upgrade 11.1 to 11.2 messed up my boot/grub

ghostintheruins · November 27, 2009, 9:26pm

Hello there,

I just did an upgrade from 11.1 to 11.2 and can not boot to OpenSUSE any more.

That happened when the first reboot was starting after finishing the upgrade from the DVD.

I tried to find the issue and use the repair system with no luck yet.

Now I get no gfx for grub

The only thing I managed is to add the windows boot section for windows but I can not seem to boot to opensuse.

device.map:

(hd1)	/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0
(hd2)	/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LQCJ
(hd0)	/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Maxtor_6L160P0_L31AHTVG

device.map.old

(hd0)	/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0

Notice the change of mapping here.

menu.lst after the repair + added windows section:


default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd1,2)/boot/message
##YaST - activate
 
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: other###
title winblowz
    rootnoverify (hd1,0)
    chainloader +1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE LINUX 
    root (hd1,2)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part3 repair=1 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part2 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31a
    initrd /boot/initrd

The menu.lst before upgrade entries:

default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,2)/boot/message
##YaST - activate

title winblowz
    rootnoverify (hd0,0)
    chainloader +1

title openSUSE 11.1 - 2.6.27.37-0.1 - acpi=enabled
    root (hd0,2)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.37-0.1-pae root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part3 acpi=on resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part2 splash=verbose showopts vga=0x31a
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.37-0.1-pae

The sda partitioning:

Device: /dev/sda
UdevPath: pci-0000:02:00.0-scsi-0:0:0:0
UdevId: <ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0 scsi-SATA_ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0>
Major: 8
Minor: 0
Range: 256
Cylinder: 19457
Head: 255
Sector: 63
Label: msdos
MaxPrimary: 4
ExtPossible: 1
MaxLogical: 63
SizeK: 156290904
Partition: 1 /dev/sda1 47688921 8 1 0 5937 7 primary
Partition: 2 /dev/sda2 971932 8 2 5937 121 82 primary
Partition: 3 /dev/sda3 32852925 8 3 6058 4090 83 primary boot
Partition: 4 /dev/sda4 74774542 8 4 10148 9309 f extended
Partition: 5 /dev/sda5 74766478 8 5 10148 9308 7 logical

What am I missing here?

Cheers.

vader95 · November 28, 2009, 12:05am

It looks like you have two harddrives, is that true? Did you possibly install on one harddrive and be booting from the other?

vader95 · November 28, 2009, 12:08am

It looks like you have two hard drives. Is it possible you installed openSUSE on one and booting from the other one

Dexter1979 · November 28, 2009, 12:22am

I agree with Vader95… if you completed the install successfully but your computer goes straight to windows without seeing grub you most likely have installed opensuse and grub on one hard drive and you’re booting from the other. Try switching the boot sequence in your systems BIOS to boot from the other disk.

Oh, wait a minute… do you have 3 hard drives? If this is the case try booting from which ever drive you installed opensuse on by switching the boot sequence to that drive. You should be able to see grub then.

vader95 · November 28, 2009, 1:07am

looks like three hard drives to me too. I agree make sure that Grub is on the disk you are booting.

ghostintheruins · November 28, 2009, 5:58pm

Hello and thanks for your reply.

Indeed there are 3 hard drives: 2 SATA and 1 IDE and same configuration was before 11.1 to 11.2 upgrade.

Win and opensuse are on ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0. Grub should be on this one too.

I wouldn’t say that the upgrade was succesful if I could not start from grub either opensuse or win.

The windows booting is not through the “fixmbr” but from the grub section I modified / added myself, so I guess it is on the right hard drive.

The SATAS hdd’s are one on the MB controller and the second one (the bootable one) is on PCI-to-SATA separate controller.

From my experience with cloning of the system (it was 11.1) I cloned last time from a former IDE to the new SATA drive, the issue is with my dumb BIOS which gives error for openSUSE partitioning. I do not remember how I did fix it last time (not sure which option was in my IDE acces mode in BIOS - LBA, CHS…) - I noticed that I have to change the geometry in testdisk). But certainly I could finish the repair last time with a “safe settings”.

