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A couple days ago, I did a successful fresh install on another computer. Today, I took my hdd from my old system and added it as a slave on IDE1. I didn't move or make any changes to /dev/sda (arch hdd) and BIOS successfully recognized the second hdd.
Then when I boot, Grub complains:
error: no such device: [some UUID]
grub rescue>At this point, I'm assuming it must by the UUID of my first hdd and for some reason, it can't find it anymore.
I should mention here that when I partitioned /dev/sda during installation, I used GPT, not MFT. Since this computer is an older Dell that I'm resurrecting with Arch, it has an older BIOS, which means that gdisk had to create a very small bios-boot partition to make it somehow compatible with the BIOS. I mention it because I'm not sure if that plays into any of this.
Next, I boot the arch-install iso "ARCH_201310" off my keydrive, then blkid to see the UUIDs of both hard drives...nothing matches the UUID that grub complains about. Then I go into gdisk and check all the UUIDs for disks, partitions...find nothing that matches. I check my grub.cfg and it's not in there either. Just out of curiosity, I regenerated my grub config and reinstalled grub (after arch-chroot, of course) and then rebooted. Got the exact same message! I'm totally at a loss now. I have no idea what's going on. I'm hoping the forum can help...so I don't have to go through the hassle of doing a fresh install all over again. If it makes any difference...here's some output from the grub shell...I tried ls everything listed, but it couldn't find any filesystems.
grub rescue> ls
grub rescue> (hd0) (hd0,msdos4) (hd0,msdos3) (hd0,msdos2) (hd0,msdos1) (hd1) (hd2) (hd2,msdos2) (fd0)Not even sure why it listed (fd0) since I removed the floppy drive and turned it off in BIOS
Last edited by bpont (2013-10-26 07:31:23)
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OK...I just rebooted and went into BIOS setup, then turned off my second hdd, rebooted again and now my system boots normally. Now the questions are: why does it make any difference and how can I switch my second hdd back on in BIOS without grub failing and being locked out of arch?
Last edited by bpont (2013-10-25 06:27:14)
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So even though I turned off my second hdd in BIOS, arch still sees it and I can mount the partitions and access everything. Weird. So the good news is I have my system back, I solved the grub issue and can access and mount my second hdd. But it still would be interesting to know why simply turning on the second hdd in BIOS made grub freak out.
Last edited by bpont (2013-10-25 06:55:11)
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So just for the sake of completeness, in case anyone in the future has a similar issue and stumbles across this thread:
The reason grub was giving an error about a non-existent device with a UUID which didn't belong to any of my current devices or partitions was because it had belonged to a previous installation on the same drive...one whose /boot was on the primary hdd of my previous computer. I think I may have also mistakenly installed grub on the second hdd at that time, instead of on the primary one...so long story short, there were some artefacts on the MBR of the second hdd which grub was finding and complaining about.
There were two possible solutions to resolving the boot failure: chrooting to my arch partition and re-installing grub, first on the second hdd, and then on the primary hdd; or the second option of removing the 55AA signature on the second hdd with a hex editor. After choosing the simpler option of reinstalling grub on both hard drives, I then switched my second hdd back on in BIOS and rebooted normally.
Last edited by bpont (2013-10-26 06:44:24)
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