Help with Grub2

Help with Grub2

[BandiPat]

Ok, I've poured over this for 2 days now, so find myself needing some 
expert help!  Let me go over what I have done.  I'll try to give as much 
details as possible.  If you don't see it, just ask.

Compiled and installed grub2.  Remove LILO from MBR.  Ran grub-install 
/dev/sda.  Run grub-setup /dev/sda.  Ran update-grub to let it create a 
grub.cfg file.  So far, so good and checking everything, it all looks 
great according to the instructions I have been able to find.  By the 
way, I have done a lot of researching these past 2 days!  That's how I 
came to find this mail list, but wanted to wait to finish my testing 
before using it.

Rebooted the computer which gave me the Welcome to Grub, then the grub 
rescue prompt.  I tried several things there without any success.  Here 
are some of the things I checked.  Tried setting some things there, then 
boot, but no luck.  Checked with the "set" command:
prefix=(hd0,2)/boot/grub
root=hd0,2

All looks good so far.  Tried "boot", got error:  no loaded kernel
Tried "insmod linux", got error:  out of partition (I think this might 
be needed for the kernel with Zenwalk)

Did "ls", got (hd0) (hd0,1) (hd0,2) (hd0,3) (hd0,4)

Used "qemu -hda /dev/sda" once which corrupted my sda2 partition, so did 
a fresh install of Zenwalk.  Upsetting, but no harm, no foul.  Acted 
like it was working, but things moved so fast, it was booting before I 
could stop it.  I thought it just tested, but didn't boot.  That didn't 
seem to be the case.  After the fresh install, used it again, but it 
went right back to the "grub rescue>" prompt.

Here's my provided grub.cfg:
#
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE
#
# It is automatically generated by /usr/local/sbin/update-grub using 
templates
# from /usr/local/etc/grub.d and settings from /usr/local/etc/default/grub
#

### BEGIN /usr/local/etc/grub.d/00_header ###
set default=0
set timeout=5
set root=(hd0,2)
terminal console
### END /usr/local/etc/grub.d/00_header ###

### BEGIN /usr/local/etc/grub.d/10_hurd ###
### END /usr/local/etc/grub.d/10_hurd ###

### BEGIN /usr/local/etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
menuentry "GNU/Linux, linux 2.6.27.10" {
	linux	(hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.10 root=/dev/sda2 ro
}
menuentry "GNU/Linux, linux 2.6.27.10 (single-user mode)" {
	linux	(hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.10 root=/dev/sda2 ro single
}
### END /usr/local/etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
================
Only thing I added to try was the "insmod linux" in the upper part. 
Here is my setup on the HD:
sda1=swap
sda2=/
sda3=/home
sda4

My head hurts, so I might have left something out.  Just ask and I'll 
try to supply it.  :-)

Ok, thanks in advance.  Would love to figure this out and get it 
working.  I'm sure it's just something small, something I'm overlooking, 
but I'm just not seeing it.  After I get this running, I'll be writing a 
small manual to include in the Zenwalk package I've built as well as 
detailed instructions on our Wiki!!  ;-)

Pat

-- 
        ---Zenwalk v5.4--Linux 2.6.27---
         Registered Linux User #225206
"Ever tried Zen computing?"  http://www.zenwalk.org

Re: Help with Grub2

[Vesa Jääskeläinen]

BandiPat wrote:
> Compiled and installed grub2.  Remove LILO from MBR.  Ran grub-install
> /dev/sda.  Run grub-setup /dev/sda.  Ran update-grub to let it create a
> grub.cfg file.  So far, so good and checking everything, it all looks
> great according to the instructions I have been able to find.  By the
> way, I have done a lot of researching these past 2 days!  That's how I
> came to find this mail list, but wanted to wait to finish my testing
> before using it.

you should only need to use grub-install and update-grub (or grub-mkconfig)

Running grub-setup after grub-install without matching arguments given
by grub-install to grub-setup it can create non-working setup.

