Arch Linux

EuhMeuh

Member

Registered: 2012-10-28

Posts: 1

Grub, kernel and boot folder disappeared after repartitioning.

Hello arch users !

I used Archlinux for some years and I never had any problem with it. Normally I would use the Archwiki, which is certainly the best wiki ever. But today is a big deal, and this is the first time I really need the help of the community.

The context :

I have a Dell Laptop with one hard drive. On this hard drive, 4 partitions :

• sda1 - Dell Utility (fat16, 40MiB)

• sda2 - Archlinux (ext4, 200 GiB)

• sda3 - Windows (ntfs, 40 GiB) - This one was not here first, I installed it for some reasons... You know, games... (I was VERY reluctant about this installation, it took me months to take a decision)

• sda4 - Swap (swap, 2 GiB)

Please note that I don't have any separate /home nor /boot partition.

What I did to get the issue :

The Windows partition (sda3) was only 20 GiB long. I decided to resize it to 40 GiB, resizing in the same time the Linux partition (sda2) from 220 GiB to 200 GiB.
It went fine, Gparted made its job perfectly.

But after a reboot : Grub famous "Error 15 - File not found".

I've already saw this kind of problem, it did not fear me, so I started fixing it...

What I did :

Booting from a Live CD, I chroot'ed my system... Reinstalled grub as explained here : http://www.hanckmann.net/?q=node/42

Rebooting... Grub starts... and I am alone in the dark with this as my only friend :

Grub>

Err.. Creepy, don't you think ?

Alright ! Let's try to boot !

root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda2 ro

ERROR 15 - File not found

Owh...what ? No kernel ?

An other chroot later, my fears were filled :

# ls /boot
grub

I don't know WHY my kernel would decide to magically disappear, but it surely did.

Some research later, I managed to get back my kernel :

# pacman -S linux

# ls /boot
grub  initramfs-linux-fallback.img  initramfs-linux.img  vmlinuz-linux

Now I can boot ! But on issue subsists :

ls /boot/grub
default        ffs_stage1_5      minix_stage1_5     ufs2_stage1_5
device.map     iso9660_stage1_5  reiserfs_stage1_5  vstafs_stage1_5
e2fs_stage1_5  jfs_stage1_5      stage1             xfs_stage1_5
fat_stage1_5   stage2

No menu.lst, no grub.cfg... nothing to tells grub what to do... I tried searching for some command to generate one of these files, but I found nothing.
So I tried to write my own menu.lst :

default 1

timeout 10

title ArchLinux
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda2 ro
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
boot

It actually worked, and I am actually writing this message from my Archlinux system. But a lot of issues subsists :

What went wrong :

• I use Slim as a "login manager". But after entering my password in slim, it fails to start openbox. I switched to tty1 and typed "startx" to get a graphical interface.

• I use Docky as my application dock, but it doesn't start, with an error message explaining it can't find System.Core (it's a C# program).

• Hoping it'll fix something, I decided to do a full update of my system :

  yaourt -Syua --devel

  It installed systemd, and I have more issues at startup because MODULES in rc.conf is deprecated...and so on... Also, Docky requires DBus, after the upgrade, it can't find it anymore.

What I want to do :

I'd like to get a "normal" menu.lst, or to migrate to Grub2. (How can I achieve that without totally breaking my system apart ?)
I'd like to get slim to start openbox correctly. (maybe something changed about the way .xinitrc works ?)
I'd like to fix issues with systemd and DBus.

I would really appreciate any tip you can give me to get rid of these issues.