So I, like, installed OpenSuse, which is totally cool but totally weird, on my computer yesterday and I’m having trouble booting from it. So I totally can’t boot from my hard disk unless I first boot from the, you know, installation CD and then hit “Boot from hard drive”. OpenSuse did the weird Linux thingy when it partitioned my disk by making about 5 different partitions and not telling me which one I should boot from. I’ve tried reinstalling the boot loader (grub) with no success. Bummer, right?
Yeah, well, so far as I can tell, none of the partitions have a boot flag. Any help would be awesome.
From the Live CD, open a terminal, and run the following
su
fdisk -l
grub
find /boot/grub/menu.lst
This will print a partition name, in grub notation, on the screen. Something like (hd0,1). Substitute what it tells you in the next command (and if it tells you several, you can do it for each - won’t do any harm);
cat (hd0,1)/boot/grub/menu.lst
quit
Paste the output (like) here.
here is the output you asked for (man).
grub> cat (hd0,4)/boot/grub/menu.lst
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Thu Nov 26 10:04:04 MST 2009
# 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 (hd0,4)/boot/message
##YaST - activate
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Desktop -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.5-0.1
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_
HTS542580K9SA00_081111BB2B10WFJS6KMA-part5 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_H
TS542580K9SA00_081111BB2B10WFJS6KMA-part2 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31
7
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.5-0.1
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_
HTS542580K9SA00_081111BB2B10WFJS6KMA-part5 showopts apm=off noresume nosmp maxc
pus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11fai
lsafe vga=0x317
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop
not sure it’s quite what you wanted since i did this from my installation. I installed using network disk instead of livecd. Hey!! Palladium! you are totally going on my permanent ignore list!
I have half a sense of humor, so sue me. Was I really THAT bad? I might totally have to, like, edit something. My problem IS a genuine one.
i totally like you know have trouble like helping ya 'cause my crystal
ball is like on the fritz you know…and, i cant like see exactly what
might be your hard drive configurations, you know?
it would awesome if you could like include some helpful details like
maybe copy paste the output from like
cat /etc/fstab
and
cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
and like also it would so cool if you could like tell us about your
'puter, you know…i mean like is a laptop or blasting huge powerful
beast with pulsating do-dads and what-nots??..i mean like and also i
can’t from tell if you installed 11.0 with gnome or 11.1 with kde or
just what you like did do man (or are like girl, i cant see that
either from where i am…do you have webcam?)…i mean like is a 64 or
a 32 or maybe even 16 i dont know…you got any ram at all, or a
zapping video card whatcamacallit…
so, about that no boot flag thing, how did that happen? did you erase
it, or what… did the openSUSE install disk do the partitioning and
stuff like that or did you all do that in like before the fact, like
with partitionMagic kinda stuff…
i wonder like, did you do a md5sum check of that iso before you burned
it to disk, or like what man…did you do a media check at all…you
so have to do that man…and, have you like digested any of the stuff
in the stickies at the top of like this forums dude??
dude, i mean like get with the like reading thing. ok?
–
palladium
Sorry i got cranky with you. 
please forgive me. here’s more output:
cat /etc/fstab
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HTS542580K9SA00_081111BB2B10WFJS6KMA-part2 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HTS542580K9SA00_081111BB2B10WFJS6KMA-part5 / ext4 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HTS542580K9SA00_081111BB2B10WFJS6KMA-part6 /home ext4 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
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
and fdisk -l:
WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x8f800000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 510 4096543+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 511 638 1028160 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 * 639 9729 73023457+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 639 3249 20972826 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 3250 9729 52050568+ 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdb: 4025 MB, 4025810432 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 489 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 490 3931455 b W95 FAT32
I have a small desktop computer. It’s an intel Mac and I’d be using OS X but my install disks are fried. 2 GB ram, 80 GB hard drive. not a power house, but i like it. I use KDE. yes I checked the file. 64 bit computer, but i use the 32-bit version of SUSE.
Please, stop giving ridiculing answers like this, or don’t post at all. There’s other places for mental mast*tion.
To the original poster: apologies for the above. The bootloader menfile seems OK, it looks like the bootloader code is not in the right place.
Did you try the repair function of the install media? If that does not work, try this:
Start the system the way you know to get it started.
Hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 to go to the console.
Login with “normal” username and password. do next:
grub-install /dev/sda
After it’s finished, do:
reboot
Take the CD out of the drive and see what happens. Get back here and let us know if it works. If not, we’ll help you through.
no go.
#sudo /usr/sbin/grub-install /dev/sda
WARNING! You are trying to invoke the unsupported grub-install script
with a parameter. To really do this, call grub-install.unsupported.
You should rather call "yast2 bootloader" or create configuration files
appropriate for the intended target.
#sudo /usr/sbin/grub-install.unsupported /dev/sda
/dev/sda does not have any corresponding BIOS drive.
thanks anyway, man.
> Please, stop giving ridiculing answers like this, or don’t post at all.
> There’s other places for mental mast*tion.
like so many awesome thanks man.
–
palladium
> To the original poster: apologies for the above.
so like, are you now the awesome official moderator and determiner of
which posts other than your own requires your apologies, or what man??
oh wow, so cool…
–
palladium