So commands needed are:

grub-install
update-grub (or grub-mkconfig, or manually create grub.cfg)

Now if you get stuck to rescue console you probably want to start
loading normal mode first (insmod normal.mod) and required modules
needed for booting. I think we should write something about rescue
console to wiki.

Here is what probably happened:

When you issues grub-setup manually you probably forgot to specify
filesystems and such so grub cannot load natively from MBR your system.

As grub-setup is advanced tool it should not be used manually, please
try with only grub-install and see if it help.

Re: Help with Grub2

[BandiPat]

Vesa Jääskeläinen wrote:
> BandiPat wrote:
>> Compiled and installed grub2.  Remove LILO from MBR.  Ran grub-install
>> /dev/sda.  Run grub-setup /dev/sda.  Ran update-grub to let it create a
>> grub.cfg file.  So far, so good and checking everything, it all looks
>> great according to the instructions I have been able to find.  By the
>> way, I have done a lot of researching these past 2 days!  That's how I
>> came to find this mail list, but wanted to wait to finish my testing
>> before using it.
> 
> you should only need to use grub-install and update-grub (or grub-mkconfig)
> 
> Running grub-setup after grub-install without matching arguments given
> by grub-install to grub-setup it can create non-working setup.
> 
> So commands needed are:
> 
> grub-install
> update-grub (or grub-mkconfig, or manually create grub.cfg)
> 
> Now if you get stuck to rescue console you probably want to start
> loading normal mode first (insmod normal.mod) and required modules
> needed for booting. I think we should write something about rescue
> console to wiki.
> 
> Here is what probably happened:
> 
> When you issues grub-setup manually you probably forgot to specify
> filesystems and such so grub cannot load natively from MBR your system.
> 
> As grub-setup is advanced tool it should not be used manually, please
> try with only grub-install and see if it help.
  > _______________________________________________

Ok, thanks for the suggestion and I do wish it had been that easy, but I 
still get the grub rescue prompt only.  If I try to do "insmod normal", 
I get "error:  out of partition".

Here is my lsmod results:
_chain      1
biodisk         1
pc          1
xfs         1
fshelp      1

That appears to be getting most of the needed modules, but again, I'm 
new to this, so not sure.  I only used "grub-install /dev/sda" and then 
did "update-grub /dev/sda" to get my grub.cfg file.  All that seems to 
produce good results, no error messages.  One time I did grub-install 
wrong and got an error message about the core.img.  I think that was 
"grub-install "(hd0,2)", which give me that error, but using /dev/sda 
worked as it should.

Any other info you need, I'll try to supply, but I continue to remain 
baffled.  :-\

Thanks,
Pat

Re: Help with Grub2

[Felix Zielcke]

Am Sonntag, den 01.02.2009, 10:05 -0500 schrieb BandiPat:
> Ok, thanks for the suggestion and I do wish it had been that easy, but I 
> still get the grub rescue prompt only.  If I try to do "insmod normal", 
> I get "error:  out of partition".
> 
> Here is my lsmod results:

> xfs         1

What exact grub2 version do you use? There was a bug with out of
partition and XFS but that should be fixed since months.

-- 
Felix Zielcke

Re: Help with Grub2

[BandiPat]

Felix Zielcke wrote:
> Am Sonntag, den 01.02.2009, 10:05 -0500 schrieb BandiPat:
>> Ok, thanks for the suggestion and I do wish it had been that easy, but I 
>> still get the grub rescue prompt only.  If I try to do "insmod normal", 
>> I get "error:  out of partition".
>>
>> Here is my lsmod results:
> 
>> xfs         1
> 
> What exact grub2 version do you use? There was a bug with out of
> partition and XFS but that should be fixed since months.
> 
Using the 1.96 stable release presently which is suppose to support xfs 
now, isn't it?  If there is another version available, please send it to 
me or point me to it.

