Mandriva2006 and Grub [solved]

[lawsonrc]

I'm using SUSE9.3's Grub as my MBR.

 

After installing Mandriva '06 PowerPak, I edited Grub the simple way.

 

Mandrava is on hda5 on my laptop., and I have several other distros on the laptop as well: SuSe9.3, Kubuntu, Mandriva LE '05.

 

Here is how I edited Grub. I did this for Kubuntu and it worked fine:

 

title Mandriva2006

root (hd0,4)

chainloader +1

 

For Kubuntu, which is on hda7, earlier in the week I had done:

 

title Kubuntu

root (hd0,6)

chainloader +1

 

I can boot into Kubuntu, but not into Mandriva.

 

***I'm getting in Mandriva Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format.***

 

How can I edit SuSe's Grub so that I boot into Mandriva.

 

NOTE: Please do not get into a suggestion/discussion/debate about Lilo at this point.

I just want to solve the problem as stated above.

 

Thanks!

 

Richard L.

[arctic]

Please post you complete menu.lst file. Your entries seem to be completely wrong. A dual-boot setup could look like this (It is from my Fedora box... sorry):

 

default=0

timeout=5

splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

hiddenmenu

 

title Fedora Core (2.6.13-1.1532_FC4)

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.13-1.1532_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet

initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.13-1.1532_FC4.img

 

title Ubuntu

root (hd1,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-9-386 root=/dev/hdd1 ro vga=791 quiet splash

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.12-9-386

savedefault

boot

 

This is an example and you should get the basic picture. It is always the same with any distro. You always need to specify the location of your kernel image and (most times) your initrd.img, otherwise the system won't know where to look for the files it needs for proper booting.

[lawsonrc]

Thanks Arctic! At our weekly Linux Workshop in Houston, TX, I have used the above way before and it has worked. Also, it is working for Kubuntu.

 

I appreciate your help in doing it the more detailed way. I'm not sure how to list the Man2006 Kernel. I know it's 2.6.12..... but not sure if it's 2.6.12-12mdk (I know this is close if not correct.) NOTE: I'm not at all "technical", so I need clear directions to make any edits, please.

 

Here is my Grub:

 

Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Mon Nov 14 13:49:24 CST 2005

 

color white/blue black/light-gray

default 0

timeout 8

gfxmenu (hd0,5)/boot/message

 

title SUSE LINUX 9.3

kernel (hd0,5)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 vga=0x317 selinux=0 splash=silent resume=/dev/hda2 showopts

initrd (hd0,5)/boot/initrd

 

title Mandriva2006

root (hd0,4)

chainloader +1

 

title Kubuntu

root (hd0,6)

chainloader +1

 

title Mandriva 2005 (/dev/hda8)

kernel (hd0,7)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda8 resume=/dev/hda2 splash=silent vga=788

initrd (hd0,7)/boot/initrd.img

 

title Failsafe -- SUSE LINUX 9.3

kernel (hd0,5)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off vga=normal noresum selinux=0 barrier=off nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 3

 

initrd (hd0,5)/boot/initrd)

 

NOTE: there may be a typographical error in the SuSE 9.3 or Mandriva 2005 since I wasn't able to copy and paste it. My laptop's SuSe 9.3 will not connect to the internet with my wireless card (although all the other distros do fine). So I had to type this. I'm on my desktop and am copying from my laptop.

 

Your help is greatly appreciated. :D

 

Richard L.

[arctic]

This menu.lst file addon should basically work for Mdv 2006. Simply replace your entry for Mandriva (that short, weird thingy) with the stuff I posted below

title Mandriva2006
   kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5  resume=/dev/hda2 splash=silent vga=788
   initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd.img

title Mandriva2006-nonfb
   kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5  resume=/dev/hda2
   initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd.img

title Mandriva2006-failsafe
   kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5  failsafe resume=/dev/hda2
   initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd.img

 

The relevant files (or symlinks) are always stored in the /boot folder of your root partition. So, if you want to find the Mandriva kernel and initrd names, simply type in a terminal (in Mandriva)

ls /boot

This will list all filenames in the /boot directory. If you want to do it from another distro, mount the Mandriva partition with e.g.

mount -t ext3 /dev/hda5 /mnt

Now, the complete Mandriva root partition "resides" in the mount folder. Then type

ls /mnt/boot

and you will get the same info again about kernels and initrd and vmlinuz.

 

I hope that clarifies things a bit. If you need more help, just shout. Or type in a terminal

grub --help

or

man grub

or take a look at the grub-documentation/howtos at www.tldp.org,

 

Good luck. :)

 

PS: As you had problems going online with SUSE, you can mount the SUSE partition on another system as well (same procedure as explained above) and get the contents of your menu.lst file the following way: Log into a terminal as root and type

cat /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst

et voilà, there it is. ;)

[lawsonrc]

Thanks arctic,

 

Unfortunately, after editing Grub just how you gave it to me, I'm still not able to get into Mandriva 2006.

 

I get Error 15: File not found

Press any key to continue...

 

I then booted from a Knoppix disk. Partition hda5 was on the desktop. When I clicked on it, it came up with all the Mandriva 2006 directories. I clicked on "home" and there was my user folder.

 

So this tells me that Mandriva 2006 is installed on hda5.

 

Any further help is greatly appreciated.

