you are trying to dual boot with Windows Vista or Windows 7? I believe your problem has occurred because a) you should not have installed the boot loader to the MBR, you should have installed it on the partition containing /boot, (this is an Installer option during the installation process) and b) the boot sector has been overwritten by Grub. You would have had the same problem irrespective of whether the Linux distribution uses Grub1 or Grub2. Installing Linux with Windows Vista or 7 is not straightforward, and is more complicated if Linux is installed after Windows Vista/7. One procedure to follow for a guaranteed dual boot with Vista or Windows 7 is given in the post Re: Questions about installation of Sabayon w/ Windows 7. I know it works because that is how I did it.

I believe you need to repair your MBR and boot sector, and possibly the BCD too. For that you will need your Windows Vista/7 installation/repair disk. I have not had to do this myself, but my suggestion would be to get Windows up and running first and then reinstall Linux using the procedure I linked to above.

Google throws up pages on repairing the MBR, boot sector and BCD; here's one of the many: How To: Repair And Restore Windows Vista Master Boot Record (MBR). As I wrote, you will need to have your Windows Vista/7 installation or repair DVD to do this.

[onederer]

Greetings!

Thank you for your reply. And now the details:
Yes, I am dual booting. But for years, I've used two separate hard drives for Windows and Linux. This way of one OS dies, I still have the other that can be used (usually, but not this time). I did choose this time, installing GRUB in it's Linux MBR section. Since I'm using the GUI installer, I have to way to see what operation is happening when GRUB gets installed by the Installer program. This is the way that I've done with the latest versions of other OS's, without any problems, with GRUB2. But this time, I did see a message that menu.?? was missing. However when I put the live DVD in the broken machine (DVD drive still works, and boots up

Please disregard this post. It was unintentionally posted by accident. The full reply is in the following post. The laptop's touch pad is way too sensitive, and sometimes give me weird results to the slightest light accidental touch! Thanks!

[Fitzcarraldo]

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that you have Vista installed on /dev/sda and Linux installed on /dev/sdb, and that during the installation of Linux, in the appropriate Installer window you selected to install the Grub2 boot sector to the MBR of /dev/sdb. Well, I don't have your setup so I can only speculate, but I think my original post is still applicable, viz. you need to use the Vista installation disk to modify the boot sector and MBR on /dev/sda to be ignorant of anything on /dev/sdb and just boot Vista on /dev/sda. Once you have booted into Vista, I would download and install EasyBCD (must be the Beta 2 version for Linux with Grub2) and then run it to set up your /dev/sda boot loader to launch Grub2. EasyBCD can configure dual boot installations with mutiple disks and partitions.

Once you have used EasyBCD to set this all up, what should happen, as it does on my PC, is that the PC boots the Windows boot manager, which offers you a menu with two choices: boot Windows or boot Linux. If you select the latter then it would launch Grub (Grub2 if your Linux distribution uses that) on /dev/sdb and you get the familiar Grub menu where you select the version of Linux you want to boot.

[onederer]

Greetings!

Thank you for your reply. And now the details:

Yes, I am dual booting. But for years, I've used two separate hard drives for Windows and Linux. This way if one OS dies, I still have the other that can be used (usually, but not this time because of dead GRUB). I did choose this time, installing GRUB in it's Linux MBR section. The first attempt, I chose the /boot sector, but that was bad also. Since I'm using the GUI installer, I have no way to see what operation is happening when GRUB gets installed by the Installer program. This is the way that I've done with the latest versions of other OS's, without any problems, with GRUB2. But this time, I did see a message that menu.?? was missing. However when I put the live DVD in the broken machine (DVD drive still works, and boots up), I still found and saw menu.?? was there, and it had a link pointing to grub.conf . But it also told me that Grub.conf, doesn't exist. Funny, I couldn't see Grub.conf in the Konsole terminal, but I did find it when I used a GUI file manager. It was a binary file. Not that easy to read or make heads or tails out of it. I tried to install a new version of Grub, in the installed Sabayon drive, but that failed. Also, this time when I ran the "live" version, it didn't automatically mount and display the box's hard drives on the desktop. This made it harder to see which designation that Grub had assigned each drive. I finally spotted the Windows drive, and the Linux drive was designated as "%". That was not very helpful. With my setup, I'm not messing with Windows at all (this is the same way that I did with my laptop). With the laptop, Grub, got installed on an external 320GB USB hard drive's MBR. It manages the menu to choose between Windows or Linux. If I unplug the USB hard drive, then Windows boots up normally, with no Grub needed to get it started.
My only conclusion, is that Grub is corrupt. And I don't know that much about the underpinnings of Grub to take it to the limit of good operation. I would be interested in taking GRUB from another distro that I know works. But I need step-by-step to do this. And, evidently, the way that you had installed GRUB was with a single hard drive with Windows living on it. I didn't go that route. I love to keep 2 OS's separate!

