Problem with Grub [Solved]

[BHReach]

Sabayon 5.5 amd64

On boot there is a Welcome to Grub blank screen for 5-10 seconds then

error: no such disk

Then grub boot screen.

In /boot/grub, menu.lst is symlinked to grub.conf. There is no such file. It looks like grub.cfg is the grub configuration file. That might be causing the problem. In any case, the broken link should be fixed.

[Skull Fire]

when you say: "Then grub boot screen" does this mean you see the grub menu and can boot in ?

are you multi booting ?

do you use multiple hard drives ?

what options were selected on the bootloader page of the installer during installation, such as, /dev/sda or /dev/sdb or was a partition choosen, such as /dev/sda4 ?

which, if any, bootloaders were wrote to the mbr before ?

did you create a /boot partition ? or was everything installed to / ?

which partitions are they on ?

what kind of partitions ? primary,extended or logical ?

[BHReach]

when you say: "Then grub boot screen" does this mean you see the grub menu and can boot in ?

yes

are you multi booting ?

no

do you use multiple hard drives ?

no

what options were selected on the bootloader page of the installer during installation, such as, /dev/sda or /dev/sdb or was a partition choosen, such as /dev/sda4 ?

/dev/sda

which, if any, bootloaders were wrote to the mbr before ?

grub (by Sabayon 5.4)

did you create a /boot partition ? or was everything installed to / ?

Selected default so Sabayon 5.5 created the partition table on its own, it created a fixed /boot and lvm for /.

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000a2847

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 1026047 512000 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 1026048 1953523711 976248832 8e Linux LVM

Here are the relevant lines from dmesg:

[ 1.691032] ata1: softreset failed (device not ready)
[ 1.691038] ata1: applying SB600 PMP SRST workaround and retrying
[ 1.846034] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
[ 1.851712] ata1.00: ATA-8: SAMSUNG HD103SJ, 1AJ10004, max UDMA/133
[ 1.851715] ata1.00: 1953525168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA
[ 1.851720] ata1.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd
[ 1.857444] ata1.00: SB600 AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd
[ 1.857448] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[ 1.857624] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA SAMSUNG HD103SJ 1AJ1 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[ 1.857979] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 1953525168 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB)
[ 1.858057] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[ 1.858060] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[ 1.858085] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 1.858290] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0

[Skull Fire]

it seems a little strange to me fdisk list. your /dev/sda1 starting on block 2048 and not starting on block 1. also the size of that same partition seems kind of big, im guessing about 500mb. both of these things should not be a problem, but its real odd starting at 2048 in my opinion, as new partitions are always created at the begining of the disk and work thier way out as more are added.

[Skull Fire]

im not sure what if any problems arise from a 1tb hard drive during installs.

if you don't come up with a better solution, i would consider backing up any data you want to save, and then wiping the hd. for a 1tb it would take you about 3 or 4 days using dd urandom to overwrite the whole disk, lol. maybe 4 or 5 hours with shred. i dont think you need to do the whole disk though. i would begin with dd urandom as i know it will wipe the mbr, i cant remember if shred will. start with dd urandom and follow the progress in 2nd terminal. let it overwrite maybe the first 20 or 30gb to make sure nothing strange is there and then just shutdown/restart. then reinstall. sabayon has no problem reinitializing the disk after being wiped. but sometimes it has issues creating new primary partitions. if you have a problem use fdisk on the live dvd to create new ones first.

to wipe the hard drive you can use a terminal in the sabayon live dvd:

http://wiki.sabayon.org/index.php?title ... eless_data

[BHReach]

im not sure what if any problems arise from a 1tb hard drive during installs.

if you don't come up with a better solution, i would consider backing up any data you want to save, and then wiping the hd. for a 1tb it would take you about 3 or 4 days using dd urandom to overwrite the whole disk, lol. maybe 4 or 5 hours with shred. i dont think you need to do the whole disk though. i would begin with dd urandom as i know it will wipe the mbr, i cant remember if shred will. start with dd urandom and follow the progress in 2nd terminal. let it overwrite maybe the first 20 or 30gb to make sure nothing strange is there and then just shutdown/restart. then reinstall. sabayon has no problem reinitializing the disk after being wiped. but sometimes it has issues creating new primary partitions. if you have a problem use fdisk on the live dvd to create new ones first.

I tried deleting the partitions with cfdisk but got the old error. Used fdisk to delete the partitions.

I see no reason to wipe any more than from the start of the drive to the end of the /boot partition:

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1026047

It took 118 seconds.

#I partition the drive with cfdisk manually.

cfdisk /dev/sda
/dev/sda1 500MB Linux (83) bootable
/dev/sda2 950GB Linux (8e) LVM
/dev/sda3 4GB Linux Swap

While creating /dev/sda1, cfdisk skipped the 1st track.

The installer would not accept cfdisk's swap partition, I had to delete it with the installer's partitioning tool and recreate it. Here is the final result:

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x15f06791

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 979964 489951 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 979965 1945712474 972366255 8e Linux LVM
/dev/sda3 1945712640 1953523711 3905536 82 Linux swap / Solaris

I created the file systems manually.

#Initialize a LVM volume:

pvcreate /dev/sda2

#Create a volume group called vg0:

vgcreate vg0 /dev/sda2

#Create an ext2 filesystem on the boot partition:

mke2fs /dev/sda1

#Create an ext4 filesystem on the LVM volume:
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2

The installation went well and now there is no grub error when booting up.

Sabayon 5.5 installer definitely has a problem partitioning my drive correctly.

[Skull Fire]

thats great. thanks for the detailed information.

edit: i also think wiping till the end of /boot was enough. i just didnt know exactly where that was, as it was starting on cylinder 2048 and not starting 1. i see it's greatly improved now as you are starting on 63. a little odd, still not on 1 yet, but i'll take it . by wiping , it eats everything on the disk from mbr to cylinder 1 and continues toward the last cylinder.

on my hd's if /boot is on the first partition it looks a little like this:

start 1, end 13, 102000 blocks which equal about 100mb.