 

R. Lawson

[arctic]

Oh... I think I know what we forgot to add: The root indication.... Try that one

 

title Mandriva2006
  root (hd0,4)
  kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5  resume=/dev/hda2 splash=silent vga=788
  initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd.img

title Mandriva2006-nonfb
  root (hd0,4)
  kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5  resume=/dev/hda2
  initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd.img

title Mandriva2006-failsafe
  root (hd0,4)
  kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5  failsafe resume=/dev/hda2
  initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd.img

Hope it works now. If not, post your menu.lst file again. :)

[lawsonrc]

Thanks Arctic,

 

I still get the File 15 Error: File not found. Here is my Grub:

 

color white/blue black/light-gray

default 0

timeout 8

gfxmenu (hd0,5)/boot/message

 

title SUSE LINUX 9.3

kernel (hd0,5)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 vga=0x317 selinux=0 splash=silent resume=/dev/hda2 showopts

initrd (hd0,5)/boot/initrd

 

title Mandriva2006

root (hd0,4)

kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5 resume=/dev/dha2 splash=silent vga=788

initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd.img

 

title Mandriva2006-nonfb

root (hd0,4)

kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5 resume=/dev/dha2

initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd.img

 

title Mandriva2006-failsafe

root (hd0,4)

kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5 failsafe resume=/dev/dha2

initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd.img

 

title Kubuntu

root (hd0,6)

chainloader +1

 

title Mandriva 2005 (/dev/hda8)

kernel (hd0,7)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda8 resume=/dev/hda2 splash=silent vga=788

initrd (hd0,7)/boot/initrd.img

 

title Failsafe -- SUSE LINUX 9.3

kernel (hd0,5)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off vga=normal noresum selinux=0 barrier=off nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 3

initrd (hd0,5)/boot/initrd

 

Also, I tried to mount the Mandriva partition with the command you gave me, but I replaced ext3 with reiserfs, but it did not work:

 

mount -t reiserfs /dev/hda5 /mnt

 

I appreciate all your help and also help from any others.

Thanks Arctic!

 

Richard

[arctic]

:lol:... a typo:

 

look, you wrote:

resume=/dev/dha2

 

It must be:

resume=/dev/hda2

 

Check it and report back. :)

[aRTee]

can you boot from the knoppix disc once more, and check the exact filenames in the folder /boot

 

In my case, mdv2006, it looks like this:

$ ls -l /boot/
total 3072
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     512 Oct  8 18:09 boot.0300
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     512 Oct  8 18:09 boot.0340
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      19 Nov 16 18:50 config -> config-2.6.12-12mdk
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   71299 Sep  9 18:16 config-2.6.12-12mdk
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root    4096 Oct  8 17:55 grub/
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  172123 Oct  8 18:09 initrd-2.6.12-12mdk.img
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      23 Oct  8 18:09 initrd.img -> initrd-2.6.12-12mdk.img
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      27 Nov 16 18:51 kernel.h -> /boot/kernel.h-2.6.12-12mdk
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     695 Oct 15 00:33 kernel.h-2.6.12-12mdk
-rw-------  1 root root  342016 Oct 26 22:46 map
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      15 Oct  8 18:13 message -> message-graphic
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  246542 Oct  8 18:09 message-graphic
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     116 Oct  8 18:13 message-text
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      23 Oct  8 16:14 System.map -> System.map-2.6.12-12mdk
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  639316 Sep  9 18:16 System.map-2.6.12-12mdk
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     256 Oct  8 18:09 us-intl.klt
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      20 Oct  8 18:09 vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-2.6.12-12mdk
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1608520 Sep  9 18:16 vmlinuz-2.6.12-12mdk

 

(including the long listing, to be clearer)

you may want to link directly to the correct file, instead of the link...

[lawsonrc]

Many, many thanks to you arctic and aRTee. I got the problem solved at our weekly Houston Linux workshop late yesterday afternoon.

 

Here is what we did:

 

Somehow, on the install, I could have sworn that I put the bootloader in /dev/hda5. I put the DVD back in the laptop, and did an "upgrade" so that at the end I could configure the bootloader once again. (This only took less than 10 minutes.) I made sure this time that I put it in /dev/hda5.

 

Beforehand, Rick A., who helped me, had added to my SuSE Grub the short, easy method:

title Mandriva2006

root (hd0,4)

chainloader +1

 

When SuSE booted up, I had both the short one above and the long one that arctic had helped me on. Both of them booted directly into Mandriva2006!!! I then edited Grub again and took out one of them, since I only needed one to boot into.

 

Rick A. told me that he had put a lot of documentation of his own about Grub at linuxquestions.org, which I was not aware of. (There he is known as ricktoad, I think).

 

So now we know why I was getting the Error 15: file not found message: Carelessness on my part during installation.

 

Again, thanks so much for taking the time to reply several times, arctic, and having the patience to help me.

 

This is still far beyond, and by far the best Linux forum on planet earth!

 

Richard L.

[aRTee]

This is still far beyond, and by far the best Linux forum on planet earth!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

You better know it!

 

Anyway, glad things now work ok for you, and good that you learnt something new.

 

Enjoy Linux!

[lawsonrc]

Will do aRTee, thanks! Your encouragement is very welcome!

[arctic]

Hmm... we are all constantly learning new things, aren't we?

[aRTee]

Yeah, like that broken hd's sometimes slowly go the way of the dodo, and it's never too early to work on backups... :P

(My bro had similar experiences.... it sucks, I know..)

[arctic]

Rofl. :D

 

Well, the sh**-part is that you don't expect a harddrive that is not even one month old to die abruptly. And things always tend to break when you absolutely cannot afford it. Sheesh... an abacus is more reliable.