restore computer and reinstall grub

[John Austin]

On Mon, 2005-08-15 at 12:50 +0800, Edward Dekkers wrote:
> Antonio Olivares wrote:
> > Dear Kind Folks,
> >    I was experimenting with an external USB hard drive
> > and installed fedora 4 on it.  I followed the advice
> > given on some emails from this list.  I must have
> > screwed up somewhere.  Upon running installation I
> > selected linux expert nohd and ran diskdrake with
> > /boot partition=100MB, linux-swap partition=768MB
> > 2xRAM, and / partition rest of space.  I selected all
> > packages and made a complete install.  The internel
> > disk which original fedora was installed had several
> > partitions and /boot/grub/grub.conf had root(hd0,2)
> > and when I tried to boot it leaving USB connected it
> > gave (hd1,0).
> > 
> > I disconnected the USB drive and tried again.
> > 
> > 
> > Upon reboot, I encounter the following message
> > 
> > root(hd1,0)
> > Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
> > kernel vmlinux-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb
> > quiet
> >    [Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1e00, size=0x18e473]
> > initrd /initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.img
> >    [Linux-initrd @ 0x18de1f000c, 0x1a0e53 bytes]
> > 
> > Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.
> > Red Hat Nash version 4.2.15 starting
> >   Reading all physical volumes this may take a while
> >   Found volume group "VolGroup00" using metadata type
> > lvm2
> >   2 logical volume(s) in Volume Group "VolumeGroup00"
> > now active
> > 
> > mkrootdev:  label / not found
> > mount:  error 2 mounting ext3
> > ERROR opening /dev/console!!!!:2
> > error dup2'ing fd of 0 to 0
> > error dup2'ing fd of 0 to 1
> > error dup2'ing fd of 0 to 2
> > switchroot:  mount failed: 22
> > kernel panic - not syncing:  Attempted to kill init!
> > 
> > I popped in install cd and ran linux rescue to restore
> > grub file using 
> > # chroot /mnt/sysimage 
> > but could not remember how to restore grub to boot
> > original fedora installed on hard drive.
> > 
> > Advice, suggestions, and comments are greatly
> > appreciated.
> > 
> > Also please give advice to make USB hard drive boot on
> > its own to run on different computers taking the
> > system wherever I go.  I messed up somewhere and would
> > like to rectify.  
> > 
> > Thanks in advance,
> > 
> > Antonio
> 
> Without the USB drive connected, shouldn't your grub be booting hd0? - 
> not hd1?
> 
> Try editing the grub line to boot /dev/hd0 instead.
> 
> In my opinion, I most definitely would have disconnected the internal 
> drive before doing all this to make sure nothing could get written to it.
> 
> I know this does not help now.
> 
> Regards,
> Ed.
Hi
If you have a working grub prompt available during the boot sequence
then use grub interactively (using the TAB character) and try and
discover which disk grub thinks is which.

When you are sure then try the following
where x, y, p and q are sensible !!!!
The x and y are as understood by grub eg (hd0,1)
The p and q are as understood by Linux eg /dev/hda2 say or /dev/sda2 say
for ext USB disk

The path may need to be (hdx,y)/boot/vmlinuz-... if only two partitions
(root and swap) are used. 

kernel (hdx,y)/vmlinuz-... ro root=/dev/hdpq
initrd (hdx,y)/initrd-...
boot

Do not bother with grub.conf until you get a successful boot
Just boot interactively

John

I assume you have been reading
http://www.vigla.eclipse.co.uk/