Today I tried a lot of “repairs” options with various options for the kernel, disconnected the other drives, until the system was a totally mess. I managed to get the windows boot back with Testdisk though but I’m out of ideas.

Every time with repair I get “device.map” error.

Now with repair, even the swap partition is not OK and I get another ext3 partion with few Mb and opensuse tells me that "parted can not work on /dev/sda (yes, now it changed the mapping again).

I will try tomorrow with the boot sata drive only connected directly to the MB controller and see what gives.

Cheers.

PS
Ohh, and the grub is/was set to be installed in MBR.

vader95 · November 28, 2009, 9:36pm

if you can boot windows, then GRUB is not installed or the timeout is less than one second. It sounds as though you have the Windows boot loader installed and being used. I would use your opensuse disk and try to reinstall the system as ext4. Unless you don’t have important files backed up.

ghostintheruins · November 29, 2009, 4:22am

I was booting with GRUB to windows before the last repair which messed the partitioning.

I have this linux install from version 10 I think with upgrades to every version.

Unfortunately I do not have a /home /boot /root separate partitions on opensuse so a fresh install would mean a lot of work setting the system up though the data on my opensuse is not lost.

I will poke a little bit more with repair and maybe I will do a fresh install.

My problem seems to be close to this one but I ain’t quite sure since my hdd’s are seen: Opensuse 11.2 does not boot after install - openSUSE Forums

Cheers

caf4926 · November 29, 2009, 4:32am

A re-install should not be necessary - you just need to figure what changed.

Boot a live cd like Parted Magic and do us: fdisk -l

You could get yourself SuperGrubDisk and see if it will boot your suse install, if it does, you may be able to repair it.

Look at this:
HowTo Boot into openSUSE when it won’t Boot from the Grub Code on the Hard Drive

rknapp · November 29, 2009, 6:10pm

It seems that you just use the wrong hdX in grub.
Grub does not use the device map file while booting - it relies on the order of drives the BIOS reports.

So if you configured the BIOS to boot from a disk, this disk wil very likely be hd0 in grub.
From a running openSUSE system the order might be a different one, depending on which driver is loaded first. (which will affect the numbering of /dev/sdX)

ghostintheruins · November 30, 2009, 1:42pm

Hello.

I’m back after messing a lot with things since I found out that I had also a bad partition table (either from the multiple repair tries or testdisk use or maybe both).

After a lot of work with partedmagic I decreased the swap and re-created the ext3 partition. I made a tar archive before with the whole linux system (aprox. 10Gb) and put it back in.

I suspected the issue rknapp informed about but how can I solve it from yast2 bootloader? In yast bootloader I can change the order of devices, add / remove but which is which?

Like I said I have a dumb bios: I can not select exactly the hard drive I want to boot.

I have HDD-0 (which is either the IDE drive or the SATA connected to the MB controller - beats me which is it since the “detection” of the master is that fast while bios detects it).

The second option is SCSI which is actually the SATA drive connected to the PCI-to-SATA1 controller (with raid support but I am not using it for raid, yet) and this is the default boot option set in BIOS.

The boot order in BIOS is:

1. SCSI
2. CDROM (have 2 DVD's connected on the second IDE cable)
3... CDROM.

**Boot other devices: NO**/CODE]

For booting the cd/dvd I use "press F9" option which gives, e.g.:
HDD-0
SCSI
CDROM
LUSB

Now: regarding fdisk output (current one), here it is:

Disk /dev/hda: 163.9 GB, 163928604672 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19929 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x30cee048

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 18144 145741648+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 18145 19929 14338012+ f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/hda5 18145 19929 14337981 b W95 FAT32

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb031b9e4

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 19457 156288321 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa380a380

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 5993 48138741 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 5994 6058 522112+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/sdb3 6059 10420 35037765 83 Linux
/dev/sdb4 10421 19457 72589702+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 10421 19456 72581638+ 7 HPFS/NTFS



This is from partedmagic which sees it as /dev/sdb.

Opensuse install dvd sees it as /dev/sda but when I had an external USB hdd it did see it also as /sdc I think.

What bugs me the mose and gets me frustrated is that "every repair" is succesful but it wont boot.