I hope that this clarifies some things. I highly appreciate your come-back. Now, where do we go from here? If I can't succeed, I'll have no choice but to dump Sabayon, even though I like it very much, for another distro that can handle a graphic installation. The prior working version of Sabayon, didn't present this kind of problem. It was installed the exact same way as this newest version. I expected no problems with the latest version of Sabayon, considering that it should have been much better than the older version that I intended to replace.

I currently run the latest version of PCLinuxOS in the laptop. Grub was totally installed by the OS's GUI installation program. No intervention on my part. No special deviations to get it running. The installer took care of the whole thing. Oh, I don't have a Windows installation disk. Vendors are too cheap in our days. They install a Windows factory version on a separate partition of the Windows hard drive. And that setup basically is designed to install the whole OS if the previous version went bad.

Cheers!

[Fitzcarraldo]

You must have inadvertently submitted your post before completing it, as your complete reply has now been posted. Anyway, as I said in my second post, my recommendation would still be to try to use EasyBCD to set up the BCD in Vista to display a menu to launch Grub/Grub2 which will then let you select your distribution. I don't boot from multiple disks, so that it the limit of my advice. But were I in your position I would try it to see. If you choose not to try what I am suggesting, perhaps someone who has installed SL 5.2 with Windows Vista on a multi-disk PC will read this thread and be able to advise you.

[onederer]

You must have inadvertently submitted your post before completing it, as your complete reply has now been posted. Anyway, as I said in my second post, my recommendation would still be to try to use EasyBCD to set up the BCD in Vista to display a menu to launch Grub/Grub2 which will then let you select your distribution. I don't boot from multiple disks, so that it the limit of my advice. But were I in your position I would try it to see. If you choose not to try what I am suggesting, perhaps someone who has installed SL 5.2 with Windows Vista on a multi-disk PC will read this thread and be able to advise you.

Thanks!

I'm thinking of disconnecting or ripping out the Linux hard drive and then booting that machine. Windows has not been messed with at all, and therefore, should bootup. The Windows' MBR is totally intact. It's the bad GRUB that's preventing the machine from currently coming up. I'm still wondering why you would mess with Windows when it still is intact i.e.BCD. There was nothing wrong with Windows with the prior version of Sabayon. And I made sure that when I selected the hard drive to install Linux again, it was the correct one. I'm using the same principle as the laptop's Linux installation. Windows doesn't get touched at all. I need a fully functioning boot-loader, with a GUI OS selection menu. Too bad that I wasn't given the choice of keeping the old GRUB. At least it was working!

Cheers!

[Fitzcarraldo]

I'm still wondering why you would mess with Windows when it still is intact i.e.BCD.

Well, Windows Vista/7 is not something I'm particularly familiar with, but I think that even if the BCD is intact, EasyBCD simply edits it to get the Windows boot loader to jump to a Grub/Grub2 boot loader on a disk and partition of choice. On my previous laptop, where I dual-booted Windows XP with SL, when I switched on the laptop it went straight to the Grub menu. Now, on Windows 7 (Vista is the same) and by using EasyBCD to edit the BCD in the Windows 7 partition, I get two boot loader menus instead of one, as I mentioned earlier: first the Windows boot loader appears and offers me a menu of OSs to load. If I do nothing or select Windows 7 then that is booted; if I select a Linux distribution then the Windows boot loader launches the Grub boot launcher which gives me the usual Grub menu to select things from. It's better this way than the old way, because if my Linux installation or Grub boot loader gets corrupted for any reason, I can still boot into Windows.

[PennyRoyal]

Hope it is ok to jump in here. I too am having issues with the new 5.2 64bit release. Grub2 is not installing if you choose to install it onto the root partition (NOT MBR). I have burnt 3 discs on 3 different computers. All are good burns. All produce the same results. Installation seems to go along just fine. Finish, reboot and no grub. I have seen similar posts the last couple days.

I have 2 HDs in my computer. I have Windows XP, Windows 7, and 8 (yes eight) different Linux distros installed and running. I boot to Grub which is installed on it's own partition and chainload to individual partitions. Sabayon is my default OS and was running perfect for me until I reformated to install 5.2. I think there is definately a bug here and I hope a fix or reworked iso comes along soon. As for now... I'm just waiting... causeI love sabayon...

Penny

[Fitzcarraldo]

^That is interesting. In my simpler case with one HDD (/dev/sda), when I selected in the Linux Installer to install the Grub2 boot loader to the Linux boot partition instead of the MBR, Grub2 was correctly installed on /dev/sda3 (/boot) and not the MBR. So perhaps this is a problem with the Linux Installer. I suggest one of you file a bug report (the link Bugs on the top right of this page) so that the SL developers can take a look at it.