First boot after installation is frozen at grub

shadowww · 2010-04-20 01:56:10

Heh.

I'm installing Arch for first time. Was going step by step with guides, wiki pages, etc. Everything looks great and logical except that one thing: after reboot I'm stuck at frozen grub page. Can't press 'e', can't press 'c'.

Now I think this can be maybe due my last config setup - setup of grub. I edited there only 2 things as I remember:

1. I changed waiting time from 5 to 3 sec
2. I put comment marks (#) in front of second series of options (I belive it was called rollback or sth similar). The thing is I didn't want to have 2 options at boot, I just wanted one. Pls no questions why I did that..

Now,
1. am I stuck at frozen grub bootscreen because of these my 2 options I changed in last config file, or it must be something else I screwed?
2. is it possible to fix that somehow without me going through WHOLE install process again, editing all config files again...?

idk if its important but I made partritioning sth like this:
/boot ex2
/ xfs
/home xfs
/swap swap

GRUB on mbr. I hope at least. (it was sda i think)

Thanks to everyone in advance!

empthollow · 2010-04-20 02:58:15

I would mover the menu.lst file to a safe location and reinstall grub from live cd. Then, I would make one change at a time to see what it was that caused the freeze. It sounds like your system is in tact, you just need to reinstall grub.

shadowww · 2010-04-20 10:19:45

Here, I just remembered of what could be real reason (things mentioned in my 1st post seems unlikely to me, but if some expert can comment on them and find cause there- fine) of my freezing grub: INCOMPATIBILITY with my mainboard.

I remember when I tried to install Arch from "normal" net install CD, when I would boot up from that CD everything would just hang at grub menu. Keyboard was non-responsive, I couldn't enter setup and all what I could was push restart button or ctrl+alt+del restart (pretty much same situation as I have now after I installed base system).

Then I downloaded alternative Arch CD (ISOLINUX ISO) and tried to boot it with that and things went smoothly. I like this distro very much, and I'm not giving up that easily.

So... what I recon to be my best solution is:

1. install LILO (I always prefered LILO to fat massive amount of hack which people call GRUB tho)
2. try to setup "some" option / parameter in GRUB which will magically make it work on my system. I'm pretty much lost here, guess I should read grub documentation, but I'm posting this in hope that people will suggest me some miracle menu.lst option that could help me. If miracles exists.

Now, the problem with LILO is that installer doesn't give me a chance to install it. Which is the only unlogical thing I encountered in my Arch adventure do far. It is ISOLINUX cd - meaning, people who have problems with GRUB will use that one and all that installer gives me at the end of installation is GRUB bootloader, eh?!

I guess that when comes to installation of bootloader I should open new virtual console and follow this instructions for LILO. Since this isn't mentioned in beginners guide/official installation guide I'd just like to confirm my assumption by experts here.

Thank you for reading and if you have any other suggestion please post it!

shadowww · 2010-04-20 22:28:47

Huh. So this part of forum is not really active, eh?

Well I fixed my problem by installing LILO bootloader. Had to do some googling/reading/IRCcounseling but managed to do it after all.

Just in case someone considered replaying in my thread....

empthollow · 2010-04-21 03:11:40

Interesting, I was not aware grub was incompatible with some mainboards. Good to know.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-04-20 01:56:10

First boot after installation is frozen at grub

#2 2010-04-20 02:58:15

Re: First boot after installation is frozen at grub

#3 2010-04-20 10:19:45

Re: First boot after installation is frozen at grub

#4 2010-04-20 22:28:47

Re: First boot after installation is frozen at grub

#5 2010-04-21 03:11:40

Re: First boot after installation is frozen at grub

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