[Solved]GRUB error: No such device

Scotty · 2010-07-26 17:05:42

I have a bit of a confusing problem and my efforts to find a solution of the Arch Wiki and elsewhere have not worked. The problem I'm having is simply that right after install, everything went fine on install, I reboot, and I cannot get past Grub. I have reinstalled the whole base system twice. Still the same error:

error: no such device: 8f2e32e6-7d21-4f4d-8661-6f1ec6e658ee
Grub Rescue>

Edit: I just noticed that the UUID grub is giving me does not match any of my partitions...

It just leaves me at that.

I have two hard drives. One is a brand spankin' new SSD that I know works perfectly fine (I test installed Ubuntu on it to be sure), the other the regurlar old hard drive that came with the computer many years ago.

sda is the hard drive
sdb is the SSD

I have the SSD with swap and / on it in two partitions
the hard drive is /home

Because of the inherent speed increase on my SSD and the fact that /boot is on there, I decided to install Grub on sdb. The installer offered the following options:

sda
sda1
sdb -->I hit enter to install Grub here, because I read that you have to install it to the MBR and not a partition.
sdb1
sdb5

Because of the inconsistent naming by Linux and Grub, I set Grub to boot by UUID, so that kernel updates cannot change the drive naming.(Hence the UUID error)

Here is my /etc/fstab

#
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system>            <dir>            <type>    <options>            <dump>   <pass>           
devpts                          /dev/pts         devpts      defaults                  0               0
shm                              /dev/shm        tmpfs     nodev,nosuid           0               0 
 
#/dev/cdrom                 /media/cd      auto     ro,user,noauto,unhide    0          0
#/dev/dvd                     /media/dvd    auto     ro,user,noauto,unhide    0          0
#/dev/fd0                      /media/fl        auto     user,noauto                   0          0

UUID=917fcc85-d745-4a79-898f-c04804d77f3c swap swap defaults 0 0 #This is the swap partition
UUID=cc049fae-555a-4cf2-8099-bf7d41b53999 /home ext4 defaults 0 2 #The Arch installer treated this as sda
UUID=d2814805-1990-4f4b-92d0-26277effc5c6 / ext2 defaults,noatime 0 1 #The Arch installer treated this as sdb

Here is my /boot/grub/menu.lst

To clarify I do not have a seperate /boot partition

#I left the commented stuff at the top out

#general configuration
timout 10
default 0
colour light-blue/black light-cyan/blue

# (0) Arch Linux
title      Arch Linux
root      (hd1,0)
kernel   /boot/vmlinuz26   root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/d281405-1990-4f4b-92d0-26277effc5c6 ro 
intrd     /boot/kernel26.img

# (1) Arch Linux
title     Arch Linux Fallback
root      (hd1,0)
kernel   /boot/vmlinuz26   root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/d281405-1990-4f4b-92d0-26277effc5c6 ro 
intrd     /boot/kernel26-fallback.img

Any help is appreceated, I hope I provided enough information.

Scott

Last edited by Scotty (2010-07-27 05:41:44)

hokasch · 2010-07-26 17:23:18

Does the error appear when selecting a kernel, or before you even get a grub menu?

Shot in the dark, maybe you still have another grub installed on sda, and it starts up instead? You can zap it with dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1 (be careful..)

Last edited by hokasch (2010-07-26 17:24:17)

Scotty · 2010-07-26 17:31:55

I am not shown a menu or anything, sorry for not specifying that.

I do not see the usual "Grub loading stage 1.5". Just a blinking underscore in the top right after my BIOS loads.

I installed it on sdb because it is a much faster drive, and that drive has my /boot foler on it.

Last edited by Scotty (2010-07-26 17:34:07)

hokasch · 2010-07-26 17:36:22

nevermind. Grub Rescue seems to be a grub2 thing, this would further indicate the grub attempting to load is not the one you installed with arch, assuming you didn't explicitly used grub2.

Scotty · 2010-07-26 17:43:45

Well, Ubuntu did install Grub when I did a test installation. And it uses Grub 2. Could this be it?

hokasch · 2010-07-26 17:53:12

If you ever installed grub on sda and haven't cleared the MBR yet, this could very well be the problem. Try to overwrite the MBR on sda with the above command from a live cd - but double check you go the right disk etc, and always keep backups...

Scotty · 2010-07-26 18:02:40

I zapped the MBR with the above command, still the same error message.

hokasch · 2010-07-26 18:14:37

OK sorry for this, what should really make the difference which hd gets to boot is you bios-settings... oh boy. <duck>

What is on sda, do you have any other systems installed - hopefully I did not just told you to needlessly kill your windows bootloader or something?

Did you install grub2 with arch, or the default grub legacy? Is your bios set up to boot from the second hard disk?

