Arch Linux

Arman

Member

From: California, United States

Registered: 2010-02-16

Posts: 4

Need help reinstalling GRUB

Arch was running perfectly up until a few days ago. Wanted to test out a new distro (which is in beta -_-) and it ended up deleting /boot/grub and /etc/fstab on my Arch install. The beta distro messed up, so I installed Mandriva over that, but that doesn't seem to load.

Now when I select Arch from the GRUB menu "error 15" pops up.

I'm trying to follow this guide: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Reinstalling_GRUB , but when I get to the part where I have to mount my partition, and then have to type in these commands:

mount -t proc proc /mnt/proc
mount -t sysfs sys /mnt/sys
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev

I get the "mount point _____ does not exist" error.

These are my linux partitions:

$ sudo fdisk -l | grep -i linux
/dev/sda2            2611        2865     2048287+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4           28914       30401    11952360   83  Linux  ( Mandriva Linux)
/dev/sda5            2866        4140    10241406   83  Linux  (/home, where /boot/grub/menu.lst was I believe)
/dev/sda6            4141        5415    10241406   83  Linux  ( / )

Here is my backup copy of menu.lst (when I only had XP and Arch):

# (0) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux
root   (hd0,3)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/3ad6515e-2293-4127-9d82-f4605256de94 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img

# (1) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux Fallback
root   (hd0,3)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/3ad6515e-2293-4127-9d82-f4605256de94 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img

# (2) Windows
title Windows
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

I've also looked at this thread: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=56251 , and tried removing "/boot"  from kernel and initrd, but I got the same "error 15" message. Windows runs perfectly fine though.

I'm clueless as to what to do next. I'm not sure if I saved a backup of menu.list with Mandriva Linux on it...but I doubt that would have helped much either way.

Is my only option reinstalling Arch?

Profjim

Member

From: NYC

Registered: 2008-03-24

Posts: 658

Re: Need help reinstalling GRUB

I'm trying to follow this guide: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Reinstalling_GRUB , but when I get to the part where I have to mount my partition, and then have to type in these commands:

mount -t proc proc /mnt/proc
mount -t sysfs sys /mnt/sys
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev

I get the "mount point _____ does not exist" error.

OK, so you're not able to do a chroot. Here's a more spelled-out version of the instructions: http://superuser.com/questions/111152.

It sounds to me like you didn't succeed in mounting your drive to /mnt, so when you tried to mount the proc etc. directories the /mnt/proc directories didn't exist.

EDIT: The wiki page says:

You need to know what the proper partitions and file-system types are. This
example will use sda1 as the root partition and ext3 as the file-system --
change as appropriate:

cd /
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /mnt

From what you wrote:

 $ sudo fdisk -l | grep -i linux
/dev/sda2            2611        2865     2048287+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4           28914       30401    11952360   83  Linux  ( Mandriva Linux)
/dev/sda5            2866        4140    10241406   83  Linux  (/home, where /boot/grub/menu.lst was I believe)
/dev/sda6            4141        5415    10241406   83  Linux  ( / )

it looks like you'll want to use /dev/sda6 instead of /dev/sda1. Also, I doubt that your /boot/grub/menu.lst was on your /home partition, unless you copied a backup of it there, or did some clever remounting contortions.

Last edited by Profjim (2010-02-28 13:52:38)

Arman

Member

From: California, United States

Registered: 2010-02-16

Posts: 4

Re: Need help reinstalling GRUB

Forgot to mention I tried mounting both /dev/sda6 and /dev/sda5. I'm close to deleting the Mandriva partition(/dev/sda4), would doing that now have any negative effects when trying to reinstall GRUB on Arch?

I did a little test, I tried mounting my /dev/sda4 partition:

cd /
mount -t ext4 /dev/sda4 /mnt
mount -t proc proc /mnt/proc
mount -t sysfs sys /mnt/sys
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev

chroot /mnt /bin/bash

and everything worked with no errors whatsoever.

So, like you said in your post, it seems the directories do not exist on /sda6 or /sda5.

Thank you very much for that link. Because of it I stumbled upon: http://www.supergrubdisk.org/ . Running it right now, and hoping it works. If it doesn't, I might as well just reinstall and make sure I don't make the same dumb mistake again.

*EDIT* Well, Super Grub disk stopped at a certain part, doesn't seem like it will work.

Last edited by Arman (2010-03-01 01:43:50)