I even tried to use the chroot method from partedmagic: grub unsupported gave me an error message, yast2 bootloader repair was succesful but no booting (I got instead the testdisk boot "menu": 1234F).

Now I have the win partition active with the win bootloader on.

If anybody has a great idea I will try it.

OK, the last "flame" is that with this system I had almost every time problems with booting afterwards.

Ohhh, I have tried also booting with supergrubdisk - I get the menu but after selecting to boot opensuse I get a black/gray screen.

The last issue is that now I can not see the linux partition with explore2fs.

Cheers and thanks in advance.

knurpht · November 30, 2009, 4:09pm

What happens if you boot from the install DVD and pick the option ‘Boot from harddisk’. If that works it would get you into openSUSE and we could see things from there.

ghostintheruins · November 30, 2009, 6:59pm

I always thought that option would default to the boot loader on the hdd, either grub or the windows one. Gonna try that too.

In the meantime I managed to repair more or less grub. Meaning I can again boot win from it and the gfx works (also no more “cant find message”).

With acpi=ht and edd=off I even get the text from grub but the booting hangs at:
“initrd /boot/…
[Linux-initrd @ 0x8800, 0x6ccc7046 bytes”

or something like that.

menu.lst

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Mon Nov 30 19:23:50 EET 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 (hd0,2)/boot/message
##YaST - activate

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: other###
title WindowsXP
    map (hd0) (hd0)
    map (hd0) (hd0)
    rootnoverify (hd0,0)
    makeactive
    chainloader +1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.5-0.1 (default)
    root (hd0,2)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part3 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part2 splash=silent quiet  showopts vga=0x31a
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.5-0.1-default

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.5-0.1 (default)
    root (hd0,2)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part3 showopts apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe vga=0x31a
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.5-0.1-default

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Desktop -- openSUSE 11.2 - 2.6.31.5-0.1
    root (hd0,2)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part3 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part2 splash=silent quiet  showopts vga=0x31a
    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 (desktop)
    root (hd0,2)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part3 showopts apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe vga=0x31a
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE LINUX 
    root (hd0,2)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part3 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part2 splash=silent quiet  showopts vga=0x31a
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.5-0.1-default

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- SUSE LINUX 
    root (hd0,2)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part3 showopts apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe vga=0x31a
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.31.5-0.1-default

My fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>

proc	/proc	proc	defaults	0	0
sysfs	/sys	sysfs	noauto	0	0
usbfs	/proc/bus/usb	usbfs	noauto	0	0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part3	/	ext3	acl,user_xattr	1	1
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part5	/media/data1	ntfs-3g	defaults,locale=en_US.UTF-8	0	0
debugfs	/sys/kernel/debug	debugfs	noauto	0	0

[b]/dev/sda5            /media/NIXTRANZFER   ntfs-3g    iocharset=utf8        0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part1 /windows/winsys      auto       noauto,user           0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part2 swap                 swap       default               0 0
devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5       0 0

This is wrong:

/dev/sda5            /media/NIXTRANZFER   ntfs-3g    iocharset=utf8        0 0

That fat32 partition is on another hard-drive.

I left only the sata-bootable drive connected for the last repair. I tried booting with the options I mentioned and after no luck I added the Win line in menyu. After that I connected the other 2 drives and booted to windows.

Could that bad line be the culprit or the issue is somewhere-else?

Cheers.

rknapp · December 1, 2009, 9:49am

Uh, that’s confusing…

Your BIOS shows HDD-0 before SCSI, but grub sees it as hd0…
Might be due to selecting something in the boot menu.

On my system, the BIOS reorders the disk order if selecting the second disk in the boot menu - this really sucks because the device.map file won’t be correct in this case and using Yast to configure the bootloader will fail (or updating the kernel etc.).

Well… let me try to summarize:

root (hd0,2) works
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0-part3 is mounted on /

So the device map should be something like:


(hd0)	/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LTD0
(hd1)	/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_5RA2LQCJ
(hd2)	/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Maxtor_6L160P0_L31AHTVG

(hd1 and hd2 don’t really matter here because you don’t boot from them)

However, if you booted using the boot menu (you mentioned F9), this order may be changed somehow and might not be the same as if you boot without F9.