Thanks,
Pat

-- 
        ---Zenwalk v5.4--Linux 2.6.27---
         Registered Linux User #225206
"Ever tried Zen computing?"  http://www.zenwalk.org

Re: Help with Grub2

[Felix Zielcke]

Am Sonntag, den 01.02.2009, 11:11 -0500 schrieb BandiPat:

> Using the 1.96 stable release presently which is suppose to support xfs 
> now, isn't it?  If there is another version available, please send it to 
> me or point me to it.

The 1.96 release is pretty old, almost a year.
Better get the SVN trunk:
svn co svn://svn.sv.gnu.org/grub/trunk/grub2

That should hopefully work for you.

-- 
Felix Zielcke

Re: Help with Grub2

[BandiPat]

Felix Zielcke wrote:
> Am Sonntag, den 01.02.2009, 11:11 -0500 schrieb BandiPat:
> 
>> Using the 1.96 stable release presently which is suppose to support xfs 
>> now, isn't it?  If there is another version available, please send it to 
>> me or point me to it.
> 
> The 1.96 release is pretty old, almost a year.
> Better get the SVN trunk:
> svn co svn://svn.sv.gnu.org/grub/trunk/grub2
> 
> That should hopefully work for you.
> 
===========
Felix,
You are my new hero!  That was the problem, the XFS I was using.  Once I 
got the newest release built and installed, everything worked as it 
should.  Yaaay!  I can't thank you enough for your help.  It's really a 
very simple and painless process, if all things are correct.

Now I just need to add some other entries to use, plus I would like to 
make the loader screen a bit prettier.  If I just want to boot to 
runlevel 3, can I use the standard boot entry that takes me to the gui 
and just add "append=3" as the last entry?

I also want to add a memtest entry.  The boot loader screen is 
themeable, isn't it or you can use a graphic, jpg or png, etc?  Sorry 
for all the questions, but I'm excited that it finally works.  Now I 
want to start playing and learning.

Thanks again!
Pat

-- 
        ---Zenwalk v5.4--Linux 2.6.27---
         Registered Linux User #225206
"Ever tried Zen computing?"  http://www.zenwalk.org

Re: Help with Grub2

[Felix Zielcke]

Am Sonntag, den 01.02.2009, 13:00 -0500 schrieb BandiPat:

> Felix,
> You are my new hero!  That was the problem, the XFS I was using.  Once I 
> got the newest release built and installed, everything worked as it 
> should.  Yaaay!  I can't thank you enough for your help.  It's really a 
> very simple and painless process, if all things are correct.

Nice.

> Now I just need to add some other entries to use, plus I would like to 
> make the loader screen a bit prettier.  If I just want to boot to 
> runlevel 3, can I use the standard boot entry that takes me to the gui 
> and just add "append=3" as the last entry?

No append=3 is LILO syntax not GRUB.
You do it like this:
linux   /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-amd64 root=/dev/sda1 3
By the way you can use grub-mkconfig to generate a grub.cfg for you.

> I also want to add a memtest entry.  The boot loader screen is 
> themeable, isn't it or you can use a graphic, jpg or png, etc?  Sorry 
> for all the questions, but I'm excited that it finally works.  Now I 
> want to start playing and learning.

Oh for the graphic mode to work you need to have /usr/src/unifont.bdf
file which is for Debian/Ubuntu in bf-utf-source package and then
compile grub2 with `./configure --enable-grub-mkfont' so that the fonts
files needed for it are generated.
And then you can use a background image with something like this in
grub.cfg:
insmod png
background_image /my/image.png
or you can use insmod jpeg or tga

Themes are not yet supported but Colin's gfxmenu branch will be merged
soon.

