Arch Linux

fat_boy

Member

Registered: 2010-12-01

Posts: 6

[SOLVED] Can't boot OS after fresh Arch installation.

Hello,

I am a new user on this forum thus please be tolerant for any mistakes. The problem I have is with booting Arch after its installation.
More precisely GRUB configuration and disks numbering do not match somehow and GRUB can not find kernel etc.
As for my configuration, there are two SATA II disks connected through on board controller. First disk is connected to port 0 with Windows 7
installed, second disk is connected to port 1 and intended for Arch only. BIOS was set to boot from second disk.
Procedure I followed to install Arch was following. I downloaded 2010.05 netinstall x64 ISO file and used dd on my thumb drive. Then I booted
my desktop of this thumb drive, logged on as root and executed ./setup. After several steps I was asked to confirm configuration of my
fresh system and make desired changes. At that point I double checked all configuration files especially /etc/fstab. I choosed to use instance
disk naming instead of UUID or label. Afterwards I was presented with GRUB menu.lst and again checked and confirmed its configuration.
Let me point one thing, before installation I logged on using 'arch' user and run couple of commands in system i.e. cat /proc/scsi/scsi,
fdisk -l etc. I knew disk in port 1 I was going to install Arch on was recognized as sdb and other one as sda. Therefore I used sdb in fstab and
menu.lst files. Also HD1,0 entry for Arch in menu.lst was used and MBR installed on sdb.
Once Arch installation was completed I rebooted system and here the problem started. After I was presented with GRUB menu I choosed Arch to boot
and then it showed error complaining about partition type. I do not remember exact message but I concluded problem must be with GRUB conifguration
and launched its command line. From there I used find, root, setup, kernel, initrd and boot commands. I was surprised when GRUB found 'menu.lst'
on HD0,0 not on HD1,0 as I would suspect. Everything went fine but OS boot stopped at ramdisk stage(I think) showing me 'ramfs' prompt. The only
option I had was to press reset button on my chassis not being able to use my keyboard. Is this because I did not specify 'usbinput' HOOK in mkinitcpio.conf at installation stage ? Anyway I could not boot Arch and thought I will try to boot my desktop of optical drive and repeat installation. Unfortunately it did not change anything, same problem. Then I disconnected Windows 7 disk from port 0, left only disk connected to port 1 and
repeated Arch installation. This time I was able to boot Arch after successful installation, but problem with GRUB reapered when I connected back
Windows 7 disk to port 0.
I did not give up and reinstalled Arch(with two disks connected) but this time I decided to use UUID in fstab and menu.lst files instead. Finally
I booted Arch successfully. But this is not end of the story I have checked fstab and /proc/mounts, my root partition was marked by UUID
but home partition by instance name i.e. /dev/sdb2.
I went trough couple of similar problems on different forums and people said that legacy GRUB might have a problem booting Linux of second
drive with MBR on it. I do not know if this is true and if was affected by this issue but I would like to know your thoughts.

Matt

Last edited by fat_boy (2010-12-02 18:17:15)

toad

Member

From: if only I knew

Registered: 2008-12-22

Posts: 1,775

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot OS after fresh Arch installation.

Admittedly I only read as far as that you have a grub problem. Have you tried super grub disk to boot arch? That should bring it up so you can repair any grub pointers.

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never trust a toad...
::Grateful ArchDonor::
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useradded

Member

From: Edinburgh, UK

Registered: 2010-05-15

Posts: 77

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot OS after fresh Arch installation.

Hello fat_boy

You've put so much in here that it's not clear to me (and probably others) what it is you want to know.  I've done this myself in the past too, so I know that if you could put into a couple of sentences what it is you'd like to know it would greatly increase your chances of getting help.

fat_boy

Member

Registered: 2010-12-01

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot OS after fresh Arch installation.

I am sorry for late reply. I managed to solve the problem. I connected disk with Arch to port 0, disk with Windows 7 to port 1 and reinstalled Arch. After that GRUB did not have any problems with booting both systems and I used disk instance names in fstab and menu.lst.
Now I know not to install Linux and MBR on second disk in system but on first one.
Thanks for responses.

Texas

Member

From: Dallas, Texas

Registered: 2010-09-10

Posts: 131

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot OS after fresh Arch installation.

Please prepend [SOLVED] to the post title.