Installed Sabayon, cannot boot [Solved]

[kjlamkin]

Also worth mentioning that sabayon is not ubuntu, we do not use sudo, we use su, a lot of the commands used in sabayon are chained commands of which sudo will only implement the first of leaving you with a broken incomplete command.

Thanks for the heads up...that is good info to know.

Try this, load the live dvd and when it has finished loading

I followed your instructions directly. Still didn't work. I am left with the word "GRUB' with a blinking "_" after rebooting.

Below is a chunk of the grub.conf file that I was able to open. Do I need to create a /boot partition? When formatting my hard drive, I chose "/" as the Mount Point. When in the LiveDVD Sabayon, my partition with Sabayon installed on it comes up as just "%". My WinXP partition is recognized by Sabayon as being a windows installation. Don't know if any of that is really relevant.

NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,1)
# kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel real_root=/dev/sda2
# initrd /boot/initramfs-genkernel

[Fitzcarraldo]

Don't know if this will help, but have a look at: Gentoo Grub Error Collection.

[joeoden]

When in the LiveDVD Sabayon, my partition with Sabayon installed on it comes up as just "%".

See if there is any files or and folders in % mainly check the folder /boot

NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition.

Run the live dvd and find out what is the output of fdisk -l
Open a terminal (konsole) and type
su
(do not type this, Note you will see)
Password:
(do not type this, just press the Enter key and type)
fdisk -l

For a sample here is the output from the system I'm using today, your output will be different

Code: Select all

sabayon-joe joe # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320071851520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000d81b4

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        2880    23133568+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2            2881       34012   250067790    5  Extended
/dev/sda3           34013       37913    31334782+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4           37914       38913     8032500   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda5            2881        4250    11004493+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6            4251       26297   177092496   83  Linux
/dev/sda7           30189       34012    30716248+  83  Linux
/dev/sda8           26298       30188    31254426   83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order


Do I need to create a /boot partition?

For Linux you need at least 2 extra partitions one for the sabayon root files (/) and one as a swap partition best way to do this is to use gparted which for some reason is not on the Sabayon 5.1 KDE 32bit x86 disc (but is with the gnome edition)

I normally create all my partitions using gparted from the gentoo based SystemRescueCd
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

According to your grub.conf file you have the following partitions
sda1 (this should be you M$ Windows partition)
sda2 (this should be your sabayon partition, and should be the root partition that you selected as /)
sda3 (this should be your swap partition)

So if you look at the output of fdisk -l, you should see at least /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda3
If you do not then your hard disk has not been partitioned correctly

If the output of fdisk -l shows your layout correctly, then the problem could be the boot order of your BIOS

[kjlamkin]

Run the live dvd and find out what is the output of fdisk -l

Here is what fdisk gave me...looks to me like it should be good to go.

Code: Select all

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000001

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1       16708   134206978+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2   *       16709       24357    61440592+  83  Linux
/dev/sda3           24358       24484     1020127+  82  Linux swap / Solaris


As for the boot order; my bios is setup to try to boot from optical drive first, then hard disk. I'm wondering if maybe it is having an issue with the drive size. The bios detects my drive as 137GB, but in reality it is 320. Maybe I need to resize the Windows partition so that both Sabayon and Windows installation partitions total less than the 137GB?

[joeoden]

The bios detects my drive as 137GB, but in reality it is 320

Go to the Sony web site and see if you can download the owners manual to see what you have to do to set your BIOS so that it will see drives larger than 137 GiB there may also be a BIOS download that will fix it

Also try the manufacturer of your hard disk to see what the jumper settings for your drive should be for the correct size, although the fdisk -l command detects the drive as 320 GiB but your BIOS sees it as 137 GiB which could be your problem, but I'm not sure as I do not have any systems with the 137 GiG limitation problem

Have you googled for 137 GiG limit linux (I got Results 1 - 10 of about 498,000 for 137 GiG limit linux. (0.47 seconds)) maybe if you refine the search to your laptop model it should drop the results down a bit

The fdisk -l command shows that you do have /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda3
So all your Sabayon folders should be displayed when you click on % in dolphin (File Manager) you need to see if the following files and folders are in the folder /boot

In dolphin double click boot
You should see 3 files and 2 folders
boot
grub
System.map-genkernel-x86-2.6.31-sabayon
kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.31-sabayon
initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.31-sabayon

The boot is a symlink

There should be about 23 files in the grub directory here is a list from my system using the command line

Code: Select all

[email protected] /boot/grub $ ls
default        grub.conf~         menu.lst           stage2_eltorito
device.map     grub.conf.add      minix_stage1_5     stage2.old
e2fs_stage1_5  grub.conf.old.add  reiserfs_stage1_5  ufs2_stage1_5
fat_stage1_5   grub.conf.remove   splash.xpm.gz      vstafs_stage1_5
ffs_stage1_5   iso9660_stage1_5   stage1             xfs_stage1_5
grub.conf      jfs_stage1_5       stage2


If the above are there, super grub should have worked, unless your BIOS limitation is causing the problem

Have you tried any of suggestions in the link Fitzcarraldo asked you to look at?

[kjlamkin]

Great news! Between the link for Grub errors that Fitzcarraldo gave and the link to the rescue disc that you gave me, I was able to get Grub to work and am now running Sabayon. I think in the end it was indeed the bios limit.

For reference, here is what I did...

Don't know if this will help, but have a look at: Gentoo Grub Error Collection.

From here I was able to find the problem I was having...however I didn't quite understand exactly how to do anything with it since I didn't know how to chroot. So, I searched the Sabayon forums and found this thread, "Big Grub Problems". This was able to show me how to chroot in and fix the grub loaded.

I did all of that and got a little further in Grub. Instead of the "Grub _" appearing, grub tried to load and then gave me "Error 17", which turns out to be a file structure error.

Knowing this, I figured since the files were all there for the Sabayon installation, there should be no reason it wasn't working unless the BIOS was indeed causing the hard drive to only appear as 137 gig. I have been to the Sony website too many times in the years I have owned this laptop and was unable to get a Bios update or any useful information really. Their tech support might as well not even exist.

I normally create all my partitions using gparted from the gentoo based SystemRescueCd
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

Using this rescue disc, I ran gparted and then resized my windows partition to 60gb and made a new 60gb partition for Sabayon. Reinstalled Sabayon and here we are.....system up and running with Grub working perfectly.

Thank you all for all of your help and patience with this!!!