-- 
Felix Zielcke

Re: Help with Grub2

[BandiPat]

Felix Zielcke wrote:
> Am Sonntag, den 01.02.2009, 13:00 -0500 schrieb BandiPat:
> 
>> Felix,
>> You are my new hero!  That was the problem, the XFS I was using.  Once I 
>> got the newest release built and installed, everything worked as it 
>> should.  Yaaay!  I can't thank you enough for your help.  It's really a 
>> very simple and painless process, if all things are correct.
> 
> Nice.
> 
>> Now I just need to add some other entries to use, plus I would like to 
>> make the loader screen a bit prettier.  If I just want to boot to 
>> runlevel 3, can I use the standard boot entry that takes me to the gui 
>> and just add "append=3" as the last entry?
> 
> No append=3 is LILO syntax not GRUB.
> You do it like this:
> linux   /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-amd64 root=/dev/sda1 3
> By the way you can use grub-mkconfig to generate a grub.cfg for you.
=========
Yes, I saw that grub-mkconfig replaced update-grub for that.  A question 
about that though.  When I ran grub-mkconfig /dev/sda, I looked for the 
file in /boot/grub directory, but none was there.  What I did get was 
the complete file shown in the shell I was using.  I just copied that 
into a new grub.cfg then copied it over to /boot/grub.  Is that normal 
behavior or did I do something wrong or did it put the file somewhere else?

I knew that Suse uses an image for their grub loader screen, but never 
investigated that aspect when i was using it.  I'll play with that a bit 
as I would like to do something prettier.  Right now, I'm very pleased 
to have gotten it working on the computer!

Pat

Re: Help with Grub2

[Felix Zielcke]

Am Sonntag, den 01.02.2009, 14:09 -0500 schrieb BandiPat:

> Yes, I saw that grub-mkconfig replaced update-grub for that.  A question 
> about that though.  When I ran grub-mkconfig /dev/sda, I looked for the 
> file in /boot/grub directory, but none was there.  What I did get was 
> the complete file shown in the shell I was using.  I just copied that 
> into a new grub.cfg then copied it over to /boot/grub.  Is that normal 
> behavior or did I do something wrong or did it put the file somewhere else?

You called it wrong. You should have typed `grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg'

-- 
Felix Zielcke

Re: Help with Grub2

[BandiPat]

Felix Zielcke wrote:

> Oh for the graphic mode to work you need to have /usr/src/unifont.bdf
> file which is for Debian/Ubuntu in bf-utf-source package and then
> compile grub2 with `./configure --enable-grub-mkfont' so that the fonts
> files needed for it are generated.
> And then you can use a background image with something like this in
> grub.cfg:
> insmod png
> background_image /my/image.png
> or you can use insmod jpeg or tga
> 
> Themes are not yet supported but Colin's gfxmenu branch will be merged
> soon.
>----------------------------
One last question Felix, I hope.  I think it will be, I just want this 
last part to work.  I have the bf-utf-source package which appears to 
only copy two .bdf files to /usr/src and nothing else.  Can I safely 
assume then that I can extract the contents out and manually copy them 
to /usr/src and grub2 will be happy?

Except of course doing the above configure for grub-mkfont, I need do 
nothing else except provide the unifont.bdf?  If that is the case, then 
I'll just add these to my Zenwalk package for grub2, so it will be 
complete and ready for images?

Thanks again,
Pat

Re: Help with Grub2

[Felix Zielcke]

Am Sonntag, den 01.02.2009, 17:17 -0500 schrieb BandiPat:

> One last question Felix, I hope.  I think it will be, I just want this 
> last part to work.  I have the bf-utf-source package which appears to 
> only copy two .bdf files to /usr/src and nothing else.  Can I safely 
> assume then that I can extract the contents out and manually copy them 
> to /usr/src and grub2 will be happy?

Yes this works.

> Except of course doing the above configure for grub-mkfont, I need do 
> nothing else except provide the unifont.bdf?  If that is the case, then 
> I'll just add these to my Zenwalk package for grub2, so it will be 
> complete and ready for images?

Yes.


-- 
Felix Zielcke