Hi All, I’m a OpenSuse newbie, but a linux user for several years. I’m currently using PCLinuxOS as my main distro and have 2 installs. I’ve decided to give OpenSuse a try to checkout KDE4 and try a 64bit distro.
I downloaded and burned the DVD, checksum ok. I installed to an existing partition with a reformat, and accidently had Suse overwrite my MBR grub. Nothing would boot, so after much futzing I booted into PCLOS and reinstalled grub.
I reckoned if Suse put a grub in my MBR, there probably wasn’t one in the root partition. So I used the DVD to reinstall the bootloader to the Suse root and copied the Suse menu.lst entry to my main grub, still no boot. I keep getting error 2 file not found.
Here is my fdisk…
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2550 20482843+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 2551 3060 4096575 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 3061 13258 81915435 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 13259 30402 137703699 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 13259 14277 8185086 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 14278 15570 10385991 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 * 15571 16889 10594836 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 16890 30402 108537660 83 Linux
Here is my OpenSuse menu.lst entry
###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.0
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD2500JS-60_WD-WCANKA492703-part7 splash=silent showopts
initrd /boot/initrd
and another piece of the puzzle… grub doesn’t see the stage1 for the Suse install…
There seems to be some inconsistencies between your Open Suse stanza in menu.lst and the boot record of the partition where grub stage1 code is installed.
According to menu.lst, /dev/sda7 (hd0,6) is your root partition.
However, grub stage1 code was installed in the boot record of /dev/sda6 (hd0,5).
Are you sure /dev/sda7 is the root one?
Have you tried booting from /dev/sda6 by modifying the Open Suse entry like this?
###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.0 root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD2500JS-60_WD-WCANKA492703-part6 splash=silent showopts
initrd /boot/initrd
You can also type e after selecting the Open Suse menu line. That will put you in edit mode, so that you can modify the root and kernel line with the devices until you get the correct ones.
To quit edit mode and boot the modified OS, press b.
Once you have identified the right root device, edit menu.lst to make the change permanent.
It is no necessary to install grub in any other partition as far as you control the boot process of your installed OSes from a central menu.lst configuration, like in your case.
To find out what is really happening, get a grub command line prompt at boot time as I suggested in my first post, but this time pressing ‘c’
(Complete the commands with the right release string, don´t use the symbolic links, they might be broken)
Assuming /dev/sda7 is the root partition of your Open Suse Os, the above commands should run without a problem.
If you get messages, then, something went really bad at the time of installation. If you get errors, then, the kernel or the initrd, is probably not there.
In that last case, try to boot in rescue mode. Once the rescue environment is set, mount the /dev/sda7 partition and doublecheck that everything is in place. Verify that all the objects needed to boot the OS are there.
If not there, mount and check in other partitions.
I’m back with the same issue. I thought perhaps my install media was problematic, so I downloaded the kde live cd and burned it at 4X. Checksum ok after every step.
Once again I’ve done the install to my sda7, not overwriting my MBR.
I’m getting the same issues as my first post
I’ve cut and pasted the grub stanza from my OpenSuse install to my sda1 menu.lst as is my usual practice and I get file not found. When I try and use the edit functions from grub the vmlinuz files aren’t found, but if I mount that partition from another install, they are there…
Have you tried installing grub in the openSUSE root partition boot sector and then just chainloading from your PCLinuxOS menu.lst (which is what the MBR is pointed to now that you reinstalled it with PCLinuxOS)?