Arch Linux

morphjk

Member

Registered: 2010-06-10

Posts: 59

Issues Installing Grub

I am currently setting up a new frontend HTPC which is going to be running Arch as that is what is already on all the other boxes the issue I have is that I have an error with the install of grub. Now firstly my partitions are these:

sda1 - 2gb swap
sda2 - 500mb
sda5 - 20gb (logical) for OS
sda6 - 20gb (logical) for OS
sda7 - 37gb (logical) for /home

I made the partitions and made sda2 bootable. I then made sda5 have the following:

/, /boot;/tmp;/var

sda7 was then made to have /home. sda5&7 have been made ext4. Now it goes through the package install and I get to the install grub side of things and I get errors.

These are the errors:
error installing GRUB.

(see /dev/tty7 for output)

So I went to tty7 and found it says:
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists...no

Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists"...no

Error 15: File not found

grub>quit

This is trying to install it to mbr of sda.

Doing the following command:

ls -l /boot/*

I get the following:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1363990 May 13 2010 /boot/System.map26
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2082176 May 13 2010 /boot/vmlinuz26

/boot/grub:
total 2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1355 Apr 18 2010 menu.lst

/boot/memtest86+:
total 157
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 160280 Sep 30 2009 memtest.bin

So I am not sure what I need to do to fix this up. Would appreciate help on this.

KimTjik

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2007-08-22

Posts: 715

Re: Issues Installing Grub

I made the partitions and made sda2 bootable. I then made sda5 have the following:

/, /boot;/tmp;/var

What does this mean? You have a swap and /home separately, so logically the rest /root is on sda5. I don't know if the installer would accept conflicting mount points, but what you write looks a bit odd.

morphjk

Member

Registered: 2010-06-10

Posts: 59

Re: Issues Installing Grub

I want to have sda1 as swap which it is. I then want to have sda5 with root, boot, tmp and var on it (so when it asked for aditional options I entered it as /boot;/tmp;/var because I had already selected root to start with) and home on sda7

Last edited by morphjk (2011-07-12 06:10:23)

KimTjik

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2007-08-22

Posts: 715

Re: Issues Installing Grub

Maybe I'm slow but that still sounds odd. If you've selected a root partition and you don't aim to dedicate a partition for /var or some other directory, you don't need to select mount points for those. Everything that's not defined separately will reside under the root directory.

morphjk

Member

Registered: 2010-06-10

Posts: 59

Re: Issues Installing Grub

Maybe I'm slow but that still sounds odd. If you've selected a root partition and you don't aim to dedicate a partition for /var or some other directory, you don't need to select mount points for those. Everything that's not defined separately will reside under the root directory.

I doubt it is you. It will be me as I've only setup a couple of Arch machines with a lot of guidance.

It complained when I didn't tell it to boot under sda5 and gave me a warning which is as follows:

there is no separate boot filesystem. You can either go back or ignore.

KimTjik

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2007-08-22

Posts: 715

Re: Issues Installing Grub

I think the Grub package included with the install media is patched for ext4, hence you might not need a separate boot partition. Try what you did, but define only mount points for swap (sda1), / (sda5) and /home (sda7), since that's the only defined mount points you'll have in your system. After that there shouldn't be any problems installing Grub to sda.

What do you intend to use sda6 for?

morphjk

Member

Registered: 2010-06-10

Posts: 59

Re: Issues Installing Grub

I think the Grub package included with the install media is patched for ext4, hence you might not need a separate boot partition. Try what you did, but define only mount points for swap (sda1), / (sda5) and /home (sda7), since that's the only defined mount points you'll have in your system. After that there shouldn't be any problems installing Grub to sda.

What do you intend to use sda6 for?

sda6 is going to be a clone of this system for when I upgrade. I will upgrade one and keep the other one not upgrade so that if I upgrade and I need to go back I can. It is something done on a forum for HTPC. The main linux guru has been busy of late so I wanted to get the install underway.

So when I see that warning about not having a boot filesystem I am okay to ignore it? Thanks for the help too.

KimTjik

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2007-08-22

Posts: 715

Re: Issues Installing Grub

So when I see that warning about not having a boot filesystem I am okay to ignore it? Thanks for the help too.

The partition should be flagged (in for example cfdisk which is included with the installer) as boot partition. If that's done you shouldn't receive any error messages, if as I suppose the install media contains a Grub package patched for ext4 support.

morphjk

Member

Registered: 2010-06-10

Posts: 59

Re: Issues Installing Grub

So when I see that warning about not having a boot filesystem I am okay to ignore it? Thanks for the help too.

The partition should be flagged (in for example cfdisk which is included with the installer) as boot partition. If that's done you shouldn't receive any error messages, if as I suppose the install media contains a Grub package patched for ext4 support.

No worries I'll give it a try later on when I get a chance. Thanks again for the help