You are not logged in.

#1 2009-07-05 22:34:43

trot2millah
Member
From: Oregon
Registered: 2009-06-08
Posts: 6
Website

How to boot Arch Linux manually from GRUB

I could really use some help-

I messed up my GRUB configuration and it now drops me straight into the GRUB command line.  I need to be able to boot into Arch Linux in order to fix this...i currently have a dual-boot setup with Windows XP, located at (hd0,0).  My /boot is located at (hd0,2) I think, but not totally sure.  Assuming I have the latest Kernel (2.6.30 or whatever), and installed Arch Linux normally without tweaking anything, how can I boot into Arch Linux?

Offline

#2 2009-07-05 22:46:03

Daemonjax
Member
Registered: 2009-07-02
Posts: 48

Re: How to boot Arch Linux manually from GRUB

I'd start with an arch livecd, get to a prompt, and try and fix your /boot/grub from there... (first mount your /boot partition to some folder, and go from there: i.e. /mnt/sda1/boot/grub/) 

replace sda1 with sda2, or sda3, or sda4, etc, until you find the one with your /boot folder on it.

Note:  I'm saying sda instead of hda because, for some reason, my hard drives show up as sdnx instead of hdnx (which I did not expect).  YMMV

Note: I think that may be because in menu.lst the devices are named by ssui instead of the usual (hd0,0) jazz...  I know from past experience that's how I'd boot and mount off of raid devices in linux, but I guess we're just supposed to use them all the time now.

take a look at what your menu.lst looks like...  I never messed up grub so bad that I couldn't fix it by editing that one file...

The next step would be to reinstall grub on your system, but I actually never had to do that, so I won't comment on it.  (check out grub-install... if I got to this point I would just run grub-install /dev/sda... this doesn't rebuild a menu.lst, however, so I don't think it'll help)



Grub's supposed to let you edit your menu.lst before it actually boots it... I've never had it kick me right into the command prompt mode...  which makes me think that you're menu.lst is so borked it doesn't know what to do with it... but that's only a guess... I hope it's just your menu.lst that's borked and not your whole /boot/grub folder.

I think you'll be able to resolve the problem, so don't panic!!!! big_smile


Here's my menu.lst incase that helps you...

# Config file for GRUB - The GNU GRand Unified Bootloader
# /boot/grub/menu.lst

# DEVICE NAME CONVERSIONS 
#
#  Linux           Grub
# -------------------------
#  /dev/fd0        (fd0)
#  /dev/sda        (hd0)
#  /dev/sdb2       (hd1,1)
#  /dev/sda3       (hd0,2)
#

#  FRAMEBUFFER RESOLUTION SETTINGS
#     +-------------------------------------------------+
#          | 640x480    800x600    1024x768   1280x1024
#      ----+--------------------------------------------
#      256 | 0x301=769  0x303=771  0x305=773   0x307=775
#      32K | 0x310=784  0x313=787  0x316=790   0x319=793
#      64K | 0x311=785  0x314=788  0x317=791   0x31A=794
#      16M | 0x312=786  0x315=789  0x318=792   0x31B=795
#     +-------------------------------------------------+
#  for more details and different resolutions see
#  http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#Framebuffer_Resolution 

# general configuration:
timeout   3
default   0
color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue

# boot sections follow
# each is implicitly numbered from 0 in the order of appearance below
#
# TIP: If you want a 1024x768 framebuffer, add "vga=773" to your kernel line.
#
#-*

# (0) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/d8006dd5-d0d2-4f22-9b02-378888e36426 ro vga=791 quiet
initrd /kernel26.img

# (1) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux Fallback
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/d8006dd5-d0d2-4f22-9b02-378888e36426 ro
initrd /kernel26-fallback.img

# (2) Arch Linux 2.6.30.1-CUST
title  Arch Linux 2.6.30.1-CUST
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz2.6.30.1-CUST root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/d8006dd5-d0d2-4f22-9b02-378888e36426 ro vga=791 quiet
initrd /kernel2.6.30.1-CUST.img

# (2) Arch Linux 2.6.30.1-CUSTNODRM
title  Arch Linux 2.6.30.1-CUSTNODRM
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz2.6.30.1-CUSTNODRM root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/d8006dd5-d0d2-4f22-9b02-378888e36426 ro vga=791 quiet
initrd /kernel2.6.30.1-CUSTNODRM.img

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

Note: You can't just use any old uuid for the root=part... and I don't remember how to find it... years back I think I used dmraid tools.

Try something like:

title hope this works with some tweaking
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img

or not... I may have gotten my syntax wrong, or perhaps hd0,0 isn't your boot device
try:
cat /etc/boot/device.map
that may help

also, I noticed you're dual booting windows and linux... i you're currently trying to configure that, you definately want windows installed first, and then (hopefull) grub automagically detects it and adds it to your menu.lst for you when you install linux.  That's the only way I've ever gotten it to work, but I'd still avoid ever creating any partitions under windows (I'd boot into linux for that job), or you risk windows overwriting grub.  It's more of a PITA than it's worth...

I prefer to run linux in a virtualbox on my windows box rather than dual boot.  Sure, there's a performance hit (like 2 - 10 times slower, depending), but it's worth it to avoid the PITA that dualbooting is.

Last edited by Daemonjax (2009-07-05 23:36:52)

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB