No Boot Menu After Installation [Solved]

[joshi.rohya]

Hi,

I just downloaded Sabayon 4.1 GNOME, and started an installation, everything went well but after a reboot, all i had was a GRUB Console, no error codes though.

DSC01199.JPG

To provide some background, I'm having this problem with all Linux Installation, so obviously there's something wrong with the some setting(I feel its BIOS settings) i think, but i just cant fix it. This problem started after i got a new Motherboard (Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2HP AMD780G chipset). Here's my Hardware config for your reference,
1. AMD Athlon X2
2. 3GB RAM
3. Western Digital SATA HDD (have set to Native IDE Mode)
4. Samsung SATA HDD(have set to Native IDE Mode)

Board has a Primary IDE Channel and is disabled. (tried installing with Enabled Mode but same problem).

As I have dualboot with WinXP on using fixMBR from recovery console after reboot it throws a Partition table Error. This wasnt the case before. FixMbr used to work just fine for me.

Please help me out as its Driving me nuts. I wanna installl Sabayon 4.1.

[WarraWarra]

Easiest is boot from 4.1 gnome dvd and select install then let it fix the boot menu.

[joshi.rohya]

HI,

I'm still facing the same problem. Anyone please help me out here...

[WarraWarra]

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/h ... ull=1#grub

This is what I do if grub gets confused.
(hd0,0) = 1st hard drive 1st partition
(hd0) 1st hard drive MBR
Example as 0 =1st and 1 = 2nd,
European counting = ground floor then 1st floor,
USA = 1st floor=ground floor , 2nd floor = 1st level above ground = confusing so linux counts European style.
Example:
hd7,3 = 8th hard drive, 4th partition or /dev/sdh4

1:
Boot live dvd.

2:
Once logged in open terminal and type live dvd root password

su
passwd:
root

3:
Get partition layout

fdisk -l
Example of partition layout:
/dev/sda1 = 128mb /boot
/dev/sda2 = 2048 swap
/dev/sda3 = rest of hd = / or root

4:
Then mount partitions.

mkdir /mnt/gentoo
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/gentoo
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/boot
swapon /dev/sda2

5:
Get correct layout to /etc/mtab of partitions.

grep -v rootfs /proc/mounts > /etc/mtab

6:
You can either use grub-install or grub

grub-install --recheck /dev/sda
grub-install /dev/sda

OR

grub

grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)

What happens here =
grub-install --recheck /dev/sda
This will check current config or 1st hard drive.
grub-install /dev/sda
This will install to 1st hard drive MBR grub according to "grep -v rootfs /proc/mounts > /etc/mtab"
or listing as is now in /etc/mtab so /etc/mtab = auto genenrated = should be good.

7:
Now check /boot/grub/grub.conf

nano /boot/grub/grub.conf

Example:

title Sabayon Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel (hd0,0)/kernel-9.4.2500 root=/dev/sda3 vga=791 volume=1% res=1440x900 xdriver=nvidia eth=xxx dodhcp and-alot-off-other-options -or-cheat-codes-as-you-feel-is-good
initrd /something-something-something

title Windows
chainloader+1

8:
If good then press ctrl+x to exit or y or n to yes or no for save and exit.

9:
Reboot


Most of the time the errors you can get = Houston "/boot" where is she, we can not find her, did Mr. Scotty beam her up to the enterprise arrgh.

Or

grep -v rootfs /proc/mounts > /etc/mtab
This one writes known or mounted to /etc/mtab and how what and where that is important for grub to figure out what is going on so it can do the install.

If /etc/mtab is empty or confused then grub will be confused but might still work during grub install.

[WarraWarra]

If this above does not work then your bios or usb hd is changed by the bios from 1st to 2nd hard drive or something like this and should be listed in correct order by fdisk -l

If bios is changing this then check bios settings or if possible download and update the bios to latest version and then see and try again.

[joshi.rohya]

Thanks a lot! Will try out this today.

[joshi.rohya]

Hi,

I just changed my SATA HDD config in BIOS to AHCI (it was set to Native IDE), and I was greeted by the Grub Menu, I didnt even try fixing GRUB, just changed the mode and VOILA! though XP denied booting.

Thank you guys for ur help...

[joeoden]

Yes you can have sata and ide in the same system

Only thing to watch out for is that you have the boot order setup correctly in
your BIOS, the default for older motherboards is ide
Best thing to do is refer to your motherboard manual if you are not sure

If it is set to ide 1st (and you don't have that option in BIOS) then computer will boot from the ide and not your sata, but that can be fixed by installing grub to the ide and changing the setting in the grub.conf file

Have fun
Joe


MODERATOR EDIT: This post was in reply to a post that has now been deleted as it was posted by a spammer who added spam links later.