A new 12.2 Gnome LiveCD install here is not booting, instead producing this message:
“error: file ‘/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod’ not found”
“grub rescue”
The first reboot during install failed with this message, as well.
I can boot off the drive via the CD.
The machine has multiple drives. All of /dev/sda is the root partition. That’s where the boot loader should be.
Running “Boot Loader” from YAST I saw this:
/dev/sda was flagged as the boot drive.
/dev/sdf (another drive, with the swap partition at the beginning of the disk) was also flagged for boot and /dev/sdf was shown as the boot drive in the options section of Boot Loader.
Inspection showed the the grub2 files were located on in /boot on /dev/sda, and no grub2 files were configured on /dev/sdf, despite what the Boot Loader option screen was reporting.
I removed the incorrect boot flag from /dev/sdf and reconfigured the options correctly. The reboot still fails.
The installation did not offer a boot loader configuration screen.
Why am I seeing grub errors when, presumably, 12.2 does not use it??
(I just had to edit this to remove a <br> tag at the end of every line. What’s that about?)
Now you might just have a typo, but if this file (normal.mod) is not present, then the installation failed either because of a PC problem or due to a install media problem. openSUSE uses folders called Grub and Grub2 because we allow you to install Grub 2, the default or Grub Legacy and due to many similar and identical files names, it was decided to move the new Grub 2 to a Grub2 folder and separate from Grub Legacy. The best I could suggest is to download and burn the installation CD again and try a new install of openSUSE 12.2.
Reinstalled successfully with that same CD. The installer was, inexplicably, seeing an MBR on /dev/sdf and configuring based on that. I changed the location of the boot loader to /dev/sda from the installation summary.
This machine is obviously unusual: 6 drives in it. But, since manual partitioning leaves you pretty much on your own, I’d like to see that portion of the installer routine allow you to set up the boot loader manually.
Well first and foremost, you got a good installation and that is what counts. As for manual, you can get manual if you 1) Do a custom Partition, not based on any suggestions & 2) You modify the settings from default in the Booting section. I can also say that I am not sure that the Grub 2 installation will actually place a generic boot code in the MBR as instructed. Its a problem when nothing was there before (new drive or not the normal boot drive) and you don’t place the Grub boot loader into the MBR on purpose. When using the /dev/sda drive on a system that already booted, the fact that no generic code gets copied is not a problem, because something is already there. For anyone new to the Grub 2 boot loader, here is a bash script you might find useful.