Arch Linux

snufkin

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2008-11-08

Posts: 71

GRUB Error 17 on installation

Firstly, I'll present my disk:
hd3   /dev/sdd
ssd1: 200GB NTFS with Vista
ssd2: 385GB NTFS
ssd3: 1GB swap
ssd4: 9GB ext3 mounted as /

Now, I know there's a lot of threads on this, but I still think it's better to create this thread in case of specific errors. I'm using 2008.06-core-x86_64.

Everything works out perfectly, until I'm going to install GRUB. I comment out (in menu.lst) the two entries at the bottom (Arch fallback and Windows), just to have only Arch listed. Then I save and quit and choose which harddrive to install GRUB to (sdd).

Then immediately after I press OK, I get an error; look in tty5 for error message. The following is what tty5 shows (although, tty5 shows it with fucked up formatting):

grub> setup (hd3)
Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition
grub> quit
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. The may take a long time.

GNU GRUB version 0.97 (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere

else TABlists the possible completions of a device/filename. ]
grub> root (hd3,3)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x82
grub> setup (hd3)

Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition
grub> quit

and when I reboot, I get this:

GNU GRUB version 0.97 (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere

else TABlists the possible completions of a device/filename. ]

grub>

Now, what am I supposed to do?

Last edited by snufkin (2008-11-08 14:55:09)

deej

Member

Registered: 2008-02-08

Posts: 395

Re: GRUB Error 17 on installation

Could you clarify ? Do you have more than one hard drive ? I ask because I had the same problem when I ran
my SATA drive and an IDE drive as a backup. Grub insisted that my SATA was hd0, when in actual fact it needed
to be changed ( in /boot/grub/menu.lst ) to hd1 [ root   (hd1,0) ] - or visa-versa, it was a while ago !
I could never get the 'minimal CLI' to do anything, so I reinstalled, adjusting menu.lst accordingly.

Hope this doesn't confuse the issue !

Deej

snufkin

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2008-11-08

Posts: 71

Re: GRUB Error 17 on installation

I have a SATA-disk (sdd), on which I'm trying to install GRUB on, and four PATA-disks (IDE). For some reason all hard drives gets labeled sdX.

sda, sdb, sdc are PATA-drives, sdd is my SATA-drive, and sde is another PATA-drive.

EDIT: Hm, wait. I see now that GRUB's trying to install on hde, instead of sde. Brb, I'll try to change that.

Last edited by snufkin (2008-11-08 20:30:29)

snufkin

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2008-11-08

Posts: 71

Re: GRUB Error 17 on installation

Sorry for double posting, but I'm not really bumping or anything (just one thread I think). It's easier to understand from a new post, than from editing my old one.

Now I've managed so install GRUB. I get to the GRUB menu, and select my OS, then I get:

root   (sd3,3)

Error 23: Error while parsing number

Press any key to continue...

What's wrong now? I use the correct syntax (sd3,3), and I don't see any problems. Neither Windows nor Arch boots. Same error (except (sd3,0 on Windows).

creslin

Member

Registered: 2008-10-04

Posts: 241

Re: GRUB Error 17 on installation

What's wrong now? I use the correct syntax (sd3,3), and I don't see any problems.

There's no such thing as (sd3,3).  If you're referring to /dev/sdd4, the correct grub notation is (hd3,3).

# Arch
title Arch
root (hd3,3)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdd4 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img

These examples might help:

/dev/sda1 = (hd0,0) = /dev/hda1
/dev/sdc4 = (hd2,3) = /dev/hdc4
/dev/sdb2 = (hd1,1) = /dev/hdb2

Last edited by creslin (2008-11-08 23:25:23)

---

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

deej

Member

Registered: 2008-02-08

Posts: 395

Re: GRUB Error 17 on installation

It's good fun with lots of disks, eh ? I'd write down the notation for, and what is on, each partition - easy to get
confused. It's normal for grub to use the 'root (hd~)' notation for sata and pata.

Deej

snufkin

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2008-11-08

Posts: 71

Re: GRUB Error 17 on installation

Yay, I finally got i working. Thanks for helping me out.

The problem was that when I booted from the CD, my SATA disk was sdd (so therefore I configured GRUB to boot from hd3,3), but when I tried to boot from the hard drive with GRUB, it had for some reason changed to hd0,3.

Thanks for your help guys.