Arch Linux

capolise

Member

Registered: 2008-08-11

Posts: 13

Live CD doesn't boot but displays Grub prompt

I downloaded archlinux-2008.06-core-i686.iso and verified the MD5 hash.
I have installed only WinXP, when I try to boot archlinux CD I get the Grub prompt but in the installation guide this is not mentioned.
Is it an error on my Laptop?

Zerathidune

Member

Registered: 2007-02-25

Posts: 102

Re: Live CD doesn't boot but displays Grub prompt

Are you having trouble booting the arch cd? the first option in the grub menu should work for most people.

The official install guide is pretty general, I'm not surprised it makes the assumption that you'll figure out how to boot from grub on your own. The Beginner's guide on the other hand, does discuss this step.

capolise

Member

Registered: 2008-08-11

Posts: 13

Re: Live CD doesn't boot but displays Grub prompt

Are you having trouble booting the arch cd? the first option in the grub menu should work for most people.

I haven't no Grub menu only a GRUB command prompt like this:

grub>

From this point I don't konw how to boot the Arch installation CD. I have to write some magic commands from here?

UPDATE: Sorry but I have read the official guide and it assumes  that the user knows how boot the CD from grub prompt. Now from the beginner guide I see that I have to press e to edit the boot line and b to boot the kernel. I go to try!

Last edited by capolise (2008-08-11 15:35:35)

capolise

Member

Registered: 2008-08-11

Posts: 13

Re: Live CD doesn't boot but displays Grub prompt

Nothing to do I think that Grub don't read the MENU.LST configuration file...

ravster

Member

From: Queen's U, Kingston, Canada

Registered: 2004-05-02

Posts: 285

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Re: Live CD doesn't boot but displays Grub prompt

Try 'find arch/setup'. That should show you which 'hdx,x' thingy to use in the 'root (hdx,x)' command. Then you need to identify the kernel. I don't know if there is a 'ls' command in the grub prompt, if there isn't you need to find the location of the kernel file and the initrd file first (use explorer on windows to get the paths).
Do 'kernel /pathtokernel' and initrd 'pathtoinitrd', then do 'boot'
I don't know if that will work, but its worth a shot.

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ravidesai.com

capolise

Member

Registered: 2008-08-11

Posts: 13

Re: Live CD doesn't boot but displays Grub prompt

The find command 'find arch/setup' terminate with an error, Grub see only this device:
fd0 fd1 fd2 fd3 fd4 fd5 fd6 fd7 hd0. None of the eigth fdx device is readable by Grub.
I have the laptop Benq Joybook 7000.

WORKAROUND:
I downloaded the 2008.3 version of the installation CD, that uses ISOLINUX as boot CD manager, and it works fine, then I will upgrade the system to current release with pacman.

loosec

Member

Registered: 2007-03-08

Posts: 134

Re: Live CD doesn't boot but displays Grub prompt

I've seen similar things on the USB image when it was not correctly copied to the USB stick. Also some USB sticks seem not to work.

capolise

Member

Registered: 2008-08-11

Posts: 13

Re: Live CD doesn't boot but displays Grub prompt

Now I writing from mozilla firefox on ArchLinux! then I'm a new archer!

I don't know what is the problem for the boot of 2008.6 in my laptop (BENQ Joybook 7000) but I suspect that it's not a CD problem because I have burnt one RW and two CD-R, and the last was a good CD-R, at 4X speed. Finally I have used the 2008.3 image on an old CD-RW and all was fine, the upgrading of the core libraries has taken few minutes, only 80Mb of libraries to download!

jsteel

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: England

Registered: 2008-03-18

Posts: 119

Re: Live CD doesn't boot but displays Grub prompt

I have this problem with an Acer TravelMate 290. The CD works fine in another laptop. I made a note of the kernel and image parameters needed to boot and entered these into the grub prompt on the other laptop; it didn't work.

Last edited by jsteel (2008-08-15 22:42:43)

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johnvoisey

Member

Registered: 2006-11-04

Posts: 28

Re: Live CD doesn't boot but displays Grub prompt

Just to stick my 2p worth in ....

I have a web-book (the latest newfangled thing from carphone warehouse). It comes with ubuntu preloaded and I just cannot STAND the distro. Sorry it has to go (!) Removing the existing S-ATA drive and inserting a new blank one took two minutes. Then the fun started.

As the web-book has no internal CD-ROM I tried downloading and making a USB stick boot, and got a grub error 2. I tried every conceivable combination of root (hdx,y) command and got some sort of error to each one.  I then thought maybe it was the web-book's bios refusing to recognise a usb boot device, then I saw it would recognise the SD/MMC card, so I tried making a bootable image on one of those. Again, no joy, just a load of grub prompts.

So now the gloves were off. Out came a spare full size CD-ROM and a multiple interface usb adapter dongle acquired from maplins some time ago. In no time at all the web-book recognised the new usb cd-rom. But no luck at all with this 2008 ISO. Every time I try booting from it, all I get is the grub 0.97 menu and "grub>" prompt and nothing I can do will make the machine recognise anytbing on the CD.

Yet I have successfully booted the web-book from a bootable DOS CD-ROM and also successfully booted and installed ARCH from the Arch 'Dont Panic' CD image that became available about a year and a half ago. 

I know what you're thinking. It's a duff CD image. Well, I md5summed the image and demanded nero verify the image burned, AND when I load the 2008 image ISO into, for example, the desktop PC I am using to write this post, it works (it shows me a grub menu including two "live cd" entries (one a legacy IDE version) plus tools including memtest and space invaders. All of which work on the desktop PC

As the webbook boots from older isolinux style installation disks, I am forced to conclude there is some incompatibility between SOME machines and SOME of the grub features exploited in this newest ISO. If anyone reading this has any bright ideas I'd love to hear them. Equally if anyone can benefit from any sort of diagnostic output let me kn ow what commands to run and I'll collect whatever evidence I can.

bruno321

Member

Registered: 2010-03-05

Posts: 89

Re: Live CD doesn't boot but displays Grub prompt

Sorry to bump such an old thread, but this problem hasn't been solved. I have the exact same problem as jsteel: I have an Acer Travelmate 290 and it just displays the boot prompt when I try to boot from latest Arch ISO CD (which is a fine copy since I've already installed Arch from it).

What should I do?

EDIT: Ok, sorry for the unnecessary bump, googling a little bit more solved the issue. As reported on http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/11408 this is indeed a bug that has a workaround which is to download and install the ISOLINUX version, which I'm about to do.

Last edited by bruno321 (2010-03-25 02:01:34)