Remapping the drive :(

sa · 2008-07-01 01:30:12

For work reasons, I am forced to taint my poor laptop with the curse of Windows. In order for this to happen, I have to completely reformat my drive. This is how it's laid out:

Model: ATA HITACHI HTS72202 (scsi) 
Disk /dev/sda: 200GB 
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B 
Partition Table: msdos 

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 
1 512B 41.1MB 41.1MB primary ext3 boot 
2 41.1MB 4343MB 4302MB primary linux-swap 
3 4343MB 12.2GB 7872MB primary ext3 
4 12.2GB 200GB 188GB extended 
5 12.2GB 77.2GB 65.0GB logical xfs 
6 77.2GB 200GB 123GB logical ntfs

and of course, Windows refuses to install to anything but a Primary partition. If I back up all my partitions, will it screw Arch up if partitions are set up differently? Even if I kept them in the same order and put all the linux partitions in one extended partition?

lucke · 2008-07-01 01:35:28

You just have to keep fstab and grub's menu.lst in sync with your layout.

sa · 2008-07-01 01:44:31

Thanks! Do any of the linux partitions have to stay as a primary partition?

lucke · 2008-07-01 01:56:24

No.

sa · 2008-07-01 17:46:12

awesome, thanks a ton guys

sa · 2008-07-02 03:20:55

something completely weird happened. after installing windows, it took over the MBR of course. so I went back and tried to reinstall grub with an ubuntu livecd, and it reinstalled it and everything, and I checked the /boot partition's menu.lst to make sure it was the right Arch one and it was. now when I start up the computer, for some reason I get a different menu which has 3 Ubuntu 8.04 options and 2 for Windows. I erased the Windows partition because it was messing up the boot (and it didn't work anyway), but I downloaded SystemRescue CD and not even that is able to help me. I've gone into grub a whole bunch of times and tried to set it up on my hard drive, and when I mount the /boot partition and / partition I check the fstab and grub menu.lst and both look perfectly fine. I can't figure out at all what happened with this Ubuntu menu.lst.

edit: it looks like somehow I grabbed this bad Grub setup off a external hard drive I didn't know was plugged in. Now I get an Error 21 on boot, can't install from grub or grub-install off SystemRescue CD. I'm unsure what else to do, since most Error 21 problems I saw on google were hardware based but I'm working on a laptop.

Last edited by sa (2008-07-02 03:35:13)

lucke · 2008-07-02 11:25:16

If you have access to any grub (ubuntu's, systemcdrescue's), get into the CLI and type root (hdx,x) - pointing to your Arch boot partition - and then setup (hd0).

Maybe that'll help.

sa · 2008-07-02 15:51:44

ok, so i did a bit more messing around to get it to start up. at least grub works.
when I start up, either with the normal kernel or Fallback option, it loads for a while until a Kernel panic:

EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
kinit: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
kinit: init not found!
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

any chance this could be an fstab problem?

(thanks a ton for your time, by the way~)

Last edited by sa (2008-07-02 16:30:15)

lucke · 2008-07-02 16:26:44

I need you to be more verbose.

Have you done that root (hdx,x) and setup(hd0) thing? Got your Arch grub back?

How did you get to that grub> prompt and what exactly did you input there?

What's your current partitioning scheme? Posting "cfdisk /dev/sda" output would be appreciated.

sa · 2008-07-02 16:38:28

I just edited my previous post because it's no longer relevant, but there's a different problem now.

I did the root/setup thing in grub, turned out I was messing something up (I didn't realize grub started counting drives at 0, so I was pointing it to the wrong partition) so I finally got it to work and I got my Arch grub back. Before I figured out the problem it would jump straight to the grub> prompt. Here's my current scheme:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda2   16646 25841 69521760 5 Extended
/dev/sda5   16646 16651 45328+ 83 Linux (ext3)
/dev/sda6   16652 17206 4195768+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7   17207 18316 8391568+ 83 Linux (ext3)
/dev/sda8   18317 25840 56878101 83 Linux (jfs)

sda5 is the /boot partition, sda7 is / and sda8 is /home

lucke · 2008-07-02 16:49:28

So, here's how your grub entry should look like (just in case try with fallback image, if it works you can try without fallback):

title  Arch Linux
root   (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda7 vga=773 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img

And you need to have fstab set properly on that sda7.

sa · 2008-07-02 17:26:33

thank you so much! i was a bit unclear on how to work the menu.lst file, so I guess I was telling it to try and boot from the /boot partition too. everything works now, thank you SO much! i owe you an e-beer or something.

lucke · 2008-07-02 17:28:35

Glad it worked :-)

tigrmesh · 2008-07-02 17:55:43

sa wrote:

thank you so much! i was a bit unclear on how to work the menu.lst file, so I guess I was telling it to try and boot from the /boot partition too. everything works now, thank you SO much! i owe you an e-beer or something.

Congratulations! Please mark this thread as solved (edit the first post).

Arch Linux

#1 2008-07-01 01:30:12

Remapping the drive :(

#2 2008-07-01 01:35:28

Re: Remapping the drive :(

#3 2008-07-01 01:44:31

Re: Remapping the drive :(

#4 2008-07-01 01:56:24

Re: Remapping the drive :(

#5 2008-07-01 17:46:12

Re: Remapping the drive :(

#6 2008-07-02 03:20:55

Re: Remapping the drive :(

#7 2008-07-02 11:25:16

Re: Remapping the drive :(

#8 2008-07-02 15:51:44

Re: Remapping the drive :(

#9 2008-07-02 16:26:44

Re: Remapping the drive :(

#10 2008-07-02 16:38:28

Re: Remapping the drive :(

#11 2008-07-02 16:49:28

Re: Remapping the drive :(

#12 2008-07-02 17:26:33

Re: Remapping the drive :(

#13 2008-07-02 17:28:35

Re: Remapping the drive :(

#14 2008-07-02 17:55:43

Re: Remapping the drive :(

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