bootloader blues

[Jimmy Montague]

This is the death of the bootloader blues thread, folks. My bootloader 
problem has been solved by Tim. Thanks and a tip of the hat to all who 
offered advice and twice to Tim for his hundred-proof solution.

*    I booted from the CD into rescue mode (F5 key at menu)
*    At the command prompt, I typed "chroot /mnt/sysimage <enter>"
*    "root (hd1,0) <enter>"
*    "find (hd1,0) /grub/stage1 <enter>"
*     "setup (hd0) <enter>"
*    "quit <enter>"
*    Out of Grub, back at the command prompt, I ejected the CD and 
rebooted the machine. Grub came up just as it should have done in the 
first place. I can now boot into FC5 (default) or "other" (which is what 
the Grub menu calls Windows).

Thanks again to Tim and to everyone who contributed.

Jimmy


Tim wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-04-13 at 14:15 -0500, Jimmy Montague wrote:
>   
>> Sorry: I can't decipher the MAN page.
>>     
>
> I found "man grub" to be next to useless on each Fedora Core Linux that
> I've tried, but the *full* manual is available as an info file:
>
> info grub
>
>   
>> I don't know how to copy bootloader to the MBR of the Windoze drive..
>>
>> When I ran fdisk -l, as you suggested, here is the result:
>>
>> Disk/dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40027029504 bytes
>> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track/ 4866 cylinders
>> units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
>>
>> Disk/dev/hdb: 40.0 GB, 40027029504 bytes
>> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track/ 4866 cylinders
>> units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
>>
>> Device    Boot   Start   End    Blocks       Id   System
>> dev/hda1    *        1  4865    39078081      7   HPFS/NTFS
>>
>> dev/hdb1    *        1    13      104391     83   Linux
>> dev/hdb2            14  4866   38981722+     8e   Linux LVM
>>     
>
> Looks the same as a friend's foray into FC5, and he had a similar
> problem (after installation, it booted straight into Windows, without
> any GRUB menu, despite being told to install GRUB to the MBR of the
> first, Windows, drive during the installation routine).  I think this
> (below) is the procedure I used to fix things up.  It's a while since I
> did it, and didn't note precisely what I did.
>
>      1. Booted a rescue disc.
>      2. Entered the command "grub" (we're now are in a command line
>         interface shell for GRUB).  I may have had to chroot into
>         the /mnt/sysimage, but I cannot remember.  You'll soon know if
>         you have to, if there's no response to the grub command.
>      3. Entered "root (hd1,0)" (setting the boot drive and partition for
>         where most of GRUB, and the system kernel files
>         are:  /dev/hdb1).
>      4. Entered "find (hd1,0)/grub/stage1" (the first file GRUB uses to
>         boot up from).  (This step may not be necessary, but should
>         demonstrate that the required file is where it's needed.)
>      5. Entered "setup (hd0)" (to install the bootloader to the drive my
>         system BIOS boots up).
>      6. Entered "quit" (to properly exit from the GRUB command line
>         interface shell).
>
> (Example commands shown between the quotes, just type what's inside
> them, don't also type the quotes.)
>
> If all goes well, you'll install the first stage of GRUB into the MBR of
> the drive your motherboard boots from, and set up the other stages of
> GRUB (and its menu) correctly in the boot partition of your Linux drive.
> Now, when you boot, you use GRUB to determine which system to boot up.
>
> Alternatively, some people use the Windows bootloader, adding in the
> files needed for it to switch over to the other (Linux) drive.  I've not
> tried that, so can't offer any tips.
>
>