Pre-install MBR advice

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hei all

Its a long time since I ran SUSE on my system, in fact its a long time since I actively ran 2x Gentoo copies, 2x SLAX and a Kanotix on my 2x IDE drive XP system - I have been running OSX for a couple of years :wink:

With so many distribution copies I have always used a Grub floppy and/or later an Eltorito Boot CD to avoid touching the XP MBR. Thats the background…

Now I would like to install OpenSUSE 11 on my 2nd drive. It still contains an old copy of Gentoo and a Fat32 partition, and I still don’t want to touch XP’s MBR on drive 0!

Can I prevent writing to drive 0 MBR in the YAST install setup, e.g. by choosing drive 1 MBR?

If so, where do I look for the menu.lst entry the installation then makes?

Thanks for your ideas :slight_smile:

#2

I have 2 HD’s and suse’s boot loader is on the one without xp on it, just make sure which drive is which and make sure during install the grub is going to be written to the correct drive.

you will need to set the drive with the grub on to be 1st to boot in bios setup

N.B.
You can still have suse partitions on the xp drive though if you want.

Use custom partitioning to get everything just right
set mount point for xp as eg: /windows c or /xp

you may have to edit menu.lst once install is done, as with mine xp did not boot (though I never use it)
if you have a problem pm me

ps.
menu.lst is /boot/grub/menu.lst

#3

Many thanks for your helpful reply

I have made 5 new partitions so I can configure a couple of OpenSUSE installs… a practice with the LiveCD first perhaps, while waiting for the dvd :wink:

I’ve also refreshed my rusty Grub skills - shiver! Will edit this with the results…

#4

I ran into trouble with the dvd :frowning: Is it possible to install a full system to hard drive from the Live CD?

#5

Guess I need to reply to myself as finger trouble caused a previous edit of the above post to abort… what I wanted to say is that I tried to install from the Live CD, but it simply exits after getting to the entering of name and password. So, I’ve ordered a new dvd.

I get media errors on both my dvd devices, and they are little used, so I assume its dvd trouble.

#6

Burning of dvd’s needs to be done as slow a possible. It took me two attempts this time with suse 11. So always use the media check from the cd or dvd menu before install. Even if you have done the md5sum check, still use the media check too.
My md5check was ok on both the .iso and then too on the burned dvd, but failed the suse media check.

Second time round worked fine though.

#7

Thanks for the tip… its going to take ages at the current rate (half my usual dl speed) but I will burn slowly. It would almost seem as though the media checker is hyper sensitive in some way… I’ can’t remember having any errors on my NEC dvd devices, so I’m trying once again now. Cross fingers as they say :wink:

#8

After 6 hours my torrent dl gave ok checksum, and I have just used it to install 11.0 right up to the final window which loads the desktop… its totally unreadable, so I assume its an nvidia issue. Excuse me for saying so, but why on earth couldn’t it manage to sort out the standard nv driver. It recognizes my (quiet) FX5200 ok…

So now its the usual (regretable) Linux matter of getting ‘under the bonnet’ and sorting it out.

#9

Here is my fstab:
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD1600JB-00WD-WMAES1643139-part5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD3200JB-00_WD-WCAMR2246678-part6 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD3200JB-00_WD-WCAMR2246678-part14 / ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD3200JB-00_WD-WCAMR2246678-part15 /home ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD1600JB-00WD-WMAES1643139-part1 /windows/C ntfs-3g users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_GB.UTF-8 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD1600JB-00WD-WMAES1643139-part8 /windows/D vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD3200JB-00_WD-WCAMR2246678-part10 /windows/E vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0

and the menu.lst which gives error 2:

Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Sat Jun 28 14:01:04 CEST 2008

default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd1,13)/boot/message

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.0
root (hd1,13)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD3200JB-00_WD-WCAMR2246678-part14 splash=silent showopts vga=normal brokenmodules=pegasus
initrd /boot/initrd

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe – openSUSE 11.0
root (hd1,13)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD3200JB-00_WD-WCAMR2246678-part14 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 edd=off x11failsafe
initrd /boot/initrd

Btw, it also errors on the message file before getting to error 2, i.e. it doesn’t seem to see sdb14

Hope you notice something

mvh

#10

You seem to have 2 swap partitions?

