I've had an rpm upgrade from Fedora 15 to 16 go slightly sideways and I've wound up with a grub prompt upon boot. I found https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GRUB_2; alas, it seems to be missing information about what one does when one's root partition is on an LVM volume.
Do I need a Live CD to recover at this point?
On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 3:12 PM, Braden McDaniel braden@endoframe.com wrote:
I've had an rpm upgrade from Fedora 15 tio 16 go slightly sideways and I've wound up with a grub prompt upon boot. I found https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GRUB_2; alas, it seems to be missing information about what one does when one's root partition is on an LVM volume.
By "rpm upgrade" I assume you mean yum upgrade? Yum upgrades don't update the bootloader to GRUB2, only anaconda/preupgrade is smart enough to figure that out, so the only way you'd be running GRUB2 is if you updated it manually. GRUB1 is *supposed* to still work fine in the interim, though apparently that didn't work out so well for you. ;-)
The good news here is that GRUB1 knew nothing about LVM, so you have to have a seperate /boot partition, which is all GRUB cares about. Fedora's initramfs does the hard work with LVM. So even though GRUB2 now speaks LVM, it doesn't have to deal with it in your case.
Do I need a Live CD to recover at this point?
Yes, that would be best. Make sure it matches the arch of the installed system so you can chroot into your installation if necessary.
The prescription for repairing your bootloader from should be something like this:
Become root. `sudo` doesn't work on Fedora live media so just: su -
Activate your LVM volumes: vgchange -a y lvchange -a y
Mount your root partition somewhere (run `lvdisplay` if you're not sure of the device path): mkdir /mnt/root mount /dev/mapper/vg_hostname-lv_root /mnt/root
Mount your /boot partition into it (run `print all` in `parted` if your not sure of the device): mount /dev/sdX# /mnt/root/boot
Verify that your boot partition is copacetic. Make sure there's a kernel and initramfs that has .fc16 in it:. Then, check /etc/default/grub and make sure that the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX variable mentions your LVM logical volume. There should be a kernel argument that looks like "rd.lvm.lv=vg_hostname/lv_root" If there is not, copy the one from /mnt/root/boot/grub/menu.lst or add one in that format that matches your configuration.
Now you can install GRUB2: grub2-install --boot-directory=/mnt/root/boot
Next, chroot into your root paritition. (I think grub2-mkconfig is smart enough to not need this, but still, it can't hurt.) chroot /mnt/root
Generate a grub configuration file. (Remember, you're chrooted now so /boot is your real boot, not the live media's.) grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
Finally, make sure it finds the F16 kernel you verified the existence of earlier, either by looking at what grub2-mkconfig spits out to the screen or checking grub.cfg.
With any luck, nothing else will go wrong and you can now reboot into F16.
-T.C.
On Thu, 2012-03-29 at 19:49 -0700, T.C. Hollingsworth wrote:
On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 3:12 PM, Braden McDaniel braden@endoframe.com wrote:
I've had an rpm upgrade from Fedora 15 tio 16 go slightly sideways and I've wound up with a grub prompt upon boot. I found https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GRUB_2; alas, it seems to be missing information about what one does when one's root partition is on an LVM volume.
By "rpm upgrade" I assume you mean yum upgrade?
I do.
Yum upgrades don't update the bootloader to GRUB2, only anaconda/preupgrade is smart enough to figure that out, so the only way you'd be running GRUB2 is if you updated it manually. GRUB1 is *supposed* to still work fine in the interim, though apparently that didn't work out so well for you. ;-)
The instructions at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrading_Fedora_using_yum
say to do:
/sbin/grub-install BOOTDEVICE
But after upgrading the packages, I had no "grub-install"; only "grub2-install". So I did that. Clearly it was insufficient.
Now that I look at that page again, I see in the "Fedora 15 -> 16" section, it talks about running "grub2-mkconfig". I missed that part before. Whoops.
Your instructions were very helpful. Thank you. For the possible benefit of others, I'll mention a few things…
The prescription for repairing your bootloader from should be something like this:
Become root. `sudo` doesn't work on Fedora live media so just: su -
Activate your LVM volumes: vgchange -a y lvchange -a y
Mount your root partition somewhere (run `lvdisplay` if you're not sure of the device path): mkdir /mnt/root mount /dev/mapper/vg_hostname-lv_root /mnt/root
Mount your /boot partition into it (run `print all` in `parted` if your not sure of the device): mount /dev/sdX# /mnt/root/boot
Verify that your boot partition is copacetic. Make sure there's a kernel and initramfs that has .fc16 in it:. Then, check /etc/default/grub and make sure that the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX variable mentions your LVM logical volume. There should be a kernel argument that looks like "rd.lvm.lv=vg_hostname/lv_root" If there is not, copy the one from /mnt/root/boot/grub/menu.lst or add one in that format that matches your configuration.
Now you can install GRUB2: grub2-install --boot-directory=/mnt/root/boot
You meant to write
$ grub2-install --boot-directory=/mnt/root/boot /dev/sdX
Next, chroot into your root paritition. (I think grub2-mkconfig is smart enough to not need this, but still, it can't hurt.) chroot /mnt/root
FYI, I tried it without chroot'ing and it didn't work. (Which could just mean I did it wrong.)
Generate a grub configuration file. (Remember, you're chrooted now so /boot is your real boot, not the live media's.) grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
This part failed for me until I went back and did
$ sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/root/dev
before chroot'ing.
Finally, make sure it finds the F16 kernel you verified the existence of earlier, either by looking at what grub2-mkconfig spits out to the screen or checking grub.cfg.
With any luck, nothing else will go wrong and you can now reboot into F16.
Problem solved. Thanks again.
-
Braden McDaniel -
T.C. Hollingsworth