This is all ****, that’s why they developed EFI

Oh… about the bad line - this shouldn’t affect grub at all.

And I saw that this succesful attempts was without the IDE disk, right?
So if you attach it again, your original device map might be correct again.
The BIOS will try to start from the IDE disk, but grub is installed on the SATA disk.

To make this work, you will have to install the grub into the MBR of the IDE disk and you would have to change the grub configuration again to use hd1.

Can’t you just configure the BIOS to boot from SCSI first? Some have a SCSI first option which may be hidden somewhere in the BIOS setup…

ghostintheruins · December 19, 2009, 9:41am

Hello there,

I did not have too much time getting into it but… the last thing happened.

After a win restart grub just didn’t want to load Win anymore with no actual visible reason.

I remember this happening even with 11.0 I think (I had a different MB / hardware back then) but usually a hard power-off and start used to solve it.

I did try to fix MBR fix boot from the win repair with no luck, maybe because grub was installed in so many places (MBR’s) from the repair tries.

Tried the OS “repair” like last time with only one hdd connected with no luck.

Even more, the “repairing” (please take into account that I was using only the boot repair option) managed to actually kill my HDD partitioning and destroy the first primary partition with the win on it (seems that suse is quite a “winblowz killer”).

I found out about it while trying to recover something from it with parted-magic disk… MFT’s was killed. no back-up done for it (stupid me did back-up only linux and few things from win - firefox profile for one).

Wanted to give OpenSUSE one more chance with my hardware… I took out from the package the 1Tb sata drive I delayed to add to my computer for a while now, did a quick fresh install of win and then tried to install 11.2.

All did seem to go well, even the first start was ok, I enjoyed, 11.2 kde for few minutes, I even submitted my hardware profile with smolt, did the updates and… restarted.

Yikes, that was nice to get the black screen again in the default kernel settings and the nice hang at “linux-initrd…” with all safe-settings on.

Please notice that the 1Tb drive was the only drive in the computer for the fresh install, connected to the MB sata-controller (SATA0 master) and grub was installed on the extended partition (boot from extended partition).

The partition was something like:

 primary ntfs ]
 extended ] with:
    free space for lin ]
      which actually did not use, the installation did shrink one of the other ntfs partitions.
    3 ntfs logical partitions with various dimensions ]

I did let the installer to do exactly what it wanted regarding the partitioning, separate /boot /root /home, and I did not force grub install in the MBR

Well, sorry but this did it. No more openSUSE for me until I can afford to buy a new PC. I am only glad that I did not try to upgrade to 11.2 the job pc I’m using since similar issues did happen when I installed 11.1, win menu from grub was done, I added manually later (I think I did post a help in another post here some time ago).

I think I’ve been using opensuse since it came on the linux world, been using it for servers so I am a little bit sad I have to put it aside for a while now.

I will not install 11.1 back for that matter since that one also gave me problems while updating so for now I do not want to risk spending even more hours to “repair” it.

It might be a MB-BIOS issue (this is it) but I got it for free from a friend so beggars can’t be choosers) in connection to gparted the installer uses.

More or less the hardware I have:

Vidcard is an Assus with GF FX 5200 chipset;
the PCI-to-SATA separate controller is a SIl 3512 chipset based with raid non-raid available (I do not use hard-raid or soft raid);
an avertv analog tv tuner on it;
2.5Gb RAM (2x1Gb + 512Mb);
processor is Intel Pentium 4 HT (Northwood), 2.5GHz

What puzzles me the most is that using the KDE live cd, all goes well, it runs smoothly, so this could be a bad thing for the new user: he/she tries it, likes it, wants to install it and then all goes wrong.

Please do not take this as a rant.

Cheers to all and enjoy the holidays and all the best for the new year.

PS
rknapp, yes, indeed, the SCSI was set as the first booting device, that’s how I was using for a while now, and that was the way to make it work (at least for the short time).

caf4926 · December 19, 2009, 10:18am

Grub sure can be tricky for some to Map out in their mind. Some Guys find it equally tricky Mapping areas of importance in other areas ⚤