This is how my fstab looks:

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Maxtor_6Y160P0_Y454TYNE-part2 /MaxtorMini ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Maxtor_6Y160P0_Y454TYNE-part1 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD3200AAKS-_WD-WMAPZ0196427-part6 / ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Maxtor_6Y160P0_Y454TYNE-part3 /Maxtor ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD3200AAKS-_WD-WMAPZ0196427-part5 /STORE vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD3200AAKS-_WD-WMAPZ0196427-part1 /XP ntfs-3g users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_GB.UTF-8 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD3200AAKS-_WD-WMAPZ0196427-part7 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0

My menu.lst:

Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Sun Jun 22 04:42:57 BST 2008

default 1
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd1,5)/boot/message

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Debug – openSUSE 11.0 - 2.6.25.5-1.1
root (hd1,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25.5-1.1-debug root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD3200AAKS-_WD-WMAPZ0196427-part6 resume=/dev/sdb1 splash=silent showopts vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.25.5-1.1-debug

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux-2.6.25.5-1.1-default###
title openSUSE 11.0 - 2.6.25.5-1.1
root (hd1,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25.5-1.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD3200AAKS-_WD-WMAPZ0196427-part6 resume=/dev/sdb1 splash=silent showopts vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.25.5-1.1-default

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe – openSUSE 11.0 - 2.6.25.5-1.1
root (hd1,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25.5-1.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD3200AAKS-_WD-WMAPZ0196427-part6 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume edd=off x11failsafe vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.25.5-1.1-default

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title WIN XP
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

Wester Digital is sata and holds a xp partition - as I have already said
Maxtor id pata (ide) drive and actually only holds swap and 2 ext3 partitions which are only storage partitions.
All my suse partitions are on the WD drive
But my boot loader is on Maxtor MBR
And Maxtor is first boot device in bios

If I switch my WD drive to first boot, XP boots, no grub at all.

I hardly ever use XP for real, but use it in a VBox from suse, saves ever needing to re-boot. That said, I rarely use it in VBox either, as suse does all I need.

**To get vesa display, so you can work on adding the repos:
**

If graphics driver gets messed up, type 3 in the boot line to get runlevel 3 - login as root

type
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa

reboot
this should enable a display using vesa

GRUB ERRORS:

GRUB Error Messages
GRUB Error 2 on booting 1st time - Ubuntu Forums

#11

Many thanks for detailed reply… after finding that grub> find /vmlinuz found nothing other than my two Gentoo copies, I decided to run a new install with hwprobe=-modules.pata - when I got to the Boot loader section I looked for the posssibility to use the 2nd drive’s MBR but just could not see it. So I continued with root / - then I can copy the grub info to my floppy/eltorito CD and it should be all systems go.

While I wrote this, the installation completed and I now have a nice clear green logged-in window! i.e. it worked :smiley:

#12

I was a bit too optimistic :frowning:

Don’t know why yet but using the menu.lst which the installation put in /boot/grub doesn’t work either on a grub floppy or eltorito CD.

I’m reaching the end of my energy for today, and if tomorrow is no better then I’m afraid OpenSUSE might well be removed from my list.

mvh

#13

Thanks for the help guys but all the frustration isn’t helping my head!

I managed to log into the system ok today from the dvd by selecting Update and making a simple change between US and UK language, but what a hassle to get back into the system… while I was there I looked for the possibility to make a Rescue CD, but found none. That could have avoided the long check of everything that is the current ‘repair’ situation.

Something is seriously wrong with version 11 when entries in the menu.lst it produces can’t be found by grub>find

So, its ‘back to my Mac’ and possibly the updating of old copies of Gentoo just to keep Linux alive - 2 years away was perhaps a bit too much :wink:

Mvh

#14

There’s no problem having as many swap partitions/files as you want. One reason for having two swaps is for example when you have two disks in RAID1 and you want to continue to have at least one swap partition when one disk fails.

#15

Hei,

yes I had one for each Gentoo installation on both drives at first, though I later found its not really necessary

mvh

#16

I’m giving it another go, this time giving OpenSUSE the whole 2nd drive to install on… it completes the installation ok, BUT the desktop is again unreadable… I used Knoppix to access the menu.lst, put this into its own boot floppy, but the loader gives a grub error 15 as before (IIRC).

There’s not much left now than also to remove the Gentoo copy from my first drive, i.e. no other Linux systems, just XP Home SP3, and see if it then works.

As a final step I’ll try using the first drives MBR, but I need to be sure my XP backup restores ok first :wink:

#17

it completes the installation ok, BUT the desktop is again unreadable

Are you sure this is not just a display issue

#18

Its something I have seen with a number of distros… most recently with Knoppix 5.0.1 until I used screen= & depth= cheatcodes.

The more important problem is grub not finding OpenSUSE when restarting. But I’m getting closer to having just XP and whichever Linux distro works nicely on the 2nd drive.

mvh

#19

I am just about to re-install using the latest version 11 DVD and writing to the MBR on drive 0 my XP drive.

I do have backup, but could someone please confirm this should work - I have seen several posts giving me a scary feeling about v11’s boot loader install…

Mvh

#20

Unless you setup otherwise, grub will install to the mbr of the 1st HD. Sure it will work, though you may need to edit menu.lst later to get xp to boot from the bootloader, it doesn’t always get it right