Last edited by hokasch (2010-07-26 18:19:51)

Scotty · 2010-07-26 18:23:24

hokasch wrote:

OK sorry for this, what should really make the difference which hd gets to boot is you bios-settings... oh boy. <duck>
What is on sda, do you have any other systems installed? Did you install grub2 with arch, or the default grub legacy? Is your bios set up to boot from the second hard disk?

sda = /home, that is it.

I installed Grub legacy (or whatever the Arch Installation Framework uses) with arch, though I installed Ubuntu earlier to see if the system worked and how Linux-compatible it was. Ubuntu uses Grub 2.

I have no idea which hard disk the BIOS is set to boot from, there is no option in my BIOS, just the boot order.

hokasch · 2010-07-26 18:29:14

sda [sic]= /home, that is it.

Ok, I am relieved...

Arch uses grub legacy. If we assume the error message is coming from grub2, that would mean it is still loading the wrong grub. See if you can get anything out of the grub rescue console, help should list available commands. The sdd drive should be first in your boot order.

Scotty · 2010-07-26 18:32:19

hokasch wrote:

sda [sic]= /home, that is it.
Ok, I am relieved...
Arch uses grub legacy. If we assume the error message is coming from grub2, that would mean it is still loading the wrong grub. See if you can get anything out of the grub rescue console, help should list available commands. The sdd drive should be first in your boot order.

I can only choose "Boot from hard disk" in my boot order. I can't specify which. (Thank you, crappy OEM Board BIOS!)

grub rescue>help
Unknown command 'help'

Huh...

hokasch · 2010-07-26 18:36:39

damn. what about "set" and "ls"?

Scotty · 2010-07-26 18:46:43

grub rescue> set
prefix=(hd0,1)/boot/grub
root=hd0,1
grub rescue> ls
(hd0) (hd0,1) (hd1) (hd1,5) (hd1,1) (fd0)

So this is the grub on sda1

hokasch · 2010-07-26 18:56:21

That makes sense. Unfortunately, I am not sure how many bytes have to be overwritten on the start of the partition so grub is removed, but nothing else. Hopefully someone else jumps in on this.

Scotty · 2010-07-26 19:03:38

Ah shoot, should I just wipe both drives completely clean and start over? Nothing of value is on either drive.

Last edited by Scotty (2010-07-26 19:31:43)

hokasch · 2010-07-26 19:07:15

If there is nothing of value on sda1, just delete the partition and recreate it, that should be enough. No need to reinstall.

Last edited by hokasch (2010-07-26 19:07:59)

Scotty · 2010-07-26 19:37:10

Okay, I went in and deleted and recreated the partition. When I format the drives, I am given:

/dev/sda #What is this? Is this a partition? The whole disk?
/dev/sda1 #This is /home
/dev/sdb #Same question here
/dev.sdb1 #This is /
/dev/sdb5 #swap

hokasch · 2010-07-26 19:43:31

emm, don't format all the drives! your install is still on sdb... sda/sdb are the disks.

what I meant was boot the live cd, run cfdisk /dev/sda, delete the partition, recreate it, save. Then format as you like, e.g. mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1, and reboot.

Scotty · 2010-07-26 19:46:13

Whupps, good thing you caught that...I hadn't deleted all the partitions anyways. Only sda1

Scotty · 2010-07-26 19:52:13

Still gettting the error message. F*** me.

hokasch · 2010-07-26 19:53:34

What a bugger. I was pretty sure that would fix it. Try "set" again.

Scotty · 2010-07-26 20:00:12

set has not changed from when I tried it above.

hokasch · 2010-07-26 20:19:50

Really? Sorry, but I can't think of any possibility it would survive dd-ing the MBR and deleting the partition. All I can come up with is again, run from the live cd:

dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1

This will remove the partition table as well. Check with cfdisk /dev/sda if it still has one, if so the command was not succesfull. Then try to boot, and if it works, repartition sda.

Last edited by hokasch (2010-07-26 20:20:25)

Scotty · 2010-07-26 20:41:54

Ok, I tried dd-ing again:

[root@archiso ~]#dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes (0 B) copied, 0.000393155 s, 0.0 kB/s

Partition table still there.

falconindy · 2010-07-26 21:49:36

/dev/null is a black hole, and a selfish lover. It takes and takes, but never gives back. Use its sexier cousin, /dev/zero.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-07-26 17:05:42

[Solved]GRUB error: No such device

#2 2010-07-26 17:23:18

Re: [Solved]GRUB error: No such device

#3 2010-07-26 17:31:55

Re: [Solved]GRUB error: No such device

#4 2010-07-26 17:36:22

Re: [Solved]GRUB error: No such device

#5 2010-07-26 17:43:45

Re: [Solved]GRUB error: No such device

#6 2010-07-26 17:53:12

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#7 2010-07-26 18:02:40

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#8 2010-07-26 18:14:37

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#10 2010-07-26 18:29:14

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#11 2010-07-26 18:32:19

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#12 2010-07-26 18:36:39

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#25 2010-07-26 21:49:36

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