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#1 2012-09-29 06:36:00

battleMang0
Member
Registered: 2011-09-23
Posts: 8

[SOLVED]Cannot install boot loader to MBR with LDM partitions

Ok so i had a working triple boot arch-BT5-windows box for the past year now. Thinking that I dont really need the BT5 partition on my hd physically(i can load it up in vmware now)I decided to delete the partition and make a new ntfs partition for extra space for win7.

So I did that and in my disk management in win7 I can see that my previous partition which was BT5 was unallocated I decided to change the fs to ntfs. Little did I know i had a swap primary partition for both my arch and BT5 at that time. And the moment i tried to make a 'new simple volume', it opted me to change the new partition to a dynamic disk.

And there is my mistake, clicking yes and my whole hard drive went from basic disk MBR to dynamic disk MBR. Since a basic disk can only have 4 primary partitions, the moment I made my previous BT5 partition to a ntfs it changed to dynamic disk.

So the moment I restarted nothing boots, I get the grub> line when grub cant find my partitions because it does not recognize any filesystem.

Loaded up my windows 7 cd did a system restore and did a MBR restore. Got back to win7 os and I downloaded a partition manager and successfully converted my dynamic disk back to basic disk(took around ~6hours to finish a 700gb).

I know my arch partition is still there and I tried to reinstall grub2, so I booted up on arch LiveCD and mounted my arch partition chrooted to it and tried to install grub2. I get this error:

/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup: warning: this LDM has no Embedding Partition; embedding won't be possible.
/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup: warning: Embedding is not possible.  GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists.  However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup: error: will not proceed with blocklists.

i ran os-prober and saw that it recognized my Win7 partition and inside the menu entry i get something along the lines of:

set root='ldm/########bunch of numbers and letters############/Volume1

I know grub does not recognize LDM partitions, since I converted basic -> dynamic then back to dynamic->basic, how come grub still sees my windows partition as LDM?
LDM = Logical Disk Management, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Disk_Manager

Right now I only have win7 working since I cannot install arch correctly. I even did a --force install with grub, arch works when i choose it at boot with grub, but when i choose win7 I get "disk read error occured".

I dont want to re-install my win7 since I got it as a student download and its already activated, I dont know if I can re-use my product key. I love arch since its the linux distro that actually made me learn more about the linux compared to ubuntu where it didnt force me to use command at all, while arch actually made realize command line is where all the fun is big_smile

What are my options to fix this problem?

Thanks to any replies big_smile
--battleMang0

Last edited by battleMang0 (2012-09-30 11:44:02)

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#2 2012-09-29 06:50:22

DSpider
Member
From: Romania
Registered: 2009-08-23
Posts: 2,273

Re: [SOLVED]Cannot install boot loader to MBR with LDM partitions

Use /dev/sdx with grub-install, not /dev/sdxY. Because you want to install to the MBR, not to a partition.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Be … bootloader


"How to Succeed with Linux"

I have made a personal commitment not to reply in topics that start with a lowercase letter. Proper grammar and punctuation is a sign of respect, and if you do not show any, you will NOT receive any help (at least not from me).

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#3 2012-09-29 06:57:05

battleMang0
Member
Registered: 2011-09-23
Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED]Cannot install boot loader to MBR with LDM partitions

Thanks for the quick response.

I typed:

# grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck /dev/sda

i still get

/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup: warning: this LDM has no Embedding Partition; embedding won't be possible.
/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup: warning: Embedding is not possible.  GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists.  However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup: error: will not proceed with blocklists.

then I tried

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
...sees my windows partition...
#grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck --force /dev/sda
...grub installs...

But if i choose Windows 7 in the list. I still get the "disk read error occurred. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to reboot"

Last edited by battleMang0 (2012-09-29 06:57:55)

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#4 2012-09-30 06:44:00

battleMang0
Member
Registered: 2011-09-23
Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED]Cannot install boot loader to MBR with LDM partitions

OK solved it, since grub2 is being annoying i decided to try syslinux. It installed to the MBR and now can boot things correctly. My disk only has 3 partitions so I dont really need a complex boot manager like grub. Syslinux is enought big_smile

How do I mark this thread as solved?

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#5 2012-09-30 06:52:14

DSpider
Member
From: Romania
Registered: 2009-08-23
Posts: 2,273

Re: [SOLVED]Cannot install boot loader to MBR with LDM partitions

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … ow_to_Post

Finally, when a solution is found, mark your thread as solved by editing the first post and prepending the tag [SOLVED] to the title in the "Subject" field.


Edit: Except that it's more like giving up (rather than solve), because you didn't actually solve the GRUB issue.

Last edited by DSpider (2012-09-30 06:53:27)


"How to Succeed with Linux"

I have made a personal commitment not to reply in topics that start with a lowercase letter. Proper grammar and punctuation is a sign of respect, and if you do not show any, you will NOT receive any help (at least not from me).

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#6 2012-09-30 10:31:14

battleMang0
Member
Registered: 2011-09-23
Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED]Cannot install boot loader to MBR with LDM partitions

How is this like giving up? I tried everything to get grub to install, scoured the internet about my problem, meaning I had to try a solution if I saw one that I thought that would help me. I had to re-write my MBR more than 10 times just so I can fix this grub issue, I had to post here because I had no where else to look for help.

I am AWARE that grub cannot read LDM partitions, so what is the point of using grub when it can't even read my partitions correctly. So why not just try a different boot loader like syslinux.

And telling me that "I gave up" is quite insulting actually. If you happen to find a way to get grub reading LDM partitions correctly then i'll happily switch back to grub.

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#7 2012-09-30 11:00:57

WorMzy
Forum Moderator
From: Scotland
Registered: 2010-06-16
Posts: 11,751
Website

Re: [SOLVED]Cannot install boot loader to MBR with LDM partitions

I think DSpider is referring to your to the topic title: "Grub2 thinks windows partition is LDM". That problem is not solved, which may give false hope to someone else searching for a solution to the same problem.

That you resolved your personal issue by switching to a different bootloader is fine, it just may not help the next guy..


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#8 2012-09-30 11:55:38

battleMang0
Member
Registered: 2011-09-23
Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED]Cannot install boot loader to MBR with LDM partitions

Ok i changed the title so it doesn't reflect on grub. For the people that unfortunately incur this same problem, there was really nothing grub can do since it will not read LDM partitions. I searched on why grub is acting like this and I came to understand that its either a bug in grub or there isn't support for LDM partitions yet. So there was no other choice but to switch boot loaders, as far as I know people that had the same problem had to resort to formatting their whole drive to fix the problem. Thanks for the input big_smile

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#9 2012-11-10 07:26:34

Pip
Member
Registered: 2012-01-25
Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED]Cannot install boot loader to MBR with LDM partitions

This is the *REAL* problem reason and solution:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … omments/26

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#10 2012-11-10 07:27:16

Pip
Member
Registered: 2012-01-25
Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED]Cannot install boot loader to MBR with LDM partitions

See my post :-)

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