Arch Linux

EmyrB

Member

From: Wales, UK

Registered: 2006-09-04

Posts: 122

Grub Error 18

Hi All,

After a bit of advice from the community about the above error. I have done research and Error 18 is:- Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS, which is fair enough.

I have a 160GB IDE HDD installed and I have partitioned it like this: -

SDA1 512MB Swap
SDA2 59.5GB /
SDA3 100GB /Home

(the figures are rounded up)

Grub is installed to the MBR of SDA.

Now in order to resolve this I need to create a /boot partition before the swap partition of say 30-50MB. How do I do this? Do I rerun the Arch setup and delete all my partitions and then do the complete net core install again, or can I run cfdisk or fdisk from the command prompt after booting the arch setup disk and change the partitions there? If I do the latter, will this effect the Arch install?

Cheers

EmyrB

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Proud Arch Linux User

dav7

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-02-08

Posts: 674

Re: Grub Error 18

Who said you needed to put it above the swap partition? As long as there are no other primary partitions on the disk besides those you've listed above and/or you've made said partitions extended/logical, I see no reason at all why grub won't have any problems finding a /boot partition at the end of the disk, so just resize /home to 59.6GB and create a /boot in the newly-created unpartitioned space.

Technically it should be fine, but some users can be jittery and go all like OCD about these things, like myself (>.>). So you have the freedom to reinstall if you want, since you'd need to move each partition down a bit to fit in a new /boot partition at the top, which can be a bit of a hassle, and might take quite some time.

Either way, you'll need to do some sort of partition management and for that I really recommend gparted.

-dav7

Last edited by dav7 (2008-10-29 15:57:06)

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Windows was made for looking at success from a distance through a wall of oversimplicity. Linux removes the wall, so you can just walk up to success and make it your own.
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Reinventing the wheel is fun. You get to redefine pi.

creslin

Member

Registered: 2008-10-04

Posts: 241

Re: Grub Error 18

How old is the bios?  I thought the the cylinder boundary only affected really old bios systems.  If it's a fairly recent bios, the error is probably due to misconfiguration in either the bios or grub installation.

If you're confident this is really the issue, personally I would just boot the arch live cd and use fdisk before the installation to 1) delete swap 2) create boot+swap 3) fix partition ordering.

Last edited by creslin (2008-10-29 16:48:26)

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ARCH|awesome3.0 powered by Pentium M 750 | 512MB DDR2-533 | Radeon X300 M
The journey is the reward.

EmyrB

Member

From: Wales, UK

Registered: 2006-09-04

Posts: 122

Re: Grub Error 18

It's an Award BIOS V3.8LCP from 30 November 2001, the mobo is a QDI Kinetiz 7B/E so no idea if the BIOS suffers from the cylinder boundary. Anyway, I shall resize my home partition and put in a /boot partition at the end. I shall let you all know how successful I am.

Cheers for the feedback

EmyrB

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Proud Arch Linux User

EmyrB

Member

From: Wales, UK

Registered: 2006-09-04

Posts: 122

Re: Grub Error 18

OK, here is an update... ahem... I tried what was suggested and added a /boot partition, but it was still coming up with a grub 18  error. Frustrated with it all I installed Pardus on the same PC and it worked. So I then stumbled upon the idea that I could have a dual boot PC, with Pardus and Arch.

However, after the install I still had the same grub error 18. So I rebooted and went into the BIOS and this is when I noticed that the QDI logo has never showed up on boot up. I switched it on (makes it much easier to get into the BIOS, so you don't have to keep pressing the delete key like a demented idiot while looking at a black screen) and I rebooted the PC and lo and behold it worked, Grub was happily showing both Pardus and Arch. So, I then wiped my HDD and installed just Arch (sorry Pardus devs) and it to worked. So whatever the QDI logo does, it makes grub very unhappy.

Anyway, I installed Gnome 2.24.1 but now I cannot shut the PC down. If I select Shutdown, nothing happens, but if I then select logout the PC shuts down. Is there and issue with Policykit on Gnome 2.24 as I had the same issues with both Ubuntu 8.10 Beta and Zenwalk Gnome 5.2 all using Gnome 2.24?

Cheers

EmyrB

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Proud Arch Linux User

EmyrB

Member

From: Wales, UK

Registered: 2006-09-04

Posts: 122

Re: Grub Error 18

I installed Gnome 2.24.1 but now I cannot shut the PC down. If I select Shutdown, nothing happens, but if I then select logout the PC shuts down. Is there and issue with Policykit on Gnome 2.24 as I had the same issues with both Ubuntu 8.10 Beta and Zenwalk Gnome 5.2 all using Gnome 2.24?

Solved as I was not a member of hal, dbus and power. Once I added myself to these I was able to logout, reboot and shutdown as normal

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Proud Arch Linux User