“Nothing happens the same way Twice” – Azlan
| May 19th, 2008I have downloaded Fedora Core 9 and spent my whole Sunday afternoon and evening in installing and then debugging the boot problem only to know that they have made changes to Grub and the way Fedora 9 boots.
I use a Fedora Core distro as a dual boot OS with my Windows XP based laptop. I have been using Fedora on my laptop for quite a while now. Fedora 8 was the best so far as only in this core version I was able to run wireless network. But I had abandoned it because I still cudn’t get Checkpoint VPN up and running on a linux machine.
Running a VPN client connection aint the only problem I have been facing. The other is a tricky one. I use Thunderbird for eMail access, both official and my personal GMail accounts. I want to share a single Thunderbird profile between Windows and Linux. Since my Primary OS is windows XP, Thunderbird’s profile files are on an NTFS drive. I am able to cross access the profile files/emails from Thunderbird from both Windows and Fedora but in Fedora it throws error on sending/receiving new files.
Anywayz thats not the problem I am concerned today. The problem today is booting Fedora 9 that I have freshly installed as a secondary OS.
I do not install GRUB on my MBR as I do not want anything to mess up my MBR to a point where I can not repair it. So can’t risk to install GRUB on MBR. Best way is to install MBR on the Linux root partition itself and then I use a bootable FDOS CD with GRUB for DOS to boot into Fedora. Well till Fedora core 8 this was never a problem, it always worked for me. But not just this time as well. This time this workaround has failed.
Every time I try to boot Fedora 9 using the GRUB for DOS from my bootable CD it throws “GRUB Error 2: Error 2: Bad file or directory type”. Initially I thought there was something wrong with my GRUB config file “menu.lst”. I tried all different variations and changes that I could think of in the config file in order to debug it. But soon I realized that this aint the cause of the error.
I Googled the problem after wasting more than and hour on GRUB config file (I should have done this on the very first step itself), and found out that starting Fedora 9 GRUB has been changed to boot in a manner that earlier version of GRUB will not support. Complete problem details as a Fedora Bugzilla Ticket
So the only way to use Fedora 9 is to install GRUB i.e. install GRUB in MBR.
Then I tried to get GRUB on a Bootable CD. Per the documentation on GRUB’s website this was certainly possible. Making a GRUB bootable CD-ROM
Hmmm I tried the steps there by booting into my fedora installation in rescue mode from the install disk:
First, make a top directory for the bootable image, say, `iso’:
$ mkdir isoMake a directory for GRUB:
$ mkdir -p iso/boot/grubCopy the file stage2_eltorito:
$ cp /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/stage2_eltorito iso/boot/grubIf desired, make the config file menu.lst under iso/boot/grub (see Configuration), and copy any files and directories for the disc to the directory iso/.
Finally, make a ISO9660 image file like this:
$ mkisofs -R -b boot/grub/stage2_eltorito -no-emul-boot \
-boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o grub.iso isoThis produces a file named grub.iso, which then can be burned into a CD
But, there was yet another problem. I cud not locate the stage2_eltorito file in /usr/lib/grub/i385-pc/ location. In fact there was not folder for GRUB in /usr/file in my installation of Fedora. After a good hour of searching in all places I found the required stage2_eltorito file in a different location:
/usr/share/grub/i386-redhat/stage2_eltorito
Great, I was hoping this should do it. I created the Image file, burnt a disk and tried booting with it. For some reason GRUB was not picking up the configuration file by default, so I had to manually feed the configuration file. Now when I have the Fedora 9 GRUB boot menu in from of me I was confident like anything that this is failproof. Unfortunately a new error this time:
ERROR 25: Disk Read Error
I so much wish that I was the master of all such stuff, booting, linux, windows, systems, operating systems and all. Alas I am an average computer user.
Anyway! For the last time I tried to pass all the boot steps in my GRUB config file manually to GRUB command line. This time I was served with ahem fuckin dunno what kindda error message.
I quit for tonight. Its past 000, will try again next time, perhaps next weekend.
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o5/19/2008: 2200
New problem. I am able to mount Fedora using GRUB Bootable CD but only by passing command line GRUB options. Thats a manual task. But when I use the same commands in a Configuration File, menu.lst, I get the above error. Now how bizarre is that!!!!
Found something here: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/6480/1/ . Don’t know if this will help me. I’ll try it out tonight.
-=oNo=-