Arch Linux

dtomasiewicz

Member

Registered: 2011-10-19

Posts: 18

[SOLVED] Upgraded to GRUB2, none of the menu choices are bootable

So I installed Arch a few days ago and I've been loving it so far... however, when it installed GRUB (not GRUB 2), it failed to detect my Windows 7 installation. I couldn't get GRUB (1) to detect it at all, so I decided to try installing GRUB 2. It installed, said everything was fine, and so I rebooted to test it out. There are now 5 items in the GRUB menu:

Arch Linux, with Linux vmlinuz26-lts
Arch Linux, with Linux vmlinuz26-lts Fallback
Arch Linux, with Linux vmlinuz26
Arch Linux, with Linux vmlinuz26 Fallback
Memory Test (memtest86+)

None of the Arch options are bootable. Furthermore, those options seem to indicate version 2.6 of the kernel, but it should be 3. All of the options give the same output when selected:

error: no such device: fb70f55b-e58a-4ac6-af45-19d19cc24d60.
Loading Linux vmlinuz26-lts ...
error: file not found.
Loading initial ramdisk ...
error: you need to load the kernel first.

Press any key to continue ...

It seems GRUB 2 doesn't want you to configure manually using grub.cfg, but its detection script apparently is not working at all. I have an Arch Live USB that I'm using to poke around, but not getting anywhere. Booting to the LiveUSB then running install-grub gives me a strange error:

#install-grub /dev/sda /dev/sda2
Installing the GRUB bootloader...
/sbin/install-grub: line 73: k/by-label/ARCH_201108-1: division by 0 (error token is "-label/ARCH_201108-1")
Error: Missing/Invalid root device:

My disk is partitioned as such:

/dev/sda1 - Ubuntu ext4
/dev/sda2 - Arch ext4
/dev/sda3 - Windows 7 ntfs
/dev/sda4 - Arch/Ubuntu shared swap

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

EDIT: Ended up just chrooting and installing LILO-- config seems a lot more straight-forward. To anyone else having this problem, I just booted from my Arch LiveUSB and did the following:

# mount -t ext4 /dev/sda2 /mnt
# mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
# mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
# mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
# chroot /mnt
# pacman -Sy lilo
# nano /etc/lilo.conf
(change the boot line to point to arch's disk, and edit each entry to point to arch's partition(s))
# lilo
# exit
# reboot

Last edited by dtomasiewicz (2011-10-21 17:46:33)

hal8000

Member

Registered: 2011-05-20

Posts: 46

Re: [SOLVED] Upgraded to GRUB2, none of the menu choices are bootable

Grub2 contains a lot more configuration scripts than Grub Legacy (grub1). I've had trouble with Grub2 before and stick firmly to grub legacy.

With grub legacy its a single configuration file, /boot/grub/menu.lst so getting this to detect windows and chainloading should be easy.

Adding something like:

title Window
root (hd0,2)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Should boot a windows partitions on sda3. Remember that grub legacy counts from 0 so the thrird partition is 2 not 3.
Hope that helps.

shulamy

Member

From: israel

Registered: 2010-09-11

Posts: 454

Re: [SOLVED] Upgraded to GRUB2, none of the menu choices are bootable

i think "rootnoverify" is needed for windows.

ezik

.:B:.

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2006-11-26

Posts: 5,819

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Upgraded to GRUB2, none of the menu choices are bootable

Is there a reason why you are not using Ubuntu's GRUB2?

Also, I migrated to GRUB2 on my server a few weeks ago and that went just fine. You do need to tell GRUB2 about the present kernel(s) though, but there's nothing that the wiki hasn't covered.

---

Got Leenucks? :: Arch: Power in simplicity :: Get Counted! Registered Linux User #392717 :: Blog thingy

Jelle

Member

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2011-01-30

Posts: 84

Re: [SOLVED] Upgraded to GRUB2, none of the menu choices are bootable

AFAIK grub doesn't autodetect other partitions with a different OS; you should run something like os-prober for automated detection (same with grub2) or do it manually. Probably everything else was fine.

If you installed grub2 exactly as detailed in the wiki and it gave no errors whatsoever, then the big question is, how does your grub.cfg look?

Last edited by Jelle (2011-10-19 13:43:16)

bangkok_manouel

Member

From: indicates a starting point

Registered: 2005-02-07

Posts: 1,556

Re: [SOLVED] Upgraded to GRUB2, none of the menu choices are bootable

every thread needs a poster who doesn't answer the question and comes with a solution no one asked for, I'll be that guy.
I found it very surprising the amount of people switching to grub2 which looks over complicated with ugly configuration when we have wonderful tools like syslinux. it has its limitations but if your setup can accept it then it's a real pleasure to use.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Syslinux

dtomasiewicz

Member

Registered: 2011-10-19

Posts: 18

Re: [SOLVED] Upgraded to GRUB2, none of the menu choices are bootable

Thanks for the help guys... looks like this was actually a failure on my part. I missed the line on the wiki article that said to install os-prober if you're dual-booting. Once I installed it and ran grub-mkconfig it recognized Ubuntu and Arch, then I was able to add Windows 7 to /etc/grub.d/40_custom.

Last edited by dtomasiewicz (2011-10-19 15:30:46)