I just bought a new 500gig SATA disk to replace the 80 gig PATA that I am using now, but I am having some trouble getting the new one to boot. I copied the partitions with Gparted and set my boot partition flag on the new disk, and changed my fstab file on the new disk. I modified the grub menu.lst file to change my disk settings and ran grub setting the root (hd0) and setup (hd0) options and all this ran successfully.
I really have two problems, grub says that its loading stage 1.5 and then gives an error 2 message. Thats a cant find file error, but I dont know what it could be. When using super grub I load the list and it boots the kernel, but for some reason it wont see my hd when I set it by id, or by the sda1 option. Anybody know whats going on? I dont really want to reinstall everything, but would really like to get to this new drive. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Bryce
Hello bryceanderson2, welcome to the Forums.
Could be many things. Can you post the result of “fdisk -l” as root user please and tell us what the various partitions are being used for.
Please also post the fstab and the menu.lst so we can sort of integrate it in our minds.
And have you tried the option “Repair Installed System” on the install DVD?
My menu.lst is as follows
##########################################################
Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Thu Sep 11 08:22:45 MDT 2008
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,0)/boot/message
##YaST - activate
###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.0 - 2.6.25.16-0.1
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25.16-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD800BB-00CWD-WMA8E4970310-part2 resume=/dev/sda1 splash=silent showopts vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.25.16-0.1-default
###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe – openSUSE 11.0 - 2.6.25.16-0.1
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25.16-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD800BB-00CWD-WMA8E4970310-part2 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume edd=off x11failsafe vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.25.16-0.1-default
###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.0 - 2.6.25.16-0.1 newdisk
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25.16-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Hitachi_HDP7250_GEA530RF05T8SA-part1 resume=/dev/sdb1 splash=silent showopts vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.25.16-0.1-default
###########################################################
The bottom entry is the one that I setup to boot the new disk.
The fdisk -l looks like this
#################################################
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000862e6
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 262 2104483+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 * 263 2873 20972857+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 2874 9729 55070820 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000479b7
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 10215 82051956 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 10216 20433 82076085 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 20434 60801 324255960 83 Linux
################################################
For good measure, this is my fstab
#################################################
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD800BB-00CWD-WMA8E4970310-part1 swap defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Hitachi_HDP7250_GEA530RF05T8SA-part1 / ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Hitachi_HDP7250_GEA530RF05T8SA-part2 /home ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 2
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
###########################################
My old disk still contains my swap partition, I hear that its faster? I hope this helps… I dont ever remember my grub saying that it was starting stage 1.5 and have no idea where to go on that. My menu.lst file seems to work using super grub…
Thanks for the help.
Bryce
In your fdisk you have the root partition on the 500Gb drive like so:
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Hitachi_HDP7250_GEA530RF05T8SA-part1 / ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 1
Which is partition 1 of drive 2; i.e. it’s sdb2
But in your menu.lst you have it addressed like this:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25.16-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD800BB-00CWD-WMA8E4970310-part2
Which is the second partition of I don’t know what drive, probably the 80Gb drive. So that’s wrong.
I suggest that you use the install DVD and its “Repair Installed System” facility to install a new bootloader as the first step.
Hi swerdna,
thanks for the help. I know must of the entries in menu.lst have it as the partition on my old disk, the WD disk but the last one doesn’t. That is the entry that I made just to get it working and then will copy its settings onto the rest once it boots.
I’ll give the DVD restore business a try and see if that helps. I guess I need to download it first, i installed from one of those live disks.
Any other help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Bryce
You can easily fix menu.lst from the Live-CD. All you need to do is mount the root partition, run a text editor, open /boot/grub/menu.lst, and edit it. If you wish, we can provide instructions.
If you use the DVD Repair System Boot Loader module, before you finish, click on the Other button lower right and then on Edit Configuration Files. You can see the change to menu.lst there. If it’s not right, you can edit it right there. This module does not work identically to the YaST module, and it has an unpleasant quirk of occasionally borking menu.lst.
So if you’re downloading the DVD then “the die is cast” for you to try the “Repair Installed System”. Use the Automatic option because you have filesystem problems and Auto is good at sorting those out. Also make sure it installs a new bootloader too because it’s good at that too. Then if it still won’t work, I suggest you use the DVD to reinstall but if you do reinstall, first take some advice from here on the partitioning because I don’t much like the way you created the partitions on the new 500Gb drive and transferred the /home to it.
Well after being sick of not using my new HD, or just bit the bullet and did a fresh install of suse 11 gnome edition from the live cd. (I know… im impatient…) It solved that boot loader business just fine. I dont know what was going on with it, maybe the world will never know…
I kept the swap on my old disk and left the partitions the way I had them… What dont you like about my configuration swerdna? I like having the /home as a different partition because every time that I want to do a fresh install, Im not as concerned about backing up anything because its on a different partition anyway. That way I just have to make sure it gets remounted as /home and I can start right where I left off. I am curious what you do though, please tell…
I am pretty new to this linux business. I started about 2 months ago because I thought my windows partition table got killed by partition magic, and I didnt have a Windows disk handy and needed my computer the next day. Suse 10.3 was handy so threw that in, and here I am a open source convert… I plan on staying with it for now, too cheap to buy a new copy of Vista…
I didn’t express myself properly. I was concerned about the failure of the filesystem check, not the concept of having a separate /home partition. I fully endorse the concept of having a separate /home partition. And regarding the filesystem problem, I think that was probably fixed by formatting during the reinstallation. So no worries now.