Arch Linux

basementhead

Member

Registered: 2010-09-23

Posts: 2

[SOLVED] Can only boot Arch via CD

Hi all,

I've installed 64 bit Arch on the 2nd hard drive of a Dell Optiplex 980.
It works very nicely, but I have a strange boot issue:

If I boot from the Arch CD, and select "Boot other OS", hit Tab, and manually edit the grub line to "chain.c32 hd 1 0", I am taken to the grub menu on the hard drive and can select my install which boots and runs fine.
If I select the 2nd HD in the BIOS boot menu (instead of the CD), I get to the same grub menu, but upon selecting my install, I get an Error 17.

Has anyone run into this before?

Thanks in advance!

Last edited by basementhead (2010-09-24 17:52:11)

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [SOLVED] Can only boot Arch via CD

I'm not sure this will help, but nothing else comes to mind:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#GRUB_Error_17
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GParted

Last edited by karol (2010-09-23 20:57:28)

basementhead

Member

Registered: 2010-09-23

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] Can only boot Arch via CD

Turns out I misunderstood how grub works.
When I changed my menu.lst to (hd 0,0) it works.

I thought that the 2nd drive was (hd 1,0), which was reinforced by the boot CD working with (1,0), but I guess the drives are renumbered when you boot from CD?
The big clues were that the partition that grub said couldn't boot was 0xde (a Dell partition), and I was sure I'd wiped the entire drive, but I knew that the 1st drive was a default Dell/Windows7 install.

Then using grub command line menu, I typed "find /sbin/init" and it found it on (hd0,2), and the mystery was solved....

Anyway - fixed by treating the drive as if it was /dev/sda (hd 0,0) instead of /dev/sdb (hd 1,0)

Thanks!