Immediately after the grub menu disappears I get the following error msg:
Error 18 Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS.
Sometimes the grub options come up again (in Text mode) …all works fine
Sometimes just start via “Failsafe”, reboot…all works fine.
What is happening here and what would be the right procedure to avoid this happening again.
Thanks and cheers
Otto
I suggest you open up a terminal session, type in su and the root password and then the command fdisk -l:
su
password:
fdisk -l
Capture the output and post it here. When you capture text it is best to highlight the whole thing in your message here and then press the code option in the editor (#). That keeps the editor from modifying it and allowing for large amounts of text to take less room in your message. That is what I am using in this message.
It would also be nice to see your Grub menu.lst file and device.map file. To read and capture these use the KDE Run Command.
kdesu kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst
kdesu kwrite /boot/grub/device.map
Be careful here as kwrite will allow you to edit these files and we only want to know what they contain.
I found a grub error listing and 18 does not match up to yours as shown at:
Then, I did find it elsewhere and the problem had something to do with booting from an external hard drive. Oddly, I do this all of the time with openSUSE. I don’t know what is wrong in your case, but perhaps the above files will help find the problem. I am hoping it does not indicate a hard drive problem.
Thank You,
Hi there,
The previous suggestions by jdmcdaniel3 might yield some additional information, and can be accomplished by booting with the install / Live CD which will allow you to run fdisk, mount the drive and access the menu.1st files - however I really think your issue lies in other areas, almost certainly related to BIOS limitations.
Is this an older PC? How old? How large of drive is this? I am suspecting this is a pretty old PC and the BIOS is unable to read the kernel beyond cylinder 1023 - this was a very, very common issue in the early days of Linux, and why (to this day) many people and distros still create a separate /boot partition - though there are other reasons to have this, it is largely un-needed these days. But perhaps necessary in yours.
Also, did you take this drive out of another computer and put it in this one? Was it booting correctly before, or is this a new install?
Please see these two links which provide a fair amount of into on this error and possible reasons:
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/GRUB
http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wiki/GrubError18
Lews Therin
Hi here is
192-168-1-3:/ # fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0003f772
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 3265 26217472 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 3265 60802 462168064 fd Linux raid autodetect
Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000f36de
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 3265 26217472 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2 3265 60802 462168064 fd Linux raid autodetect
Disk /dev/sda: 150.0 GB, 150039945216 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 18241 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0007cce6
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2611 20971520 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 2611 3916 10482688 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 3916 18242 115067904 83 Linux
Disk /dev/md0: 473.3 GB, 473259958272 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 115541982 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8 * 512 = 4096 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Disk /dev/md0 doesn't contain a valid partition table
(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd1) /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_6VM0M1CS
(hd0) /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD1500HLFS-01G6U1_WD-WX51C10P0408
(hd2) /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_6VM0DB6G
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Sun Aug 1 10:11:45 EST 2010
# THIS FILE WILL BE PARTIALLY OVERWRITTEN by perl-Bootloader
# Configure custom boot parameters for updated kernels in /etc/sysconfig/bootloader
default 0
timeout 8
##YaST - generic_mbr
gfxmenu (hd0,0)/boot/message
##YaST - activate
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.3
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD1500HLFS-01G6U1_WD-WX51C10P0408-part1 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD1500HLFS-01G6U1_WD-WX51C10P0408-part2 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x346
initrd /boot/initrd
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: floppy###
title Floppy
rootnoverify (fd0)
chainloader +1
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.3
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD1500HLFS-01G6U1_WD-WX51C10P0408-part1 showopts apm=off noresume edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 nomodeset x11failsafe vga=0x346
initrd /boot/initrd
Thanks for looking at that
Sort of solved it
This morning it did not boot at all. Grub menu did not appear.
The Hardware is about 2 years old. The Gigabyte Motherboard has a dual Bios. So I could easily reload the defaults, set the boot sequence and it worked. What I found was that the bios stores the last 4 (that was displayed) successful boots.
What I suspect is, when you do a number of installs (which I did), the bios runs out of space. There may be other reasons. If anyone has an idea, I would be interested to know.
Thanks for the comments and help!
Cheers
Otto
Well otto_oz, if your system is working properly, then that is a good thing. Looking at your posts do not show anything obvious that is wrong. It appears you are booting from /dev/sda1 (ata-WDC_WD1500HLFS-01G6U1_WD-WX51C10P0408) with three partitions. /sda2 is swap and /dev/sda3 may be your /home folder. /dev/sdb & /dev/sdc, each 500 GB may be part of a raid drive which shows up as something else, but I can’t tell from this information. As for /dev/md0, not sure, but fdisk does not think that it is a valid drive partition. When you are in openSUSE, how many partitions do you have files on?
Thank You,
On 2010-08-06 23:36, jdmcdaniel3 wrote:
> As for
> /dev/md0, not sure, but fdisk does not think that it is a valid drive
> partition. When you are in openSUSE, how many partitions do you have
> files on?
No, it says that the raid setup does not contain partitions itself, which is perfectly normal.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” GM (Elessar))