Alternative booting

[Karl Larsen]

David Krings wrote:
> Chris Jones wrote:
>>> So, unless my list above is incomplete it doesn't really allow for much
>>> else other than GRUB/kernel or some mysterious force from above. So 
>>> what
>>> is the next thing you tell me? Aliens abducted my system? ;)
>>
>> You can discount the kernel since, as far as I understand when you 
>> have the problem all you get is
>>
>> grub>
>>
>> I.e. you have only got to the grub prompt - The kernel only comes 
>> into play *after* grub, once grub has found the kernel you selected.
>>
>> The fact you don't get that far means grub is unable to find the 
>> kernel you requested (or its own config file perhaps ?). This means 
>> grub cannot read /boot for some reason.
>>
>>> >From your list this leaves
>>
>> - hardware
>> - BIOS
>> - GRUB
>> - user
>
> OK, I agree that the kernel isn't the issue here unless one of the 
> updates installs a new kernel, but even then it is an installer issue, 
> not a kernel issue.
>
> BIOS is not the problem as I was able to successfully boot several 
> times with the exact same BIOS without any problems.
>
> Hardware is out as it did work before more than once and the hardware 
> is perfectly fine.
>
> Leaves GRUB, updater, or user...since we cannot agree on either GRUB 
> (which in its defense worked a few times!) or user (my setup worked 
> fine several times in regards to booting) I add updater to the list 
> and blame
> that one.
>
>>
>> and from the details in this thread I cannot discount any of the 
>> above (although personally I would consider GRUB the least likely)
>
> Well, I don't fault GRUB for not booting the OS when it gets fed wrong 
> info. What I squarely blame GRUB for is that at the grub> prompt no 
> reasonable means of recovery are available, at least not in my case.
    At the grub> prompt there is lots you can do. You can reload grub if 
you want to. Lets say your /boot/ partition is /dev/sdb6 and you want to 
put grub in the first hard drive which in grub talk is (hd0). Now 
.dev/sdb6 is going to be (hd1,5) in grub talk.

    Now to load grub do this:

grub> root (hd1,5)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

Now reboot and see if it worked.





>
>> You say you have installed this system a few times - How hard would 
>> it be to just install one more time, but this time with a /boot at 
>> the start of your drive - This will either a) work, so all is fine or 
>> b) not work, proving something or other about the problem.
>
> I could ignore any updates and may get this done in a few hours, true, 
> but I don't want to spend more time on trying stuff out that doesn't 
> have a good chance of working.
>


-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.